being not so foreign
I've been spending a lot of time lately talking about my relative foreigness, or lack thereof. My current project has a fair amount of "staff churn" as we like to call it, and obviously plenty of new clients. I still sound very English to American ears, so that means lots of repeat conversations on provenance (you don't sound Scottish... 20 years! you don't say!... you can have dual citizenship? etc., etc.)
And yet I don't know quite what to think I am, in terms of national identity. I am clearly not typically Scottish, nor do I consider myself especially British -- not having lived in the UK since I was 5, and being pretty assimilated in the US after 23 years. And yet I am not fully assimilated, not even close. I don't realize how American I sound until I hear myself next to an actual Brit. I look at how fragmented American society is becoming and where politics seem to be going, and think I want out. Then I read about Blair's latest big-brother scheme, and ASBOs that are only serving to torment simpletons, and don't know that I want to live in the UK either...
The silliest reaction I have had, though, is my ongoing sense that I sound wrong delivering words of fatherly wisdom and guidance, because fathers have Scottish accents -- well, mine does, anyway.
I've been reading a bunch of old Paddington books to L which were mine when I was her age -- some still have price tags in both pre- and post-decimalisation amounts, to date myself a bit. R says that my accent is significantly more pronounced when I read them. I suppose I have reached one standard of being middle aged: things from my childhood are starting to be a comfort, not that any of us need a replay of the UK in the 70s.
I know that several routine readers / lurkers live somewhere other than where they started out, but I think that you / they mostly moved as adults. I'm curious to hear how any of you, who are inclined to respond, feel about living somewhere else in the long term, whether you think this is permanent, and how that affects your view of the world... if you feel like sharing, of course ; )
And yet I don't know quite what to think I am, in terms of national identity. I am clearly not typically Scottish, nor do I consider myself especially British -- not having lived in the UK since I was 5, and being pretty assimilated in the US after 23 years. And yet I am not fully assimilated, not even close. I don't realize how American I sound until I hear myself next to an actual Brit. I look at how fragmented American society is becoming and where politics seem to be going, and think I want out. Then I read about Blair's latest big-brother scheme, and ASBOs that are only serving to torment simpletons, and don't know that I want to live in the UK either...
The silliest reaction I have had, though, is my ongoing sense that I sound wrong delivering words of fatherly wisdom and guidance, because fathers have Scottish accents -- well, mine does, anyway.
I've been reading a bunch of old Paddington books to L which were mine when I was her age -- some still have price tags in both pre- and post-decimalisation amounts, to date myself a bit. R says that my accent is significantly more pronounced when I read them. I suppose I have reached one standard of being middle aged: things from my childhood are starting to be a comfort, not that any of us need a replay of the UK in the 70s.
I know that several routine readers / lurkers live somewhere other than where they started out, but I think that you / they mostly moved as adults. I'm curious to hear how any of you, who are inclined to respond, feel about living somewhere else in the long term, whether you think this is permanent, and how that affects your view of the world... if you feel like sharing, of course ; )
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