How is accent perceived in your culture?

So happy to see a millennial taking up such topics and spreading awareness! I have hope that various cultures will remain preserved...

@KritikaSpreadLove

3 жыл бұрын

Thank you I hope so too!

Thank you for addressing what we've all been thinking for years..forever!! Lovely editing and aesthetics as usual :)

@KritikaSpreadLove

3 жыл бұрын

Yes! We definitely have been thinking about this for too long!

2:30 It's not European accents versus non-European, it's three things: perceived as a native speaker vs not, positive/interesting media portrayals or not, and the perceived wealth of the nation that accent comes from. So for example, a German accent is not perceived as cool because there are no cool German media portrayals, and it's not heard in people who speak English natively, so people might make them feel awkward by speaking more loudly etc. But they ARE perceived as a wealthy nation, so nobody thinks they're "coming here in large numbers and taking our low-skilled jobs" like some people in the UK think when they hear Polish or Lithuanian accents, and some in the US think about Mexican accents. A strong Italian (especially Sicilian) accent gets portrayed fairly frequently as romantic, sophisticated or otherwise cool (sometimes negatively, but even then in a way that can be portrayed as cool, like gangster movies) in the media of the anglosphere. A strong Jamaican accent (obviously, nowhere near the continent of Europe) is perceived as even cooler than Italian accents, despite not being quite as wealthy as Italy, because a) everyone knows they're native English speakers, so there's no "you won't understand me unless I shout" and b) in the anglospheric media it's so strongly associated with professional Reggae music and images of attractive people relaxing on the beach. It is perceived as a poor country but there aren't many Jamaicans leaving in very recent times to settle in either the UK or the US, so they don't get the "stop taking our working class jobs" thing. Here in the UK, many US American accents (again, nowhere near the continent of Europe) are perceived as cool, because most of them hit all three criteria: a) predominantly a native English speaking country, b) rich country (though certain American accents don't have this advantage and are instead looked down on as "hick" accents because that's how the imported American media portray them), and c) either "grittily cool", or glamorous media portrayals of life in New York City or LA, or the exotic-to-us and pleasant daily life of the "average suburban picket-fenced family" with their huge wooden houses and interestingly different schools with extravagant-to-us facilities portrayed in most American movies. I don't know about the USA, but here in the UK I think some people don't know how widely English is spoken within India as one of a person's earliest learned or native languages, and combined with how very different Indian accents are to British accents, they can suspect that someone with a strong Indian accent doesn't know English very well. So Indian accents lose out on the native speaker advantage that they should have. They're not portrayed as cool, and it is seen as a poor country, however, here in the UK at least, most people know that India has a lot of wealthy people alongside extreme poverty, and just like Nigerian accents, we associate their accents with doctors to some extent, so Brits don't assume people with that accent are poor or low-skilled, and the same applies to Arabic accents: you could be a pauper or a Saudi prince billionaire, and if you're in certain parts of London, business owners salivate when they hear an Arabic accent because many extremely rich Saudis have part-time homes there.