Most Africans in the diaspora would concur with me that when they first immigrated to the United States they wanted to speak, look and swagger like Americans. This writer was not an exception. Understandably, America is the current world power and an American identity gives some sense of pride – false or real. It is not different from the days of the Roman Empire where everyone wanted to be identified as a Roman.
While attempting to prosodic and modulate intonation to mimic American accent, some Africans accent become ridiculously and preposterously difficult to understand. A situation where Americans cannot understand them and Africans cannot understand them either!
From my experience, it takes some couple of years living in America for most African immigrants to realize and understand the uniqueness of their African Accent. After years of biting my tongue and speaking jargons, my evolutionary journey back to authentic African Accent began to emerge especially after Amadou Diallo – the 23-year-old African immigrant from Guinea that was shot dead by NYPD plain cloth officers because they thought he had a gun – case had catapulted police racial profiling on to America national consciousness. It was not uncommon then (sadly even now) to see young black males stopped and frisked like animals by police officers.
I had to figure out very quickly what to use to reduce the likelihood of being “Dialloed” on the streets of New York just in case something goes down.