Sewayne Thompson

My experience being a Jamaican-American New Yorker took me a while to adjust to the languages spoken in both communities. Being placed in public school from a young age, you can immediately pick up on the language used on the day today. It changed my original accent from broken English-patois to a more socially accepted American accent to better fit in with my peers. I learned how to speak American English in school, but television also played a big part in it. All shows I watched were white casts and American actors, so it made it easy to learn that kind of way to communicate. New York itself has a specific jargon used. It changes from region to region. Learning the American accent was one thing, but understanding the New York-specific jargon was another. There were some words I would never use in my day-to-day because they didn’t feel natural coming out of me. When you don’t have any older or younger family saying it, it would feel disingenuous to use some terms. A particular accent also comes with saying some words- an accent that I didn’t possess; therefore, it wouldn’t sound correct. Having a primarily American accent did have its differences in New York as well. That would get you called “speaking propper,” which isn’t considered much of a good attribute. Then returning home to my family and cousins calling me American or “Yankee” because of the accent change did make me feel like I let them down or “sold out.” For the sake of fitting in, I sometimes think in a way you have to pick one or the other, or you are outcast from both. I don’t  think fitting in is a bad thing either. We adopt a language to make communicating to other individuals around us simpler.