It’s a nondescript Thursday afternoon in Waterloo. The temperature is hovering around zero, the sky is cloudy, and the thawing snow is slushy and grey. I’m out and about with my friend Anne in the uncluttered city centre. There’s not much going on in the streets. We’ve just stopped by a cute café and are now strolling through the wide streets. When my friend Anne discovers a little house painted orange on a small side street, she is beside herself with excitement. Here you can buy raw cookie dough! Without hesitation, we enter the little store. Right behind the front door is a colourfully painted counter, behind which you can see numerous kitchen appliances and fridges. A young woman in her thirties is standing behind the counter. She beams at us. “Hello, nice to see you here.” She must have noticed our curious looks. “Is this your first time here?” She patiently explains the concept behind the small business, gives us free samples, and sells us several small pots of cookie dough. “By the way, I love your accents,” she says and continues to smile at us. “Where are you from? I mean, originally?” After we leave the store and walk a few meters down the street, Ann expresses her displeasure at the comment about the accents. I too have been thinking about it ever since we let the store door close behind us. The comment bothers me too, and it bothers me a lot. But why is that?
Source: Marta Dzedyshko
From the beginning or: Frankenstein
I can still remember a reading competition in seventh-grade English class. It was just before the summer vacation. Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein was passed around the classroom and everyone had to read a few passages. I was really nervous until I finally got the book. I read a few sentences but then finally won the reading competition. My teacher — who was also the judge — was really proud. Oral contributions to English lessons had not been my strong point until then. I was given neon wooden pencils and an English translation of The Phantom of the Opera. My teacher praised my seemingly American accent in front of the whole class and also wanted to know how I had acquired this accent. I was about thirteen years old and had no idea. However, I realized that it was a good thing to speak without a German accent and sound as much like a native speaker as possible.
It wasn’t until nine years later, in a university course on decolonization and language education, that I was confronted with the fact that my efforts to get rid of my German accent weren’t actually necessary. This course, of all things, was part of a program that I had initially chosen for that long stay abroad in order to finally get rid of the remnants of my “European accent”, as my friend Alastair from England likes to call it. Suddenly, I was confronted with the idea that there was nothing bad about having an accent at all. Instead, it was apparently impressive to speak several languages. For me, a strong native accent used to be a sign of poor education.
Source: Sumit Mathur
Long live multilingualism!
The criticism that multilingualism is valued far too little in language teaching comes from Janice McGregor, among others. In her essay Study Abroad Otherwise from 2020, she discusses how learning goals and expectations for language study abroad need to be fundamentally reformed. McGregor is talking about changing the curriculum for language teaching, which is already a big deal. But it does not stop there, on the contrary. It would be necessary to change the mindset of an entire society. Of course, this can start with language education, yes, but that alone is not enough. In a globalized world, being multilingual is a matter for most people today, at least in academic or business circles. Over half of all Europeans speak at least one foreign language. However, efforts to get rid of one’s native accent seem to be quite high, especially in Germany. If you ask the Internet why Germans are so bothered by their accent, you’ll be greeted by numerous instructions on how to get rid of the German accent in English. In a study by Babbel from 2020, 47% of Germans surveyed stated that they have negative feelings when they speak a language with an accent. A third of the 1,000 participants were even afraid of it and 35% of Germans surveyed want to get rid of their accent when they speak another language. One thing is certain: people tend to feel more insecure in a foreign language, especially if they think their accent is strong. This feeling of insecurity can lead to a lack of self-confidence when it comes to speaking a foreign language such as English. It is this lack of confidence that ultimately leads to us never learning to speak the language properly. I can still remember the moment when I told my friend Alastair that it was perfectly fine if he told me I had an accent as long as it wasn’t a German one. I suspect that this inner aversion to the German accent is partly due to two factors, firstly recent German history and secondly the portrayal of Germans in films, television, and the media.
Source: Lucas Pezeta
Germany is coming to terms with its past. There is hardly a year in grammar school history lessons in which the National Socialist era is not a topic. National Socialism and its fatal consequences are still relevant in politics too. This is not just about commemorations and stumbling blocks, but also about German intervention in foreign politics and war. The German population is shaped from an early age by an inherited guilt. There is no reason to be proud of Germany’s past. I don’t want to speak against the way Germany deals with the past, on the contrary. I just want to understand why even their own people feel little or no pride in their country and their language. The German language is a language of perpetrators and has lost its prestige since the First World War, but at the latest since the misdeeds of National Socialism. Perhaps this can also be described as cultural sensitivity. The portrayal of Germans and the German language in films from abroad is often simply a pain to watch. Germans as villains, Nazis, egomaniacs or at least as strange bourgeois — Hollywood has been contributing to Germany’s low self-esteem since the post-war years. The accents that the mostly American actors then put on their German characters are cringe-inducing.
One of the biggest hurdles in language learning is the fear of speaking with an accent. For me, this is still kind of true. I can’t convince myself from one day to the next that my German accent won’t bother me. How could it? I grew up like that for years. It won’t be an easy path. Because somewhere along the line, I’m also a perfectionist. Perhaps this perfectionism is also a quintessentially German trait that lies dormant in me.
Back to the small, still slightly snow-covered side street in small-town, manageable Waterloo, Ontario. The woman from the cookie dough place, I tell myself, was probably just trying to be nice and friendly and make conversation. But still, I am not truly convinced by that. I also think back to my English lessons at school. I realize that there are a few more things I should think about in this regard.