Made out to be a liar!

“Hey, look at the American over there….”

“Go back to your own country, you don’t belong here”

“Are you an immigrant of some sort?”

“Stop lying about being Irish, you’re a yank, just own up to it”

“You’ve made up so many excuses for yourself that you have actually started to believe them”

From the age of three years old, I used to binge watch Friends most afternoons with my Nan when she was alive. They were moments that I would do anything to re-live again, but little did I know how great an impact those programmes would have on myself as a person in the years to come. As I grew a little older to the age of four and five, Nickelodeon became a huge part of my childhood. Shows like Drake and Josh, Neds declassified school survival guide and Zoey 101 were TV programmes that I watched for hours on end. It wasn’t until the first comment about my accent was passed at the age of 6 that I started to turn against myself. I was always degraded for sounding different; people made me feel as if I didn’t belong anywhere and as a result, I was physically bullied. Watching TV became the only safe space for me, the street became an unsafe place for me to be. Of course, there were people I came across in life who complimented my accent for it being so clear, calming and well spoken and as I grew into my older teens, I began to do podcasts and audios of my short stories. The feedback I received was amazing to me and quite a big change from the negative comments I received from such a young age! Family and friends encouraged me to do more and to even consider voice acting and radio broadcasting; compliments that made me even prouder of my accent.

Yes, I have American relatives, but don’t jump to conclusions. One of my many Grand-Aunts had moved over to America in the 1950s and had started her family over there, but she moved over from Ireland and was an Irish citizen herself. Upon seeing her for the first time in years in October 2019, I wasn’t surprised to hear how unique her accent had become. It sounded pure American and it sounded so nice and calming. I myself am all Irish, born and bred in Ireland in the small county of Galway with an accent I did indeed acquire from watching television as a child. It took a long time for me to grow to love my accent, a very long time, but nowadays that fear is starting to set in again.

Just recently, I had been connecting with my followers on an anonymous question app as I do on a weekly basis. The question of my accent was brought up a lot and I told my story on more than one occasion and that didn’t bother me because it genuinely seemed to interest a lot of people! However, there were some that decided to brand me a liar for it! It’s comments like that that really bring a person down, it crushes their self confidence and it makes them feel like their place in society is being questioned.

First of all, for those out there who find it “fun” to degrade a person for their accent, you are tearing down a person’s confidence in ways you can’t imagine. Everyone is dealing with their own problems and what people don’t need is someone adding to their list of problems. Bullying and yes it is considered bullying, should not be tolerated on any form of social media platform and if there are people out there who get a kick out of kicking people when they’re down then those people shouldn’t be on any social media until they learn how to behave like a responsible person. If you don’t have anything nice to say then don’t say anything at all.

Secondly, if there is ever a person or people out there who calls you a liar about how you acquired your accent then please block them out of your life. They are not worth the space, space should only be given to the people who accept you for who you are. Don’t ever question a person’s character because at the end of the day you wouldn’t like someone branding you a liar for a story that you are telling is one of truth. I myself have no reason to lie about my accent yet people continue to point the finger and question it in a way that makes me feel bad about myself. We are all human, but why do some of us not act like that?

Thirdly, it’s okay to sound different! Can you imagine a world where we all have the same accent, the same way of pronouncing words, the same tone of voice, the same everything? Life would seem pretty boring, wouldn’t it? Admit it! Sounding different is what makes us all unique, it sets us apart from everyone else and gives us our own sense of originality and it would be wrong to take that away from anyone. Also, I was always the one to love looking into things so I did a bit of research. The story, the truthful story of my accent proves to be true due to a recent study showing that people’s accents and speech patterns can indeed come from watching TV and if you don’t believe me then look it up and we’ll see who will call me a liar then.

On a final note, I’ll repeat myself in what I said previous. We are all different nationalities with different accents, but sometimes our accents won’t always collaborate with our nationalities and that is NOT a crime. Embrace that originality because it is beautiful. Doesn’t matter whether you are Irish with an American accent, Chinese with an English accent or so on so forth, our voice is our voice and no-one should ever question it in a negative way, and for those who do question it in a negative way, just stop and stop right now. That negativity will plunge people into silence where they won’t want to speak and what kind of world would it be if we had people nodding or shaking their heads in reply because they don’t want to speak for fear of judgement; the answer being it wouldn’t be a world that any individual would like to be a part of.