The Woman with the Strange Name and the English Accent

People tend to remember me as the person with the strange name and the English accent. The English accent began to pay off — in very literal terms — just recently. I'm still waiting on the name.

A former co-worker asked me to do a voice over for a couple web videos. As all I need to do is stand and read a script out loud, it's a very easy way to earn a little extra money. (I couldn't do it for a living, though; among other considerations, the boredom would kill me.)

What I can't get over is how odd it is. It's as if someone one day said to you, "You know, you have really great wrists. Would you mind if we took some photographs of them and paid you for your trouble?" Assuming there was no wrist fetish in sight, there really wouldn't be anything wrong with this. It's just weird having something so everyday and personal as a wrist (or a voice) become a commodity.

What does make me thoughtful (and which I'm a little thin skinned about) is that people have a tendency to over identify me with how I speak. This ranges from innocuous to annoying.

In the annoying category are the people who only have two ways of assessing me: "foreigner" or "American." As I've been here since I was a child, it's entertaining to watch them twitch and try to figure out which category I belong in. Normally, after a bit of mental struggle, they make a proclamation in favor of one or another and then move away, quickly.

A couple web videos really won't make any difference to how strongly people identify me with my voice, and I'd be too stubborn to stop even if it did (which is probably why I still have an accent). It's just odd and disheartening that, in the eyes of many people, the way I speak becomes an extension of my personality rather than just how I pronounce words.

Comments

[Jules]

Hi Tab

I've never thought of you as a woman with an English accent. To me, you'll always an American accent (-:

Jules

[Tabitha]

Hi Jules -

Good to hear from you.

You're right; it's completely a matter of perspective. I went out with a group recently and one of the women had spent most of her life in England. Her reaction can be best summed up as "You don't sound quite American, but you sure don't sound English."