Morning Thoughts____All about some accents and Achilles' heel

-"Why did you move to Canada?"

- How do you like here?

-How comes that you know English?

Three questions and a complex opinion.

I often notice people are astonished when, after perceiving my accent, they found out they can speak normally to me, without slowing down because I can actually understand what they are saying .
I think that a change in the intonation of our voice happens naturally as soon as we realize the person we are talking to comes from a different country.

We scream, we pronounce sentences slower and sometimes we stop conjugating a verb. It sounds like, WHEN YOU BUS WANT, TICKET YOU PAY MONEY!

So basically we alter the structure of a sentence, we select a bunch of important words and we scream, as if screaming out our words could make them go deeper in the other person's auricle.
Why are human beings so awkward sometimes?

- I moved to Canada because we decided it was a nice place to live in, especially for the kids.

- I see. There is no job in Italy, correct?

- (Thinking) I think, I said something different! - (Speaking) Yes, there is a big economic crisis going on right now. But, we moved because we thought it was a good idea. We were working!

- I like Canada. I love when it snows! Cold weather makes me feel alive!

-Yeahhh, I know it is hard the winter here. That is why we often go to Florida. It's ok, don't worry. Once you adjust, you will be fine.

- (Thinking) I think I said I loved cold weather. Cold=Freddo; Caldo=Hot. Did I say "caldo" or "cold"? - (Speaking) I am sure I will be fine!

- I can hear an accent!

-(Thinking) Oh, Good for you! I am glad you can hear perfectly! I can actually hear your accent too! - (Speaking) Yes, You hear an Italian accent. I come from Italy, Sicily. Where do you come from?

-How comes you learnt English in just 3 years?

- (Thinking) Why did you decide I didn't know English before? I COME FROM ITALY, NOT JUPITER! (Speaking) Yeahhhhh, I studied it.

-It's ok, your accent is cute!

- (Did I say it was not ok?)

When you move, this is part of the offer. When you first arrive and you hear you have an accent, for a few seconds, you feel as if you were supposed to justify yourself. As if you were supposed to apologize for that. Or that, if you have an accent, it means you don't know how to speak properly. It suffices a change in the facial expression of the person we are talking to, an eyebrow that moves down against the other one that goes up and we start shaking. One thousands questions pop up in our brain making us wondering what word did we pronounced wrong. We don't realize that, maybe, the other was just thinking about our thoughts. Maybe, one of your beautiful words, made the other person have a sort of epiphany. Why not?

I think this is because we are already going through so many drastic changes that finally we are too tired to be logical.

After a while, little by little, you start feeling part of the system. You start hearing accents too, you learn how to distinguish accents and, the best part, you start hearing the accents of Canadians too. They just don't know they have one! It is not a survival battle anymore, we just realize that was curiosity. "Being curious" not necessarily means "bad intentions".

We should do ourselves a favor being nicer to ourselves!


On the other hand, being in a beautiful, welcoming country doesn't mean the population consists of beautiful people only. I start feeling some people need to think you are suffering, you are in pain, you don't like what they don't, and it is not acceptable the idea you are actually going in a different direction. Initially, this type of behaviour was bothering me a lot. I thought it was a sort of injustice. Then, I realized we all have our own Achilles' heel.  And, that's why I started keeping going when somebody is clearly not listening to my words.

Why should my Italian accent be the one that makes them realize there is no light at the end of that tunnel?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Le-3MIBxQTw