Stereotypes

I found an interesting quote online that sort of represents what stereotypes are: “Heaven is where the police are British, the cooks are French, the mechanics German, the lovers Italian, and it is all organized by the Swiss. Hell is where the chefs are British, the mechanics French, the lover’s Swiss, the police German, and it is all organized by the Italians.” ¹

Just like race, culture, nationality, and other things that differentiate a group of people from another, accents have stereotypes too. Stereotypes can be both good and bad; unfortunately the bad ones are most common. With bad stereotypes comes a lot of discrimination and prejudice.

Speakers who have foreign accents to the country they live in could possibly suffer from discrimination. For example, employment wise, they can be assigned to lower status positions compared to someone that speaks with the standard accent. This discrimination happens because the owner or manager could feel as if the foreign speaker lacks in communication skills due to their accent. However, I know many people with a foreign accent that can speak with a vocabulary just like any regular “normal” speaking person. In fact, some even have a better vocabulary than the norm, but it just sucks because others have difficulty understanding them because of the accent.  

In all honesty, most of us have a first thought that comes to mind upon hearing an accent. According to me, I think this is how some people think of when speaking with this accent:

British accent = Proper. Cup of tea in hand. Very classy.

French accent = A lot of oui oui’s. French hat. Croissant. Eiffel tower.

Canadian accent = Snow. Lots of snow… Hockey eh?

Italian/Spanish accent = Add o’s at the end of every word. Say a bunch of Italian/Spanish foods.

Californian accent = Surf’s up, dude!

Australian accent = Kangaroos. Koala bear. Ay mate!

Indian accent = Funny. Never taken seriously.

Jamaican accent = Ya man!

I know some of you have had at least one these thoughts. Don’t lie. Or maybe you’ve had some of your own, but as long as you can see past those thoughts and truly appreciate the accent for what it is, then everything’s fine.

Although some stereotypes could be offensive, some are also useful to recognize them in a game of charades. Here’s a fun video of Ellen and Ben Affleck playing charades with accents:

Sources:

¹ http://www.humanaccents.com/truth-about-accents.html#accentstereotyping