Some thoughts on being a Cultural Chameleon.
This week I have two painters working on my house redecorating. The lead painter chats to me in a generic south London accent and I reply in kind, yet when I hear him and his mater talking during the day, they are talking in “full geezer” mode, much stronger accent, loads of dialect etc
This took me back to many years working around Jamaican tradesmen in Cayman. They’d talk to me or other non-Jamaicans in what could often still be a strong accent but in English (or “Hinglish” sometimes!), but when they talked amongst themselves during the day, it was in full-blown Patois, which is recognised as a distinct language. Having been around Cayman for so many years, I could pick up much of what they said, so sometimes would amuse myself by listening in as I walked around and then joining in their conversation. After an initial reaction which was often “Hey, he understands what we are saying!”, they’d typically relax and continue in Patois.
Anyway, back to the painter. We chatted about this jumping around of accents. He shared with me his background, including growing up in Brixton (an area that historically is where many Caribbean people would first settle when immigrating to the UK, and still today as you walk out of the tube station you hear Jamaican accents all around you). Anyway, when he goes back up there and sees the friends he grew up with, then comes back to the suburban area further south in London where he now lives, people think he is “putting on” a different accent. Still, really he is just jumping around in accents depending on who he has been talking to. Oh, and if he smells curry goat anywhere, he has to have it, a legacy of growing up in Brixton!
As for me, my family moved around a lot within the UK as I grew up. When we moved back to Scotland from the south of England and I went to a Scottish high school for my last two years before University, I consciously maintained an English accent as a shortcut to finding out who would accept difference and who would “pick on me” for being different. Over the six years after high school, my accent in Edinburgh evolved into a fairly typical working-class Edinburgh accent, as I played a lot of basketball, a sport which was typically played in housing schemes (ie not among the “posh” Edinburgh folk!), so I copied the accents of those I played with.
I then moved to Cayman as I turned 24 and realised very quickly that a) Scots talk faster than the norm, and b) speaking with a fairly strong Scots accent wouldn’t help people understand my already fast speech. I then quite deliberately chose an accent that was fairly neutral, almost “BBC newsreader” in the polished neutrality.
Fast forward nearly three decades and I moved to London and my accent still jumps around, becoming more south London depending on who I’m talking to, but still morphing into Scots when I go home to visit friends and family, and similarly shifting when I go home to Cayman.
From all of that back story, I am, like the painter, somewhat of a “Cultural Chameleon”, having lived in and grown to understand and be part of various different cultures, and with the ability to naturally shift to fit with each as I move around. This extends into the business world. To use one example, I have worked a lot in Canada and across most of the provinces, so have a good understanding of cultural differences across that nation, including business culture differences between, say, Toronto, Halifax, Calgary, and Vancouver.
To be a cultural chameleon one begins with a passionate interest in learning about others and about different cultures and experiences. Over time, this just morphs into one’s own life and experiences, then into the ability to jump around and shift from culture to culture. To me, this feels to be a great privilege I have from all of my decades moving around the world in life and in business, plus it is also a real positive for both life and work. Oh, and it also brings richness to conversations (including the painter and I then exchanging tips for where to get good Roti and curry goat in South London!)
I love being a cultural chameleon and encourage others to seek to be so too, starting as young as you can. To use my sons as examples (all young adults), I encourage them to be similarly curious about others and, specifically, to go live and work in different countries and environments, plus to take every opportunity to live and work with people different from themselves. It is far easier to shift colours like a chameleon if this feels natural and comes from your own life experience.
Oh, in closing, the image above is of “Hamish”, one of the painted sculptures of Blue iguanas on the “Blue Iguana Trail” that was put in various locations in Cayman over a decade ago. This one was painted by fellow “Tartan Turtle” the architect John Doak, who is originally from Scotland but has made Cayman his home for several decades.