Accent shaming

There is a lot of talk in our society about various kinds of shaming, and this week there has been a lot of shaming and assuming the worst motivations for things people do. ("If you choose to perform at the inauguration, it must be because you endorse all the bad ideas of the president.")

I want to focus instead on something that we rarely identify as shaming, but it is nevertheless something that has impacted me.

This week, I heard a friend talking about Brighton High School. I noticed that she was very careful in the way she pronounced the t in "Brighton."

"Liz," I said to her, "you're a native Utahn, right?" (BTW, spellcheck is telling me "Utahn" is wrong, but that's how we do it here.) When she confirmed that she was indeed native to Utah, I asked her if she naturally said it that way, or if she had been trained to say it that way.

Her response wasn't unexpected. "I hate it when people don't say their t's. I'm the only one in my family who says it that way." She was surprised when I told her (1) that it isn't a phenomenon unique to Utah, and (2) it has a name: glottal stop (which uses this symbol, ʔ).

Unfortunately, I recognized her unusual carefulness because it's something I have done. Going back as far as fourth grade, I remember a classmate saying Utahns "don't say their t's." And as I heard this sentiment repeated, with the insinuation that it was an inferior or incorrect form of English, I trained myself not to say it that way. I became very careful about how I said "mountain," "Layton," etc.

Now that I've graduated from college with a degree in English linguistics, I know how bogus this idea was, and I am ashamed that I did that. I'm more ashamed of others for making me feel that I needed to do so.

These people almost always say "don't say their t's" to refer to the phenomenon. But that's not accurate at all. Using a glottal stop isn't "not saying" a t. A glottal stop is simply an allophone of the /t/ phoneme.

What are allophones and phonemes? I'm glad you asked! A phoneme is a sound or letter we think we hear. Allophones are actual sounds we make that our brain registers as phonemes.

It's best explained with an example. The words top, stop, hit, butter, and Batman all have the /t/ phoneme. But in each word, the t is pronounced differently. In top, a puff of air comes out of your mouth when you say it, but not in stop. (You can put your hand in front of your mouth to see for yourself.) In hit, your tongue stays at the roof of your mouth. In butter, it's more like a d. And in Batman, guess what it is? A glottal stop! So it's not accurate to say that a glottal stop is not saying a t.

(As a side note, in English, /r/ and /l/ are separate phonemes, but in Asian languages, they are different allophones of one phoneme. That's why Asian speakers have trouble with l's and r's in English, leading to things like Engrish.)

Another problem with the anti-glottal stop crusade (but they don't know what it is) is that it's not only a Utah thing; it's used in many other places--especially in England, but no one criticizes the Brits!

And it's not just a problem with this t pronunciation. There tends to be a look-down-your-nose attitude for Utah accents. If you look at the comment boards on any language article from a Utah newspaper, you'll see just what I'm talking about.

But we inherit accents naturally by growing up among them. We don't decide, "I'm going to speak with a New York accent," "I'm going to speak with an Irish accent," "I'm going to speak with a South African accent." Accents develop naturally, and everyone has one. So why is it OK to make fun of some people for theirs?

There's been a lot of talk about body shaming. And body shaming is a bad thing. But with fat shaming, there is often some kind of decision that has made people fat, and being overweight is unhealthy for them. (Don't accuse me of fat shaming here; I speak from experience. I weighed more than 200 pounds when I was in seventh grade and reached 250 by the time I was nineteen.) I'm still not saying fat shaming is OK, but there is often some element of lifestyle to it.

But I think accent shaming is even worse. Since accents are something we naturally develop, making fun of someone's accent is like making fun of a birthmark. (It basically is literally a mark of birth.) And whether someone says "mountain" with a glottal stop or some other allophone really makes no impact on them or on you.

I've tried to get back into saying glottal stops. It's more comfortable and natural. But I avoided it so long that I still often feel like I'm saying it "wrong" when I use one. The stigma has really affected me negatively. I'm trying to take it back with pride.

The people who criticize it don't know what they're talking about, so they're not an authority to criticize it. And those who do know what they're talking about won't criticize it.