Comments on: Losing My Accent

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By: TheMDude

TheMDude — Sat, 10 Jun 2006 01:59:00 +0000

I remember years ago meeting an SB missionary who had served in Italy since 1937 (gone during the war years and back). This was the early 80s and I was doing a workshop with a Conservative Baptist brother. Anyway, this SBC guy had the thickest southern accent in english I had every heard and I asked him how this accent translated into his spoken Italian. His offended response was of course not – he spoke accentless Italian! So I asked my CB friend and he laughed. Apparently the Italian brethern could imitate this accent perfectly to each other and were quite amused – only the SBC M didn’t know!

By: Rede Vida Mais CafÃ©

Rede Vida Mais CafÃ© — Thu, 08 Jun 2006 10:42:00 +0000

Fastastic! “Hey, the longer you’re here, the less your faith seems foreign to me.” It reminds me of our gathering yesterday with all of our summer friends. Of course, there are those that are instantly drawn to us. There are those that believe the first time they hear. It seems that most of the people I have encoutered are more like ice cubes. (not in temperature) We started our meeting with a bowl of ice in the middle. By the end of our meeting the ice was melted. I couldn’t tell you at what point it all happened. It was just a gradual thing that took place over time.
I must say that many of your thoughts remind me of the kind of heartbeat found in Donald Miller’s stuff. Especially in the younger generations there is this desire to simply have someone step out and be REAL. The “likeable factor” is important. However, I think more than anything we want ot see people that are genuine–real–transparent. It would seem that after a while we are going to have a group of people that, like Miller, are not afraid to expose the soul. I wonder—then what? Do you think that eventually we are going to desire to have that call to excellence? What does excellence look like when dealing with this accent thing? What does it look like when living in a culture so that they may hear? Is there such a thing as doing what we do well–or better than well?
Love what you do—keep up the great work!

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Tue, 06 Jun 2006 15:15:00 +0000

Hey, Stepchild. I just found your blog today while searching for another one that I forgot to bookmark. My comments will be all over the place since I've just been reviewing the whole blog, or at least the parts that grabbed my attention. I'm putting the comment here because I will eventually get around to mentioning accents. Maybe.

Let's start with this. Buck up, buddy. I liked you right away. You are winsome. Kind of. Likeable. Loveable even.

I'm posting anonymously. My writing can be completely open because my identity isn't. And that's what I love about your blog. You don't reveal your name, but you do reveal your soul. A good tradeoff.

And about that soul: how refreshing to meet someone who can take his ministry completely seriously without having to take himself seriously.

Of course, the down side of openness is the inevitable wallowing in the insecurities that we all share and most of us don't want to read about. I think about 95% of your wrestling with modernism could be solved if you left Europe for this part of Africa. Here, modernism is neither a worldview nor a reality, it's just an aspiration and a rumor about how other people live.

Speaking of accents, when I started my language learning I wanted to practice excellent diction, enunciation, accent--the whole package. As long as one is learning to talk all over again, why not do it right this time? But it didn't work out. People looked at me funny. The whole point of not having and accent is so that people will NOT look at you funny. I have been told, and have come to believe, that what people want is not that we sound like them. They want all that nonverbal stuff that leaks out and tells them the truth about how we really feel about them--they want that stuff to show that they are honored and enjoyed. If we get that right, people will give us a hearing.

That's my theory, anyway.

By: Brittany

Brittany — Mon, 05 Jun 2006 12:27:00 +0000

It’s a perplexing problem because I’ve found that some cultures actually get offended if you try to immitate their accent. In Uganda, the nationals speak English with a lovely lilting, sing-song cadence to their words. Yet when an American attempts to do the same, the nationals feel as though you are disparaging their English and are in essence saying, “You can’t understand ‘normal’ English well enough for me to speak with my normal accent, so I’m going to try to speak like you so you can understand me.”

By: Local foreigner

Local foreigner — Sun, 04 Jun 2006 14:43:00 +0000

Amazing how the locals can peg you in an instant, too. My wife went out to meet the chimmney sweep, and said one word: “Hallo” (spoken in her best dialect, she’s actually got a pretty good mimicry of the local dialect going). All the other locals greet each other with “Hallo” (or Soli, or sometimes a quick ‘Tag).

The sweep stopped in his tracks and said … haltingly … in English “my English is not so good”.

Pfingston is tomorrow – Pentacost – we’re praying for a similar event to take place in our town!