My primary language

I started off today wanting to give a tutorial on simple tricks to make the English of non-primary speakers sound more authentic. You know, basic stuff like diction and articulation. Don't pronounce "Volkswagen" as "Wolksvagen," understand that "bed" and "bet" and "bid" and "bit" and "bad" and "bat" all sound very different, and don't randomly throw in interjections like "hè" or "eh" that are natural in one language but sound weird and completely out of place in another. All triggered by an observation that people from Denmark seem to speak excellent, albeit very distinct, non-native English, compared to the Dutch, who seem to wing it well but are sloppy. But that's for another time.

Many people confuse fluent with native, first language with primary language, and accent with dialect, frequently under the illusion that there is such a thing as a standard or proper version of such a rapidly evolving beast as a living language. Everyone has an accent; that doesn't mean you don't speak authentically or properly; it may identify your social or educational background or aspirations, or it may give a strong indication as to where you live or where you came from. 

American English is my primary language (yes, I speak and dream and count and do arithmetic and talk to myself and curse in English), but it is neither my native nor my first language. I do read, write, and speak it better than any other language, arguably as well as all but a small subset of people, having done more writing, editing, and public speaking in it than most native speakers. I'm guessing my diction and pronunciation are identifiable as Bay Area to a linguist, and people from the east side of San Jose can tell I'm from the other side of the county. My everyday dialect, depending on who I'm talking with, is a pretty neutral western, urban, educated American one, which is pretty neutral except for words like Nevada, orange, San Jose, or Navajo, which the majority of Americans pronounce wrong. Relative to those with a similar dialect, I probably curse more and use an occasional "ain't" or "y'all" or double negative, which reflect where I spent some of my time, but I don't stand out as an immigrant. 

So, in terms of sounding local or authentic, I can pass. When people ask me how, I shrug it off and say "I've lived here for most of my life." But there are many people who never fully adapt, despite having immigrated many decades ago. Part of it was hard work, long after I thought I already spoke the language fluently. When I was 17 or 18, I desperately wanted to belong, so I worked on it. My best coach was this guy Keith, a Black gay theater major at an almost all-white school in Texas, who knew a thing or two about being different, and who had an ear, endless patience, a big laugh, and a generous willingness to share. The reality is that learning pronunciation (not just language) requires a combination of necessity, interest, ear, the desire to improve, and effort. And for me, a chameleon-like instinct to want to blend in.

But, despite being able to pass, I am not a native speaker. My first language was Dutch, a particular version of which I spoke that we used to call ABN (algemeen beschaafd Nederlands), or common civilized Dutch, which was a misnomer, even then: It was not common, as almost everyone spoke with a regional or social distinction or some combination of the two; it was civilized only in the eyes of ons soort mensen, our kind of people, and viewed as posh (snobbish, stuck up) by many others; and it was originally based on the regional dialect of Holland, and suspiciously common among certain students from Leiden and their descendants, like me. It is different from the exaggerated old-fashioned upper-class version spoken by some (something we easily mocked, the "potato in the throat") or the working-class, inner-city, or lower-Saxon country dialects we sometimes appropriated but that weren't ours. My Dutch is clearly native; I speak Dutch this way without trying and without pretending. Most Dutch will immediately peg me, just like many Americans can immediately hear that Bernie Sanders has post-war Brooklyn Jewish roots and is old. 

I also spend zero energy keeping up with how the language has evolved since I left in 1983, which means I sound different from people living in Holland today: my pronunciation and choice of words are becoming stale beyond that of many people my age, as I'm stuck in time. I actually resent cliché words and phrases that pop up frequently today that you would never use when I was young, and that are probably just how the language is evolving but that sound affected, stupid, or lazy to me. I increasingly have to search for a word or don't know how to spell one (something that NEVER happened in the past), and I worry that I inadvertently use anglicisms or unnatural sentence structures without hearing that they're wrong. I maintain the illusion that if I were to be back there for any length of time, I'd adapt again, ever the chameleon. 

There is this myth that you have to be younger than X (insert an arbitrary number for X) to be able to learn a language with a native-like accent. I may partially agree, but only after qualifying this by (incorrectly) splitting the infinitive with the word effortlessly. If you are younger than, say, 7 and are immersed in another language for an extended period of time, you probably won't be able to help learning that language with a native-like accent, even if your parents still speak your native language at home. The parents who do so won't have it that easy; they will always sound like foreigners unless they do the work. 

So what's the work? It requires more than extensive exposure in a natural environment. You actually have to listen (to yourself and to others), identify the specifics of what you and what they are doing, and welcome feedback and correction. You have to pay attention to the subtleties, including choice of words and phrases, sentence structure, articulation, pronunciation and rhythm. Watch out for cultural appropriation (e.g. phrases or pronunciations that are specific in terms of who is expected to use them without suggesting mockery, disrespect or insincerity). You can be native-like without being a native and while still being authentic. You can adapt how you speak without losing the anchor of who you truly are or sounding like you are faking it. A German who starts to correctly pronounce their American Vs or Ws is simply learning, but I have a grudging sort of respect for the fact that Bernie still sounds like he's from Brooklyn despite moving to Vermont in 1968, although I also sympathize with the Connecticut Bush family who sound pretty Texan (having moved to the Panhandle in the early 1950s and being in the "ole business" and politics); but Americans who adopt local diction in brief visits to England sound like idiots.

So thank you, Keith, for teaching me how to say Saturday instead of "Setterday" -- even though you also told me to say "Cali-phone-ya" for "California." And for helping me develop my ear.