Maria's Story — Accentricity

Sadie (voiceover): Before we get started, just a quick note about things that you can do to support Accentricity at the moment. As you may or may not know, it costs a little bit of money to run a podcast and to keep it online and available for free. And to help us do that we’ve recently teamed up with Glasgow based artist Cat Ingall and asked her to design our first Accentricity t-shirts. There’s a page on our website and you can also find a link in the episode description. If you buy one, you’ll be doing us a favour, but you’ll also get a genuinely banging t-shirt. So it’s all winning really. And if you’re not a t-shirt person or if you’d rather help us out with a small monthly donation instead, there’s also a link in the episode description to our Patreon and Steady subscription pages. We’re always and forever grateful for whatever support you’re able to give.

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Sadie (voiceover): This is Accentricity Series Two: The Moving Project. Stories about migration, language, and identity from around the world.

Over the past year we’ve been working with a group of people teaching them to podcast and helping them to tell personal stories about the experience of moving from one place to another. This is Maria’s story.

Maris grew up in Bulgaria with a Czech dad and a Bulgarian mum. She left Bulgaria as a young adult and has now living in Scotland for 10 years. First, you’ll hear Maria’s 10-minute audio piece which is about her relationship with her accent in English. She’s training to be a speech therapist and wonders about how her clients will respond to someone who sounds like her and whether they might respond differently if she sounded Scottish.

Like everyone who took part in the project, Maria was brand new to podcasting at the beginning and she made her episode without professional equipment: using just a recording app on her mobile phone and free computer software. After Maria’s audio piece you’ll hear a conversation we had over the internet after she’d completed the project. In it I asked her a bit more about growing up with two languages, about leaving Bulgaria, about being a migrant in Scotland, and about her work with the Bilingualism Matters research network. If you’re interested in subscribing to the Bilingualism Matters podcast that she mentions in the interview, it’s called Much Language, Such Talk and you can find a link in the episode description.

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Maria (voiceover): How you speak is who you are. I’m fascinated by the idea of being able to control my identity and how I present to other people using my accent. When I write, I often change up my handwriting imagining the different versions of myself I could be, and I wish I could do that with my speech as well. For example, one of the things my accent can convey is my connection to a place. When I arrived in the States as a teenager, attending a high school in North Carolina, I spontaneously started speaking like the other girls I was friends with. I remember at the time it was really cool to say phrases like “that’s so sketchy” or “I can’t even” and I definitely imitated a close friend of mine who was pronouncing words like street and strong as street and strong [different pronunciation]. If I have any trace of Americanness in the way I speak now, it’s a leftover from that time.

Several years later I found myself studying at a university in England. After only a few months I was using less a and adopted some other English accent features. However, I have now lived in Scotland for almost 10 years, and I still don’t sound as Scottish as I would like to. I could try to force it, but it does nae sound right. I’m not the only one in this situation. Monika, another Bulgarian friend of mine who lives in the UK, is also not completely satisfied with how she sounds. We caught up recently online. In this part of our conversation she describes how she’s been feeling about her accent.

Monika: Now that I live in Cambridge, I work -- I’m surrounded by all British people, and I guess feeling a bit different. Sometimes saying things in a not exactly correct way made me feel a bit embarrassed. And just I guess wanting to be -- to fit a bit more -- also my career aspiration is to be a clinical psychologist and I became a bit, well a bit worried I guess if people were going to relate to me. If they’re born in the UK, British people and I have an accent -- whether they’re going to relate, whether they’re going to trust me, how this is going to affect my relationship with my clients, I guess. So it kind of pushed me to explore if I can do something -- have a bit more control I guess over how I sound.

Maria: These concerns led her to, what to me, is a very drastic measure. She met up with an accent coach.

Monika: In the beginning he assessed my pronunciation. He said I speak in a clear way, that he can understand everything, so the problem is not big. [laughs] So he didn’t say that there was anything real to fix, but there are things that would just make me sound a bit less Bulgarian, I guess. Yeah, he did give me homework and I didn’t really do it [laughs].

