Yuri
I went to Australia two years ago. It was a fantastic trip, and I met many people including 10ish local Australian people. When I introduced myself, all of the Australians said “oh, you are Japanese! But you speak English well!”
“Wait, what do you mean by but?”, I wondered. Is it weird that a Japanese person speaks English well? I never asked the question because I knew they didn’t mean anything negative. I just smiled and politely said ‘thank you’. BUT, there are many Japanese people who speak English well, and there are very many Japanese people living in Australia. Have you not met any Japanese person who speaks English? Really?
I have been thinking about this ‘but’ since then. I am actually glad to hear that my English is good. I have put a lot of effort to be able to speak English, so the compliments make me feel that my effort has paid off. On the other hand, it is true that many native English speakers have a stereotype that Japanese people do not speak English well. I am worried that my potential employers have the same stereotype. Matsuda argues that accent-based discrimination exists in the United States, and employers judge applicants based on their accents. They even refuse applicants who have non-standard accents (as cited in Crump, 2014). In other words, during job interviews, I not only have to sell myself but also prove that my English is at a high level. I got my Bachelor’s degree in the US and I am about to finish my Master’s in Canada, but it might not be enough; I want a ‘native-like’ ‘standard’ English accent, and knowing that I can never speak such English makes me extra nervous.
In Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother, Amy Chua (2011), a professor at Yale Law School, says “do you know what a foreign accent is? It’s a sign of bravery”(p. 86). I strongly agree with it, but when it comes to job hunting, it doesn’t matter. Who cares that I am brave? I probably need to be a little more positive and optimistic, but how can I?
References
Chua, A. (2011) Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother. New York: Penguin Press.
Crump, A. (2014) Introducing LangCrit: Critical language and race theory. Critical Inquiry in Language Studies, 11(3), 207-224.
Native-speakerism is one of the things I hate the most in this world. It’s terrible that we have created a culture where learning English is demanded so that people can join the international community, but we prevent people who do so from being hired in it. We judge non-native speakers of languages as not being “good enough”, and that shows through micro-aggressions like the one you encountered with the use of the word “but” when people were complimenting your English. I sincerely believe that people intend to be kind when they say such things, but it is prompted by the native-speaker fallacy which insinuates that only native speakers can be ideal speakers of the language and thus non-native speakers will always be at a deficit and thus should be praised for approaching the native speaker’s level.
Accents are something that students I tutor are always eager to rid themselves of, but I really wish people would embrace them. Not only learners of English, but also L1 speakers of it! The majority of the world’s English speakers have some sort of “non-standard accent” (what does that even mean? What makes an accent “standard”? Is it comprehensibility? Because Scottish people have incredibly difficult accents for many people to understand, but they are native speakers. Is their accent “non-standard” too?), so it is in all of our best interests to let our ear get used to hearing different accents. I realize that I speak from a place of privilege as a person who will never be discriminated against for my accent, and in fact I am benefited by it in terms of hiring practices as the “standard” Canadian accent is said to be highly desirable in English-teaching contexts and other domains such as radio announcing, but I do hope that you fight for your right to exist in English-dominant countries as a person with an accent. I also want to fight for that, so I hope that others will embrace what they have learned and focus less on becoming “standard”. The world could use a little more “non-standard”!
-Victoria
I can tell. I had the same experience when I was traveling around the world. People normally judge others statistically. Probably those Australians might have met more Japanese people who did not have a high communication skill than ones who did. Or they might have seen some Japanese with poor English ability through media (ex. Prime Minister’s speech?).
So this might be inevitable.
However, English education in Japan is right in the middle of renovation and shifting from “grammar focus” to “communicative English” (which might be tricky as well, but I won’t talk about this renovation here because it will be a long story). Thus, the more Japanese people speak English in the future, the label placed on Japanese as a weaker English speaker will be come off. (in 10 years? or more?)
Native-speakerism might be the world created by history and media, but I believe this prejudice that many people have in mind could be changed through education, and thus, teacher education will be one of the important factors to stop native-speakerism.
Ken
Maybe people’s expectations and prejudices will change slowly as Japanese-origin speakers of English, with whatever kind of accent, just become more widespread. The week I just spent in Hong Kong was interesting in the way it made very clear how many kinds of accents Chinese-origin Hong Kongers speak with in English. It seemed to me that there wasn’t much expectation about what kind of accent one might hear, just because the speakers are so numerous.
But certainly being in-your-face and refusing to be “BUTTED” is also going to help change people’s attitudes! At least I would like to think so.
Thank you for the post. As Chinese, I also had the similar experience of people saying “Oh you don’t sound like Chinese; you speak English well”. But I’m well aware that although I don’t have strong Chinese accent, I still cannot sound like native speakers and never. I think accent really has something to do with one’s language learning before the age of 12. Since there is no time machine, I decided to accept my accent by comforting myself “what accent you sound doesn’t matter; what you say matters”. For example, Jack Ma, the riches person in China, often makes speeches in English. His English has more or less Chinese accent, but for most people, he speaks perfect English because of the content, his confidence and calm while speaking English. So I think accent is not a big deal. We don’t need to be worried or nervous about it. Try to embrace it.
And I have faith in your job hunting because of your knowledge and ability.
Yidan
I can hardly recall a similar experience (probably because my English is not good enough), but I have been reflecting whether I have said something similar to other people. If I did, I want to apologize to them, because I thought it was a compliment and did not mean to offence. Many people takes accent as a standard of judging one’s English capacity. I clearly know that I have a strong Chinese accent and felt unconfident when speaking English because of that. Gradually I found out that accent does not really matter, while the content is more important. When I was in China as a student, I would always judge teachers’ teaching ability based on their accent and now I realized it is totally wrong!
Mengting L