Speaking in American or Australian?

After reading Gigi’s blog at Gigi Goes Gaga titled Talking American, it reminded me of our own similar experience here in Australia.

Gigi wrote:

For the first year after I moved to the States, it seemed I had completely forgotten how to speak. I’ve always been an English speaker — I even think in English (although when I’m angry or flustered, my brain only remembers Tagalog). And although my Lolo (Grandfather), a Tagalog poet and writer, always admonished us strongly against speaking in Taglish, I’d sometimes slip, as I still do today, especially if in the presence of like-minded language violators. But now I found myself unable to speak comfortably in any way.

[snipped]

It took me a while to figure out what had happened. I realized when I spoke English to Americans, I wasn’t always understood. My accent got in the way.

I, too, grew up speaking more comfortably in English than in Tagalog. My parents and grandparents taught me English better than they taught me Tagalog. I grew up watching Sesame Street and other American chidren’s programs. I found it easier to speak in English. I found it so easy that I think and speak to myself in English.

I did encounter some difficulties in early schooling whenever a teacher or classmate will ask me questions in Tagalog and I wouldn’t understand completely what they’re saying because of my limited command of the Tagalog language at the time.

It’s pathetic, I know, but what can I do? I wasn’t taught a lot of Tagalog words when I was growing up. Even now, Raquel teases me that I’m not really a Filipino because I don’t know what some Tagalog words meant. Heck, she knows more uncommon Tagalog words than me and she’s three-quarters Chinese.

Anyway, when I got to Australia, I was totally caught off-guard by the accent, the speech pattern and the slang. They call this speaking Strine. During my first few months, I usually had a difficult time trying to comprehend those locals who spoke real fast in Strine.

Most of the time, I understood what was being said… given time. Unlike when I’m hearing American English, I had to wait for a few moments for my brain to fully “translate” what I just heard. The result: I wasn’t able to reply to questions quickly.

And when I did reply, I spoke in American… so I’m told. Well, that is, when I could talk coherently. When I visited the US, I was able to speak fluently in English. But here, I stuttered.

Thinking about it, I think it’s because I’m second guessing myself. Is the sentence I’m about to utter constructed grammatically correct? I pause mid-sentence to correct myself. Here, I’m also very conscious of what I’m saying because I’m afraid that I might not be understood. And I’m not! It’s happened more times than I care to count.

Also, when I was starting out here, I intended to blend in better in my adopted country by attempting to speak the way they speak. I began using phrases like, “no worries, mate” or “good on ya” or “she’ll be all right” or “yeah” pronounced more as Yeh than Yah or “whatja reckon?” I tried saying R’s without rolling them so that “summer” becomes “summah” and “harbour” becomes “harbuh” and so forth. I tried saying a rolling R in between two words when the first word ended in an Ah or Oh sound and the next word starts with a vowel so that “Pamela Anderson” became “PamelarAnderson” and “I saw it” became “I sawrit” and “drawing” becomes “drawring.”

However, thinking about all of these things plus the fact that I was trying desperately to understand the local talking to me made it even more likely that I’m going to stutter when I started speaking.

It’s a good thing that nowadays, I found listening to Strine easier. I’ve come to expect the “d’ya reckons” and the “g’days” in typical conversation. Although I still find listening to Americans very pleasant and definitely a lot easier to understand, I’m now actually caught off guard when I hear somebody speaking in an American accent (except when watching American TV shows or movies).

I also found that it helped that I abandoned my attempt to speak more Australian. I just reverted back to speaking in a more American way of speaking with an undoubtedly slight Filipino accent. I still stutter on occasion though but mostly when I’m being conscious about it. It’s kinda like when I’m walking down a flight of stairs and then I start thinking about which foot I should use next and I end up getting confused and tripping. I realised I speak English better when I’m not thinking about speaking in English.