Maria: Although it appears not to have been a bad experience, Monika’s sudden lack of energy to follow through suggests that she may have been facing a deeper issue.

Monika: Part of me knows that I would never completely fit in. I will always have this Bulgarian part of me. So yeah, I wouldn’t say I’m completely 100 per cent British.

Maria: It seems that despite not being very sure how much she likes her accent, Monika is pretty certain about her identity. I suspect that is why someone as disciplined as her wouldn’t practice towards her goal of sounding less Bulgarian. Now I will shift gears and talk about someone whose self-perception was actually a powerful motivator for change.

Michael: So my story of learning Mandarin begins with going off on the…

Maria: This is Michael. He was born and raised in Edinburgh, and he happens to be very good at deliberately changing his accent in English. However, while working in Taiwan and learning Mandarin, his accent changed in a way that he had not anticipated.

Michael: So my real massive input of Chinese was from my boss and then this language exchange partner.

Maria: They were both women and Michael spontaneously picked up their speech mannerisms and accent.

Michael: Just little phrases I would make. I would say “ah” at the end of a lot of my sentences, which is like putting on an exclamation mark. Or use words that are generally associated with female English like [foreign] which is like “oh, I can’t stand it.” Like icky.

Maria: However, Michael didn’t really stand out in Taiwan because the Taiwanese accent is generally considered to be slightly more feminine in the context of Mandarin. But when he moved to Kaifeng in the North the following year, Michael’s local friends quickly pointed out to him that his way of speaking didn’t really match his English persona.

Michael: It became incredibly noticeable that I was going round with a very [foreign] my whole attitude aspect was much more feminine essentially.

Maria: As he said in Chinese right there, he was speaking in a strange way. So Michael set out on a quest to find a new accent model.

Michael: I really loved the gruff way that the taxi drivers would speak to each other, so I spent a lot of time listening to them and chatting to taxi drivers as you go around and just trying to completely copy. When they said hello to each other they wouldn’t say [foreign] which if everyone’s going around, they’d say [foreign]. It was like “what are you doing?” or “what are you up to?” Also, how they would say okay in sort of standard Mandarin is [foreign] but they would go [foreign].

Maria: His efforts did pay off to the amusement of his friends. His biggest success however was with the taxi drivers themselves.

Michael: I would never get ripped off by taxi drivers if I was properly using the very local accent and sounded like I’d been there a while. Whereas if I was to -- well I [laughs] saw other Westerners who were living there would get ripped off. Have to pay double.

Maria: As we’ve heard both from Monika and Michael, the identity that an accent gives you and your relationship to that identity can be an important motivator for change. Personally, as I’m studying to become a speech and language therapist in Scotland, I have also sometimes felt insecure about the way I speak: that I don’t sound Scottish enough. I think one of the key reasons for that is that I don’t really have any close, best friend type, female friends who are my age and also are Scottish. Most of my Scottish input comes from people who are either a bit older or a bit younger than me, or who are at a different stage in their life altogether. So with my failure to sound Scottish I very much relate to Monika’s worries about my client’s willingness to trust me. Actually, in my linguistic research I have come across studies, one of them by Lev Ari and Keysar in 2010, which suggests that people are less likely to believe trivia facts when they hear them pronounced with a foreign accent than when they hear them in a prestigious native accent. Thankfully, Monika’s mentor has a very different take on our issues, as Monika told me herself.

Monika: My supervisor here in Cambridge helped me to actually realise I can bring in this part of me which has been used to being different person in the room. People who usually need to access psychology services; they usually feel different as well. So that would be something good to bring in.

Maria: This made me think how both Monika and I have underestimated the variety of clients we might see. According to Government report from June 2020, 21 per cent of primary school pupils in Britain also speak a language other than English. An older survey from the mid 2000s found that in Scotland, at least 11,000 pupils speak at least 104 different languages. Britain has a wonderful language diversity and to be honest I actually feel really proud to be a part of it.

