The Hindu Business Line : Accent on accents

Of crucial importance is slower than your normal, clearly enunciated speech with correct grammar. This will lead to neutral accents in your business communication, and when immersed in a particular culture, temporarily adapt to its speech patterns.

The colour of your skin, the shape of your eyes, your hair and other physical characteristics are sure indicators of your racial and ethnic background. Looking for these clues to slot a person is one of those unconscious things we all do when meeting someone for the first time. Typecasting is a favourite human pastime!

But how often have you instantly revised your first opinion of a person's background the minute he or she begins to speak? A South American accent from a seemingly all-American jock, a Malaysian accent from someone who looks like she is from Bandra; I even know of someone who boasts that he can judge how long a good Tamilian has been at universities in the US by just listening to him. Some claim, that!

Accents, then, are either what we are born with or what we consciously or unconsciously acquire. As a professional, why would accents need to be an area of focus for you? Not because you need to sound US-returned or UK-returned, but because you need to be understood in business communication and also to be able to understand others. This works both ways — for Indians and other nationals. It is doubly trying when it is a conference call without the advantage of watching lip movements and facial expressions for additional clues.

The accent these days is on developing a neutral, easily understandable version of spoken English. One of my Scottish clients has two accents — he switches between a rich burr and a more standard British accent depending on who he is talking to.

The Indian version of a standard accent is one without the strong inflections and musical speech patterns of whatever your native tongue is. Many aspiring global Indians we have trained, have had heaps of queries on the subject. I present some of the more common ones.

How easy is it to change my accent? It depends on your motivation, flexibility and willingness to change, acknowledging that change as temporary and helpful to your company's success.

How long does it take? About three to six months of sustained and intense practice. This involves being acutely conscious of it in real conversation and taking advantage of every opportunity to apply the tool learned.

Will I still be Indian? You will never lose your Indian-ness as all you are trying to do is adapt to the speech patterns of whichever country you are interacting with, or develop a standard non-accented form of Indian English.

Where do I start? You have been studying English for a long time and need to get rid of old habits. Intonation, word patterns, word connections, word stress, all need to be relearned. You do this either through a course, books or tapes and then listening hard to real-life conversations.

Of course, TV, radio and films are great teachers and fun too. Focus on the way actors and newscasters speak rather than what they are saying. Write down the sound you hear, the way you hear it. Use another script or English to rewrite the sound. For example, `hotel' is ho + tell with the stress on `tell' not `ho'. Softening the `T' and `D' sound, differentiating `V' and `W' sounds, aspirating sounds `P, C, K, Q', rolling the `R' sound and sorting the confusion between `S' and `Z' sounds are all areas to pay special attention to. Soon, we will launch a `global Indian' portal where help will be at hand.

When I'm talking in my own accent to people of another region/country will they correct me? No, those who hear you will not correct you; only notice that you say things differently. So don't rely on them. Instead imitate the sounds they make. When you know a word is pronounced in a particular way locally, adapt to that pronunciation even if it doesn't feel exactly right. Or even use an entirely different word that you would never do normally. For example, I advised my Italian client, using a BPO in India, to use "pre-pone" (instead of advance) for a meeting. "It is logical, pre-pone as the opposite of postpone, but I would never have thought of it," he laughed, but it served his purpose right away.

Will people laugh at my put-on accent? The native speaker for whose benefit you are putting it on will not find it funny, but it will seem so to Indians or other nationalities. If you use a French accent with your English, the Frenchman will think you are "speaking right", but not the American or the Englishman. Accents can be put on and off to have the desired result. But do this only after many hours of practice.

What is a standard American accent? There are a lot of dialects, the Southern drawl, New York accent and so on. But there is also a typical "American sound" as in the Midwest — the Michigan area — the accent of American newscasters, which you could use as standard. A London or BBC accent qualifies as standard "British sound".

If it makes you feel more confident, understand that every country has its own linguistic oddities. Of crucial importance is slower than your normal, clearly enunciated speech with correct grammar. This will lead to neutral accents in your business communication, and when immersed in a particular culture, temporarily adapt to its speech patterns. I'll leave you with an anecdote from one of my American clients worthy of `Mind Your Language': "Ten yay yem, my finance assistant from South India would say when asked for the time. Techno-lawgy, my customer relations woman from Bihar would say no matter how many times I corrected her with technaw-logy. I am no less guilty of linguistic quirks.

We all had a great laugh one day when they asked me to pronounce three words, `Mary, merry, marry'. I reeled them off and they had a good laugh because we Americans say them all the exact same way while my Indian colleagues had distinctly different sounds to each of those words!"

(The writer is Founder-CEO of Global Adjustments, the India-focused cross-cultural training and services company)