(excerpts)
Accent-reduction teachers say their
foreign-born clients constantly complain of how they are made to feel like an
“other.”
“A lot of them
are tired of being asked where they’re from,” said Lisa Mojsin, the director of
Accurate English, an accent-reduction school in West Los Angeles.
One of Ms.
Mojsin’s students, Colette Fournier, weary of having to repeat herself, is
working to reduce her French accent. “I don’t want to feel like I speak like a
6-year-old,” she said.
Another client,
Guillermo Harpoutlian, who is from Argentina, deals with clients from all over
the world as director of planning for a financial institution. He worries that
his thick accent could torpedo his ambitions to become a chief executive.
“In a senior
position you can’t have an accent,” he said. “You open your mouth and they say,
‘Oh, you have a beautiful accent.’ What they’re saying is: ‘You don’t know how
to speak English.’ ”
Accents still do matter in this country.
Sounding foreign can hinder careers and has led to accent-discrimination
lawsuits. People with accents say they are often ridiculed or not taken
seriously outside of their social circle.
Some accents,
of course, have been more acceptable than others — English accents, for
instance, which many think of as sophisticated. But until very recently,
television was a tough sell for a Spanish accent outside the sitcom. It was only
five years ago that Claudia Trejos, a Colombian sportscaster, anchored the
weekend sports report at the WB Network affiliate in Los Angeles, and the
complaints poured in. Viewers’ letters and voice mail messages suggested that
she “go back to Mexico.” And her peers made fun of her accent on the radio and
some local sports columnists wrote that she should be closed-captioned.
But speakers of
accented English must still contend with the often intolerant American ear. The
Equal Employment Opportunity Commission
says the increase in the immigrant population has led to a rise in job-related
accent discrimination charges filed with the agency, from 48 in 1996 to 161 last
year. (Regional American accents are not federally protected, only those related
to national origin.) In a study five years ago, researchers at the University of
North Texas found that employers gave those with neutral speech high-profile
jobs, while steering those with regional accents to jobs requiring little
technical expertise or customer contact.