The writer Amy Chua has said that “a foreign accent is a sign of bravery” and I couldn’t agree more. As we have heard, people notice our accents and comment on them. They may distrust us or even rip us off. However, if we believe that our accent reflects something important about us then I think it is up to us to uphold it and make peace with it.

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Sadie: So you’ve told me about growing up in Bulgaria with a Czech grandmother. Is that right?

Maria: Yes.

Sadie: What was that like when you were little? Did you grow up feeling 100 per cent Bulgarian or did you feel Czech as well?

Maria: I think when I was younger I definitely felt Czech as well because of her. I spent a lot of time with her. She was looking after me because when I was born my mum was still studying medicine, and after that she was in her early career, so she had to do a lot of travelling, a lot of work, and a lot of exams. My paternal grandmother stepped in a lot, and she spoke to me only in Czech. She sang Czech songs to me, and we looked at, I guess, books in Czech, and her family in the Czech Republic would sometimes send us recorded VHS tapes of things that they had recorded from TV for me to look at. So I grew up with lots of Czech culture and language around me and I definitely felt, I guess, at least half Czech compared to the other kids.

I guess it’s very predictable that when I started going to primary school and just the more years I went to primary school and then moved to secondary school, gradually I had less contact with my grandmother, although I still saw her weekly. That just gradually led me to feel almost no Czech identity at all. I was really annoyed when I realised that I can have a Bulgarian ID because I already had a Czech passport and it’s at that point in time the law didn’t allow adult citizenship with a Czech citizenship. Yeah, I felt like I was denied my Bulgarianness. I think it also helped me feel even more Bulgarian because I was denied it. [laughs]

Sadie: Interesting. Did you actively turn away from your Czech identity a little bit or was that something that you felt happened to you, if you know what I mean?

Maria: I think it just drifted away almost. I don’t think I actively turned away from it because I still had weekly contact with my grandmother and my uncle, who also spoke Czech to me. And my dad also still speaks a blend of Bulgarian and Czech to me. So I still had lots of contact, but I think it’s just the circumstances overwhelmed that part. Not that I was thinking too actively about it, but when I was little, I was also quite a shy kid. I think when I was listening to the interview with your mum, actually I really related to her; when she was saying that she doesn’t completely fit in with her Scottish classmates because she felt slightly different and having a slightly different cultural background at home. So obviously my mum is Bulgarian, and I didn’t have that entirely Czech environment at home, but I think my grandmother had contributed a lot to it. So yeah, it was mixed, and I felt mixed.

Sadie: It’s interesting because with my mum I’d always thought that situation was quite unusual. I gave you this interview that I’d done with my mum to work on for one of the assignments that we did as part of the Moving Project --

Maria: -- Yes.

Sadie: -- and it was my mum talking about being raised in Scotland by her Polish granny and speaking Polish before she learned to speak English. And I’d thought that was really unusual but it when you said “no, this is very familiar to me, this is just like my situation.” I wondered if it’s not as unusual as I think it is, possibly?

Maria: Yeah, and I was surprised actually to realise that I also thought it was unusual for me growing up in Bulgaria but at some point I realised there were other kids like that. I remember I was in my last year in high school and I had gone to the capital, Sophia, to do exams. I can’t remember what they were for, I think university entrance exams. While waiting outside of the classroom where the exam was going to take place, I started chatting to a guy and it just came up that he also has a Czech family and he had grown up in Bulgaria as bilingual and bicultural, I guess. So that was my first realisation “oh it’s not as rare as I thought this is”. It almost made me feel, I don’t know, that there is some kind of a community or something. Not that it’s a community but that I’m not totally weird but -- yeah. The more I start travelling around the world the more I realise for many people this multiculturalness is just the norm. It’s just not very common in Bulgaria, I think.

