Going to US? Fix your 'Asian' accent

New York: While the English language itself is not a problem for most Indians in the US who work as doctors, IT professionals and scientists, their typical South Asian accent has often proved to be a barrier to effectively communicate.

Increasingly, Indian and other South Asian migrants in the US are taking the help of professional speech trainers to improve their accent.

According to Lynda Wilner, a corporate speech trainer and speech-language pathologist, if there are three authors working on a scientific paper, the person going to the convention to ultimately present it is not the one with the brains but the one with the gift of the gab.

The same is true, said Wilner, on the other end of the spectrum where a large number of South Asians are working in sales-related jobs.

"People tell me, 'I called the company to buy a product but could not understand the speaker and so I went to another vendor'," Wilner said.

"And then companies lose business. This happens in the work place all the time. The most effective communicators rise to the top," she added.

How much does effective communication have to do with accent and when should immigrants resort to accent training programmes? These are just some of the questions immigrants may find themselves facing to varying degrees depending on their field of work or study, according to the online edition of Indian New England, an ethnic Indian magazine.

For Chetan Shinde, a doctoral degree student at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, his accent was never an issue. But when he began applying for jobs, the story took a sharp turn.

"I noticed that while going for job interviews, if you speak with an Indian accent it made a bad impression," Shinde said.

"The people who have adjusted to the American accent have a better chance of getting jobs. Many of us struggled," he added.

Though Shinde is gainfully employed with the Bank of America, he said he is unsure what role his accent will play in terms of long-term career advancement.

According to Wilner, accents can have serious side effects in certain areas like medicine where the confusion between 14 milligrams and 40 milligrams, or between "bleeding" and "breathing" could lead to considerable damage.

She also says speaking fast, as South Asians tend to, might give the listener an impression that the person is being abrupt, or rude.

But people like Neeraj Doshi, who has been a teaching assistant at Tufts University, say he has never faced problems on this score.

"People understood what I was saying and my accent is absolutely Indian," Doshi says. Yet, he acknowledged that accent training can help in certain fields like medicine and sales.

"If it helps you professionally, there is nothing wrong with accent training," he added.