Accent

As I recently mentioned, I started working as an MDSA again. This time I work at a primary school rather than a secondary one, so it is rather different in a few ways. Anyway, today I was out in the playground when one of the children came up to me, he had a question.

“Mr. Randall, where do you come from? I mean, like, what country?” he asked, because, you see, he’d assumed I wasn’t native to the England because of how my accent sounds.

It reminded me of my first day at this new MDSA job. The nice person I was shadowing said, “That’s an interesting accent you have. What is it, South African?”

Which is funny, because when I last spoke to a charity person and told them I came from Corsham, they said “Are you enjoying your time in the UK?” which must mean they were thinking of the Corsham in Africa.

Which reminded me of my visit to Bristol Hospital. “That’s a nice Scottish accent you’ve got,” said the nurse or doctor who performed the echo on me.

Which brought me back to my lovely Creative Writing lecturer, Anthony Nanson, who, after conducting a mock interview with me, said “I’ve been meaning to ask, are you Norwegian? I’ve always thought you had a Norwegian accent.”

And then there was that time when a doctor at Bath Hospital said “Are you American, or Canadian? Or are you just doing that voice to sound cool?”

Yet when I had a video call with an American internet friend of mine, they said “You sound so British!”

Which all seems very strange to me. I speak in the same voice all the time, yet it can sound like all of these different accents to different people! This isn’t all of the times this has happened either, there are several times I remember but left out to keep this short (and there are probably even more times that I don’t remember!). I’ve lived in England my whole life and never left, yet my accent seems to be an amalgamation of every kind of English accent. How odd.

(Don’t miss today’s Finger Puppet Show!)

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