Anyone who has had a stint in an International School will be familiar with the notorious twang that ripples through the student body in the form of gossip and the frantic pleas for the solutions to last night’s chemistry homework. There is almost no escaping it, unless you had a father like mine who insinuated that conforming to the twang would result in your being shipped off to a British boarding school, but even then, I definitely adopted it when in the company of fellow twangers. What I’m referring to is the accent that is unmistakably “American” to foreign ears yet at the same time so non-descript that it can’t possibly be “American” in any genuine sense when judged by American ears. It’s this faux American accent that divides the static children and the nomadic ones and often elicits a sense of misplacement for anyone who has been brought up as an expat or third culture kid at an International School and then returns to their home country, especially if you’re from an English speaking country other than the US.
On one hand, you speak English perfectly while most likely also speak the native language of your previous home, but on the other hand, you speak English, your so called mother tongue, with an unidentifiable accent. You may look like, say, a typical British boy, but perhaps you identify more with Indonesian culture and are accustomed to pronouncing tomatoes with an “ay” and not an “ah” between the “toes”. It’s not just British or Australian kids that experience this, anyone going back to the States after a significant period of time in an International School elsewhere in the world faces the scrutiny of their fellow Americans upon their return, or so I am told. Their accent seems as though it ought to belong to their home country, but it’s actually been influenced ever so slightly by the teachers and students from different parts of the world with whom they spent their weekdays and has morphed into a non-descript almost faux American accent. This must be a strange situation to have to face initially, but alas, ‘tis the fate of the Third Culture Kid.
Third Culture Kids are the result of children being placed in a culture other than their own for a significant period of time, giving them the opportunity to take aspects of the culture of origin and those of their new home and generate a hybrid “third culture”. Third Culture Kids are able to assimilate with each other partially because of the code switching they have come to rely on but also because of this twang that sets them apart from the kids who grew up “back at home”. Even in the case that the expat child doesn’t pick up the culture of their second home, they are still likely to undergo alterations to their original native accent. If, on the other hand, they are fully immersed in the culture of their new home and are not sent to an English speaking school, they are still likely to repatriate with a new lexicon and accent, possibly even a diminished grasp of their mother tongue depending on their upbringing. Of course, there is always the option that they may never repatriate as a result of feeling more at home away from their parents’ native home.
To return to a country to which your heritage belongs and to not be able to fit right in is a strange feeling. I have had this happen to me in both Japan and Britain, however, I am of mixed race and this is quite visible in my facial features. When one is not apparently foreign and can even prove that most of their family members are from the place to which they have returned, sporting an acquired pseudo American accent must evoke strange subconscious feelings regarding one’s identity. I have seen many British kids who have lived abroad their entire lives who then return to the UK for University to find that they are not actually addressed as strictly British. They fall into the “other” category; they’re not foreign, but they know nothing about contemporary British pop culture (this applied to me too, actually) and, most noticeably, they have succumbed to the twang. That’s not to say their lives are made difficult as a result, but it must be an odd feeling to be in a country to which your passport and parents’ culture belong but to feel slightly alienated on account of your accent and mannerisms. They are essentially stuck between staying true to their upbringing and just being who they are, which is quite clearly the ideal scenario, or trying to reestablish their roots and force themselves to fit in, which never really works as it sounds contrived.
I’ve also noticed that people in such situations really do tend to stick together and maintain stronger bonds with their childhood friends. When compared to my British contemporaries at University, on average, my friends hailing from International Schools from all over the world appeared to have stronger connections to the friends they grew up with. It’s not just between childhood friends though, even amongst people from different International School backgrounds there seems to be a natural understanding of one another. Maybe it’s the comfort of strength in numbers or the relief of not having to explain yourself when you “sneakers” instead of “trainers” despite being British or it could simply be that you have gone through the same hurdles whilst abroad and can sympathize with one another better, but the gravitation of International School kids towards one another is a phenomenon I’ve observed many times. Perhaps all this is the emergence of a contemporary branch of the traditional nomadic culture with the accent as its mark; we all roam the various parts of the world and speak the twang and thus comprise a mini culture of our own.