American English-
Not
the Real An East Indian student reflects on his British-Danish-American influences.
English
“R
eally, you are from India, but you don’t have an Indian accent!” This statement has revisited me on different occasions in different settings. The food we consume in our daily diet and the clothes we choose forecast our cultural practices and ethnicity. Likewise, the way we converse also can be a determining factor of our cultural background. We, humans, have developed a psychological preset to categorize individuals based on linguistic pronunciation. We can easily determine a person’s origin by the way one speaks a common language, e.g., English and the way we spell ‘color,’ but what happens when we have mingling of two cultures over a period of time? As time advances, we see the embodiment of the exposed culture, which may be different from the origin of the individual. I have had the opportunity of growing up with multiple cultures and interact with different identities. From a very young age, I was exposed to a specific linguistic style. However, I was unaware of this entire dilemma until my eighth-grade Parent-Teachers
By Babin Dinda 18
Spring 2019
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www.CultursMag.com
