{"id":7384,"date":"2010-06-09T11:00:50","date_gmt":"2010-06-09T16:00:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/indianamericanstory.wordpress.com\/?p=175"},"modified":"2014-12-30T21:42:23","modified_gmt":"2014-12-30T21:42:23","slug":"vox-prejudices-in-sound","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/apa.si.edu\/now\/vox-prejudices-in-sound\/","title":{"rendered":"Vox: Prejudices in\u00a0Sound"},"content":{"rendered":"

by Rajshree Solanki<\/a><\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

So what’s in a voice?<\/p>\n

Does your demeanor change when you hear on the other end of the phone a person with an Indian accent helping your computer, banking, or other issues?<\/p>\n

\"An

<\/p><\/div>\n

Indian people are fully aware of what their accents sound like. Because of that, my dad chose to not teach my sister and me our ethnic language. He thought speaking our language would have an adverse effect on our lives. He felt an accent can only hold us back in careers or other opportunities. Teachers at my elementary school had told my dad that speaking another language in the home only confused me and caused delays in reading comprehension. If only my dad did not listen to them.<\/p>\n

So what’s in a voice?<\/p>\n

My voice is nasally. Yankee-ish with an occasionally tinge of a Southern accent.<\/p>\n

My sister\u2019s voice is smoky and heavy like that of old Long Island mother.<\/p>\n

If you were to hear our voices, you wouldn\u2019t even be able tell we were Indian Americans.<\/p>\n

Prior to moving to the DC area, I was looking for a place to live and responded to an ad in the paper. When I got on the phone with the guy renting out the room, we chatted about the neighbors and the location.<\/p>\n

\u201cA lot of younger hipsters are moving into the area,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat sounds great!\u201d I said, looking forward to my move.<\/p>\n

\u201cCan I tell you how refreshing it is talk to you?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat do you mean?”<\/p>\n

\u201cWell, I’ve been getting a lot of calls from Punjab. You know the Patel, Singhs, Punjabs folks.\u201d<\/p>\n

I was quite taken aback by what he said. Did I not mention my name?<\/p>\n

\u201cOh you mean dubbadubbadubba,\u201d putting my worst impression of my mother\u2019s accent.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat’s right! Exactly!\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWell, I\u2019m one of them.\u201d<\/p>\n

DEAD SILENCE.<\/p>\n

Needless to say, I didn’t get the room.<\/p>\n

So what’s in a voice?<\/p>\n

Not teaching my sister and me our family’s language did have an adverse effect. I lost out on countless conversations with family in India, inside jokes with friends, and, most importantly, talks with my grandmother. Conversations between her and me were one-sided; mostly, it was her telling me to get married. Perhaps I won on this. But it is embarrassing when you, as 32-year-old adult, have to have your 12-year-old cousin translate for you.<\/p>\n

I lost out.<\/p>\n

So what’s in a voice?<\/p>\n

We have stereotypes that we don’t even know we have.<\/p>\n

When you pick up the phone, and you’re talking to that person at the other end, does your demeanor change?<\/p>\n

When you hear an Indian accent, what do you do? Does it make you angry or curious?<\/p>\n

I was listening to a local DC radio station on my way to work. The topic was on the National Spell Bee, and they were planning a fantasy bee bracket. The hosts talked about their top picks would be any of the Indian American participants. A person who was Indian American called in and talked about the importance of education in the Indian American community.<\/p>\n

The host then said, \u201cWow. You speak really good English.\u201d<\/p>\n

Um\u2026 thanks.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

by Rajshree Solanki So what’s in a voice? Does your demeanor change when you hear on the other end of the phone a person with an Indian accent helping your computer, banking, or other issues? Indian people are fully aware of what their accents sound…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":7385,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[57],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7384","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-beyond-bollywood"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/apa.si.edu\/now\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7384"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/apa.si.edu\/now\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/apa.si.edu\/now\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/apa.si.edu\/now\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/apa.si.edu\/now\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7384"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/apa.si.edu\/now\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7384\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7674,"href":"https:\/\/apa.si.edu\/now\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7384\/revisions\/7674"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/apa.si.edu\/now\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7385"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/apa.si.edu\/now\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7384"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/apa.si.edu\/now\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7384"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/apa.si.edu\/now\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7384"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}