Let's talk about all those accents...

Hey, American regional accents? No problem: Southern, Mid-Western, New Yorker, even a New Joisey accent are all easily grasped due to years of cultural acclimation. 

So here I am in Egypt, undergoing orientation with a group who have more-or-less the following accent patterns:  Canadian, Welsh, Scottish, various dialect areas of England, New Zealand, Australia, and South African. 

Then there are those mixed language patterns of the native French and Egyptians who learned their English in London, the Dutch English speak, and English speakers who have country-hopped so often their accents are not pure Welsh, Australian, etc, but rather a conglomeration of many.

Complicating the self-perception of being the low IQ old lady in the group because I am constantly asking the person next to me, “What did he just say?” or "What are we supposed to do, now?”  is the tinnitus (ringing of the ears) I presently enjoy thanks to an all-too-rapidly
                                                                                    aging body.

The solution on a practical level?  Of course. Sit in the front of the room so as to hear e-v-e-r-y word and hope that in a month or so, I will have acclimated to the various speech patterns.

A deeper personal reflection on the experience?  I am suddenly extra-ordinarily cognizant of the Egyptian and foreign students who will be sitting in my classes. Imagine understanding scholastic instruction in the various accent-ese described and then my own American one thrown into the mix.


Many of these kids will be astonishing one day. The future leaders of their country and in key professions of the world.

I am also struck by the participation of the educator world-citizens in my professional circle, who are amazingly adept at absorbing multiple cultures---sometimes termed as "tourist teachers."

However, the term is too simple, too trite...just not enough somehow. Two or three years in Hong Kong or China, then off to Abu Dhabi, Brazil, Nepal or some other such place. True global citizens as compared to my miniscule 37-year teaching experience in the snow-globe called Utah.

I wonder if I would have taken another path on my personal journey through this lifetime, if I had known what I know today... if I had just known.