I still remember the words: “I will faithfully observe / The laws of Canada / And fulfill my duties as a Canadian citizen.”
That was it! I’d officially become a new Canadian in a room full of new fellow citizens. Our voices melded into a mishmash of from-somewhere-else accents. That was 10 years ago.
Like many new Canadians in that room, I still speak with my accent. It’s a powerful reminder that marks me as “other than” and often “less than” mainstream Canucks.
According to Dmitri Priven, coordinator of Algonquin College’s program for teachers of English as a second/foreign language, there’s an unofficial but pervasive “hierarchy of accents.” Those from the UK, U.S., Australia and South Africa are usually perceived as “better” than the accents of people whose native tongue is not English.
Learning a second language after early childhood means that you’ll always speak it with an accent. The sound system of the first language influences the way you hear and pronounce the words of the second.
Short of having a brain and tongue transplant, there’s no easy way to lose an accent. “Hello” is enough to give you away as part of an audible minority.
Everyone has an accent, tied to class and region. Maltese English sounds very different from Dixie English. In England, Cockney marks the speaker as lower class.
In a 2003 study, Murray J. Munro of Simon Fraser University’s linguistics department noted that a foreign accent, along with skin colour, dress and mannerisms, “can serve as an excuse for discriminatory treatment.” He examined “how this phenomenon directly affects people’s lives” in Canada and identified three types of mistreatment experienced by English-as-a-second-language speakers: 1) discrimination pertaining to employment, tenancy or the provision of services 2) accent stereotyping, which superficially associates character traits with ethnicity and 3) harassment.
Examples of all three are rife.
A painful though not formally reported incident happened to Natasha T., a Polish-born math teacher. Most of her students love her and have no trouble understanding her thickly accented English. She also has great annual reviews of her work. So she was sadly surprised by an anonymous letter from a student “telling me that he/she hates me because of my accent,” those words underlined in red highlighter.
After Nada H., an award-winning actor from Syria, immigrated to Canada, she was advised to learn the “Canadian accent.” Her reaction was dismay: “Canadian accent?! What is the Canadian accent? Isn’t Canada proud to be a multicultural country?”
Accent discrimination doesn’t only affect immigrants. Munro reports on a case settled by the Saskatchewan Human Rights Commission in 2001. A woman speaking with an Aboriginal accent was told that an apartment she wanted to rent was “gone.” When a friend with “no accent” called, he was invited to see it. In this case, the landlord agreed to pay compensation and post an anti-discrimination policy in the building.
Which is the “real” Canadian English? That heard in Newfoundland or in Cape Breton? The language spoken in Parliament or the 10 distinct dialects of the Ottawa Valley?
What about the vivid, distinctive English overheard on the TTC or the standard English of most broadcast media?
According to the 2011 census, 3.4 million Ontarians and 45 per cent of Toronto residents have a mother tongue other than English or French. In 2013/14, the Toronto metropolitan area received more than 79,500 international immigrants.
The second-most-spoken language in Toronto is Cantonese and the third Italian. To speak “Toronto English” correctly, you likely need an accent that combines tongues from at least three continents.
Remember, foreign-sounding Canadians are likely bilingual (or trilingual) and therefore gifted with access to at least two cultures, maybe even two civilizations, possessing extra knowledge and talents to contribute to this one.
Not everyone in Canada frowns or winces when hearing a differently accented speaker. And not all immigrants perceive that there’s an issue with their accents.
Iranian-born Torontonian Sheida S., who immigrated in 2003, hasn’t encountered any special problems in finding a job or adapting to her new country because of what she calls her “soft accent.”
Instead, when children comment on her English, they do so in a “positive and sweet way,” saying things like, “Oh, my God, your accent is so cute. I like it.”
But not all instances of what I’ll dub “accentism” are benign.
The Canadian Human Rights Commission and the Ontario Human Rights Tribunal investigate situations in which, for example, employees are fired because of their accents, even though they meet their jobs’ language-skills requirements.
Cecilia Segula, an immigrant from Yugoslavia, moved to Canada in 1957 at the age of 17. She was often criticized for her noticeable “accent” and “broken English” by her employer and told to take English courses. As Munro explains, this kind of harassment is very hurtful, as it entails “shaming based on a characteristic that [is] unlikely to change substantially.” After she filed a human rights complaint, the Ontario Board of Inquiry awarded Segula $3,000 in financial compensation.
In yet another case, posted on the Human Rights Legal Support Centre (HRLSC) website, supervisors and management didn’t do anything to protect a man working at a call centre against racist remarks from callers instead, the employee was fired. Following his complaint, the HRLSC negotiated a settlement with the company to train their employees on their rights and the employer’s obligations.
In other words, making people feel bad about how their English sounds can cost you big bucks.
More positively, we should acknowledge that accents are a part of what it means to be Canadian.
Like the Oath of Citizenship I once proclaimed with so much passion, Canadian English is spoken with countless accents.
Remember Ian Pringle’s 1983 comment: “Canadian English doesn’t really exist: it is still coming into existence. Or rather, there are an undetermined number of Canadian Englishes – and perhaps thousands of them.”
Diana Manole, a native of Romania, is a poet, journalist and academic.
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