Passing

Lauren Schellenberg

I have no use for my anglophone accent. Late into the night I watch French television shows, whispering the lines over and over to myself. Piece by piece I am replacing my anglo turns of phrase with their French equivalents. The changes are usually small, for example:

J’aimerais un café, svp becomes je prends un café, svp

Ta sœur est belle changes to elle est belle, ta sœur

And je suis ici becomes je suis là

My French is an old car that I’ve been fixing up bit by bit – I’ve reached a point now where it looks pretty good if I drive by quickly. In short conversations I can pass as a francophone. Of course, the illusion decays as I continue to speak, but it doesn’t seem to matter. Shop keepers and waiters no longer switch to English when they hear me speak, even if I make a mistake. People don’t slow down when they talk to me or stop mid-sentence to define words for me. I feel like they’ve let me in.

But lately I’ve noticed something new. My carefully practised French accent is apparently mildly obnoxious here in Quebec. When I sounded like an anglophone speaking French, people didn’t comment on my accent or word choice – I got a free pass because it wasn’t my language. Now I get called out at parties for ‘trying to sound French’ if I use louper instead of rater, or say oui instead of ouais. I’ve moved up to the next level of ‘passing’ – I use my Quebecois accent with my Quebecois friends, and my French accent with everyone else.

This constant switching of accents has led me to become somewhat of an accent chameleon, even in English. In conversations with my family in Manitoba I sound like I’ve walked off the set of Fargo. I deliberately rejected this accent when I was growing up and now suddenly I’m saying aboot and you betcha. When talking to my Acadian friends from Nova Scotia, I find myself copying their highly regional accent that I have no right to use and saying things like warrons instead of goodbye. Heaven forbid I encounter someone from Ireland. I catch myself picking up these accents and immediately try to discard them and speak normally – if I can even remember how I normally sound.

How interesting it is that I have no qualms over deliberately adopting foreign accents in my second language when it seems so terribly disingenuous to do it in my first. How strange it is, yearning to sound like myself in French while diligently working to speak like someone else.