Reducing Accent or Losing Your Identity?
Hope to see people tomorrow at our November Diversity Roundtable at BC HRMA (Nov 1st @ 5:30pm). We have a panel of three experts who will share with us their experiences in managing language barriers for culturally-diverse employees.
In preparing to the Roundtable I found this great article that not only explains how smoothing one’s accent makes him/her better understand but alos questions the whole notion of accent reduction trend in Canada. I was wondering what people think and whether there are more pros than cons for immigrants to smoothen their accents.
“Phani Radhakrishnan, who teaches human resources and courses such as diversity in the workplace at the University of Toronto Scarborough campus, has mixed feelings about accent-reduction services.
“When I first came here, I tried to make my Indian accent more Canadian, because I wanted to feel accepted,” she said. “Everyone talks about multiculturalism here, but what happens in the backyard is different. But it’s a personal thing, and I felt I was losing a part of my identity. So now I go with my original accent and it gives me more self-confidence”.
More http://www.cireport.ca/2011/07/roland-sintos-coloma-suggests-that-reducing-accents-is-lingusitic-racism.html
Tags: accent, Identify
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