Where am I from?
Mon, January 10, 2022 I came to the United States 43 years ago in January 1979, I don’t remember the exact date, just that it was January. I was 42 years old, a few weeks short of my 43rd. birthday. Today, in January 2022 I am 85 years old a few weeks shy of my 86th. birthday, therefore, I have reached the point where I have lived longer in America than I did in my native England.
However, strangers ask me constantly, “Where are you from?” As soon as I open my mouth to speak, and they hear my accent. Over the years my accent has become bastardized, and people will try to guess. (Usually wrong.) Are you Australian? Or Irish or Scottish.
Then when I tell them I am from England, the next question is, “What brought you here?” And before long I am getting into my whole life story.
So where am I from? How do I answer that when I have lived here 43 years, and the person asking is often much younger than 43 and therefore I have been here longer than them?
My father was Irish and left his homeland for England aged nineteen yet retained his Irish accent the rest of his life, so there is little hope for me to change at this late stage. It can lead to some to some interesting conversations, but most times it is a casual meeting with someone I will never see again, and it is just plain annoying.
One cannot complain about anything or get in an argument. If I do, I am told immediately, get back to Australia, or wherever it is you came from. I am left with the feeling that I don’t belong, and it is a helpless feeling. I get what racism must feel like, only that must be much worse, especially if the victim is born here.
Growing up in England I never remember asking foreigners where they were from unless I got to know them well. Now I think of it, even today if I run into someone with an obvious foreign accent, I do not ask them where they are from. In most cases it has no relevance.
I have a friend who is Swedish. I never knew until I had known him for some time, and it came up in conversation one day. “But you have no accent,” I told him. “I know” he said, I learned English in America, so I learned it with an American accent. He never gets asked “Where are you from?”
So, I am trying to come up with an explanation for my English accent that might be shorter, and more fun than my actual life story. The conversation might go:
“Where are you from?”
“New Jersey.”
“But you have an accent.”
“Yes, my father was in the Air Force, and we were stationed just outside London, England. I was 16 at the time, and the guys flying back and forth between the States and the UK were bringing a lot of weed over. I had quite a good little business, selling it to the local kids. When my father had to return, I ran away from home and lived in London for the next ten years. I was eventually arrested for dealing drugs and deported back to the US. By then it was the 1960s at the height of the British Music Invasion, and a British accent opened a lot of doors for me. Also got me laid a lot. Now I’m stuck with it.”
“That’s really interesting.”
“It is. Watch for it on Netflix.”
"Do you want fries with that?"
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Reader Comments (5)
LOL - good made-up backstory, but watch out for ICE...
I grew up in Canada, moved to the US, then moved to London for 20+ years and now back in the USA. My Canadian accent is pretty much gone to an American ear - just some words I tend to pronounce "wrong" like "pro-cess" (not praw-cess) and "zed" for the last letter of the alphabet. I tailor my spellings to the audience. I was never happy saying "shed-ule" (UK) for US/CDN "sked-ule", but I must admit I find the Euro pronunciation of France (i.e. "Fronce") nicer than the nasal North American way. Ironically, my wife's name is Frances, so it sounds rather hoity-toity to introduce her as "Fron-ces" :-) And "Fron" does not work well as a nickname
Brits mostly assume I am American - which could be correct (North American) but they mean USA. Some will ask "What part of the States are you from?" and I would offer the bigger cold part part to the north. I never hold back in pub discussions - after all, Elizabeth II has been my Queen since birth, and I have a trifecta of passports (US/UK/CDN). Brexit has been quite interesting in that regard
I have been in meetings with Scandinavians and Germans (who almost all speak excellent English now) and one will have an American accent and another British - as you say, it depends on who taught them. But how about another blog just on British accents? There must be hundreds. I learned to associate coworkers' accents with their home towns (counties, etc.). The variations between Geordies, Cumbria, Liverpool, Cornwall and even south and east London are greater than you'd find between Nova Scotia and British Columbia in Canada (4000 miles) - with the exception of Newfoundland (part of the UK until 1949) and French-speaking Canada, of course (interestingly the French communities have much more distinctive regional accents)
And then there's the Scots :-)
Dave,
When I meet someone that has that 'not from around here' vibe, and the discussion seems appropriate I'll ask them 'where did you grow up?'
First it doesn't presume that they aren't from here.
Second it gives them the chance to tell what they wish to.
One story that I have heard a number of times is that they were born here and raised by an immigrant grandmother, and the accent has stuck.
I lived in Italy for a few months about 20 years ago and did a fair amount of riding with a local club. My Italian was terrible and so I really only spoke to those who knew at least a bit of English. I was just out of college and used to the idea that young people traveled and moved around quite a bit. All my friends back home had moved on to Colorado, or Chicago, or New York for work or grad school. So I innocently asked another rider who was in his 20s where he was from. I received a 20min lecture about how Americans are always from someplace but live somewhere else, but have also been in this city and that… He was a local of course, training to take over his father’s business, who had taken over for his father, who had taken over…you get the idea. I never asked another Italian where they were from.
Don't know if an English accent would get you laid more but it seems it would open doors for an announcer position with an MLS soccer club.
Your father was IRISH! That explains EVERYTHING, the beginning, the middle and the END of the article AND answers the Question.