accents

What is in an accent? I have one, and so does everyone else. It's just that mine is played out a little differently than most peoples. In Russia, folks generally pegged me as a Bulgarian trying to speak Russian. When in Bulgaria speaking Macedonian, they think I am a Russian trying to speak Bulgarian. Are you laughing yet? And when in Macedonia speaking Macedonia, they know I am not from Macedonia, but yet they do not know were I am from . . . and so I play a game.

When they ask me where I am from, I take the question in it's most concrete possible form and tell them that I live in Skopje, in the neighborhood known as Taftalige. "No where are you from" comes the next question. And I continue to play, "well we have lived all over, and ethnically I am German." as I continue to dodge the question they are really asking, which is "where were you born?"

Now if you spoke to me on the phone like Beth Knight-Pinneo did recently, like her, you would immediately know that I was born in the Southern USA, somewhere deep in the South. You can't shake those accents. And I have been honing mine down for years! Back home I am accused of being a "yankee" and in the Northeast I am called a "reb" or worse yet, "bubba". A couple of weeks ago I called the college in Rome GA where Heidi will be attending in the Fall to talk withone someone there, and I started laughing because of how strong her accent was . . . and she thought I was laughing because she did not think she had an accent after 3 years in Southern CA! In general, you can't get rid of your accent completely without professional diction lessons, or a voice coach.

This game of "where are you from" is extremely frustrating, because it is a daily reminder that I am instantly identifiable as a foreigner here because my speech patterns. That is just so very old and irritating. But I hope that I am also as instantly identifiable as a person of Faith, because I have the accent of Christ. Now that rocks.