Let’s play a game of atlas! This is a sentence I have found myself uttering more frequently over the past couple of years, when the subject of foreign travel emerges. Many of my fellow crime partners, or more specifically, my friends, often find themselves invested. For a large chunk of my early life, I’ve lived outside the country in not 1, not 2, but 5 foreign countries across 3 continents for 13 years. Throughout my life, it has been a familiar experience being mistaken as a tourist or a foreigner living in my own country by peers, strangers, and my university community alike. The dead giveaway for me, particularly, has been my accent.Â
What kind of accent do I have? Well, I myself don’t know. Traditionally, I’ve relied on the descriptions from my ride or die friends and my relatives to construct an overall description of my own accent. I could say it’s a mix based on the many people I’ve talked to and shared memories with throughout my childhood and teenagehood, but there were also times I was quite reserved. Perhaps my accent came from the TV shows I watched, or the YouTubers I used to watch before I continuously shifted interests during my teen years. Internally, there was also a deep imagination where I would focus on different conversations from characters I’ve seen in TV shows and comics, to even dreams from a good night’s sleep.Â
I could say my accent has changed over time and over space with every place I’ve been to, providing a unique array of available books, television shows, and movies. In Mexico, I enjoyed the fiction of my local library, not just seeming classics like Magic Treehouse, but even local folk stories. In the United Kingdom, it was a combination of the shows my parents used to watch, before I eventually got bored with them, and gaming websites like Newgrounds in the late 2000s. In Singapore, it was a mix of channels that included popular Nickelodeon shows. Through all these creative influences, I picked up not just accents, but even slang and a desire to write fresh fictional scenarios. I could say that accents have helped me become more creative over time.
An accent is typically seen as an inherited way of speaking reflective of the people someone may have interacted with, but it can also be from culture and childhood experiences as well, along with shifting interests based on my own anecdotal experiences. For me, although I have faced occasional questions from friends and family alike, and also questionable encounters with strangers mistaking me for a tourist, it also provides a strength for me, not just in a formal way of understanding communities across the world and making friends, but also to mess with people around me.Â
I could talk and gossip very fast that no one whose eavesdropping would know a lick of what I just said. I could even role-play and think of entire scripts and Shakespearean plays with my accent and think of entire characters alone, and when caught, I can feign ignorance to my roommate or close friends alike. After all, apart from evading awkwardness, I also like to keep my literature to myself.Â
A person’s accent is like a rainbow. Not only is it a source of pride, but it carries a person’s deepest memories, experiences, and humour. It’s how we interact with the world, and it’s also how we can turn the world around us to be more creative. Our accents are a tool for how we can both make friends across borders, while at the same time giving an opportunity for some comedic pranks and a filter for some zesty gossip. Overall, your accent is ultimately your way of being yourself in all wondrous and comedic chaos possible.