Accentuate the positive

In my last entry I alluded to a positive side-effect of the language barrier.  If I was surprised to find that I often have a hard time making myself understood to Americans, I was absolutely gobsmacked to discover that they love hearing me try.

My wife had told me that my accent was attractive:  I assumed that she was just listening to me through rose-coloured ear muffs.  But it became abundantly clear that she had not been exaggerating when we visited a local hairdressers together a couple of months after my arrival.


I don't generally speak much to strangers (those stranger danger warnings as a kid must have really sunk in).  I assume that's why I hadn't noticed this earlier.  But even I can't resist the conversational demands of a hair dresser.  The woman tackling my hair had extracted only a few words from me when I heard her colleague remark to my wife across the other side of the room that she "could listen to him all day".  Meaning, me, apparently!

Hairdressers seem particularly candid about expressing this view, but I've also heard it from others, sometimes as an aside to my wife, sometimes to my face.
 
It continues to astound me each time because as a New Zealander I'm used to thinking of myself as an ill-spoken provincial.  I assume that's because, even in the twenty first century, we look to the refined and urbane speech of southern England for our example.

But it turns out that here in the US, a lot of people can't really tell the difference between the twangy New Zealand accent and that of the English middle class.  When I first arrived I thought I might sometimes be mistaken for an Australian, but that almost never happens.   If you speak English and don't come from North America, it seems the overwhelming majority of locals generally assume you are English.

And, boy, do they love an English accent here.  You might think that after taking all that trouble to throw the British out they might go sour on the accent, but no. 


I'm certainly not complaining.  If I did they probably wouldn't understand me anyway - but they'd think it was the sweetest thing they'd heard all day.