Faking an Accent

A few years ago, I was enthralled by the British accent. It seemed to me as if the accent itself had a sense of nobility to it which highlighted the origin of the English language. Trying hard to grab attention as any other 15-year-old would do, I started emulating the British accent whenever I talked. Can you hear the way I would say “talk” then?

            I wasn’t wrong. People in my school started taking notice of me, and some would even call me the “British guy”. Being under the limelight, I would often utter phrases like “Neither a borrower, nor a lender to be,” and my fellows would marvel at my grasp over the English literature.

            A few weeks went by and my popularity started dying down. That is when my English Literature teacher noticed my hollow attempts of faking an accent in one of our conversations. She didn’t shun me, nor did she let it pass. She said politely, “I see what you’re doing there. But before you turn this into a habit, think carefully what I am about to tell you.” I nodded. “To be or not to be – that is the question,” she mouthed with a smile.

            That was enough to trigger a chain of thought in my mind. Why did I actually try to copy the British accent? Is it because I really liked it, or because I wanted attention? Was my liking for literature feigned too? And most importantly, what was I trying to prove?

            I took a day off and gave my thoughts some time. After a long day of conflicts with my inner self, I came to realize that I loved literature, and my liking of the English language was unfeigned. But what understood completely well is that I had only been trying to make an individual place for myself in the crowd by trying to fake the British accent. I did not want my name to fade away unnoticed in the history of the world. And probably that’s why I had made such a hollow attempt for fame.

            I took time to understand that the way a person speaks determines his personality, and personality is important. However, a personality is nothing but and insight of a person’s mind which is reflected in every move of that person. By feigning command over an accent that was never mine, I was not only occluding people from seeing my true personality, but I was also denying myself from recognizing my true self. That’s when I realized that pretence would not always be of any help if I deliberately attempted to suppress my true identity.

            This small incident in my life had actually made me concerned about a lot of things, including my personality. One fact that I now know is that true identity can not be hidden – it will come to you from time to time as guilt, or maybe as a haunting memory. Pretence would only enervate my personality and slowly lead to a loss of recognition of my own self.

            And just for the record, from the day of my epiphany to this, I have never again used a fake British accent to embellish my words.