Sadie: Okay, yeah. Because I sometimes wonder if the world -- sometimes I feel like the world is a lot more multilingual than we think it is because we always end up speaking the dominant language of the place we’re in. Or if only a couple of people have a language in common you obviously use the language. So in Scotland I think that we don’t -- even in the Highlands and Islands we don’t hear Gaelic spoken that often because whenever there’s someone around who doesn’t speak Gaelic you switch to English. It doesn’t mean it’s not spoken a lot; it just means it doesn’t get spoken as much in public places and to outsiders and things. So I almost feel like there’s all this multilingual activity under the surface. Probably not just in the UK, probably everywhere.

Maria: Like even in my family, often my dad would switch to Bulgarian when my mum was there even though she understands Czech now pretty well, at least our version of it, but it’s almost an automatic thing that we feel we have to do.

Sadie: Did you ever growing up feel like Czech was your secret language?

Maria: I have felt like that in public but even so I can’t be 100 per cent sure that there won’t be someone who also understands Czech nearby. I remember standing with my dad in a big queue and wanting to complain about the people around us, so I’d just switch to a 100 per cent Czech without any Bulgarian mixes. It’s quite rare actually that I end up using it that way, but it has been useful.

Sadie: [laughs] Do you still speak Czech at all?

Maria: Not much. When I speak to my father, we, I guess, code switch and code mix at home a lot. So we often use Bulgarian words and Czech grammatical endings. It’s almost like pretending to speak Czech but it’s not really because most of the vocabulary is actually borrowed from Bulgarian because it’s just what comes to mind more easily. And later when I studied linguistics, I learned that this is actually a pretty typical thing. People tend to first forget the nouns and verbs, but they remember the grammatical endings. So they would borrow the nouns and verbs but stick the grammatical endings to them which is -- I realise, oh yeah, that’s almost exactly what I’ve been doing almost my whole life.

But many years ago, I think maybe in 2014 I -- or 13 -- I ended up going to a Czech summer school for a whole month. It was from a programme funded by the Czech Ministry of International Affairs or something like that. They had funded a one-month Czech language course and living expenses paid as well for a group of people from all over the world. That was a very interesting experience for me because especially the first couple of days when I arrived, I was extremely frustrated I can’t use Bulgarian borrowings because I knew people won’t understand me. Really forced me to speak just in Czech and it was quite difficult. I had to pause a lot and stop myself mid word saying the wrong word. At the end of that course, I think my Czech was at a much better level, which then, because I didn’t use when I left summer school, just went back to normal. I know it can come back if I need it to, but I just haven’t needed it to come back.

Sadie: So it’s interesting then to think about you’ve got -- it’s almost like you’ve got it submerged in your brain but it’s not active at the moment. Is it comforting to know that it’s something buried deep in your brain that you could still access? Does that make sense?

Maria: Yes, yeah, absolutely. And recently I’ve been trying to mildly activate it. I just felt the craving you can say, and I started listening to a Czech podcast that I found randomly. A couple days I actually looked up the blog that these two podcasters write, and I just read one of their blogposts and because I was really interested in the topic it was quite easy to read, even if there were occasional words that I didn’t understand. I just looked them up quickly and I kept reading. I think whichever language I’ve been learning, that is for me the most effective method. Just find a topic that you really want to learn about and then you won’t feel so frustrated when you don’t understand some of the text or some of the speech. That helped, even in this case, although it’s just for reading. I haven’t actually been speaking.

Sadie: What do you think -- you talked about feeling the craving to be speaking Czech. Do you think something triggered that for you or is it just something that you feel now and again?

Maria: I think I feel it now and again. I don’t know if anything in particular triggered it, but it could have been related to memories. My Czech grandmother and my uncle have passed away, so I don’t really speak as much as I used to because they’re not around. Occasionally if I think about them or I remember them, maybe that leads to a craving for Czech language a few days later. But I haven’t actually directly observed it, I’m just thinking about that. I, also, last year -- maybe it’s related to cooking as well. At some point I discovered this website that gives really clear recipes for traditional Czech meals that -- my mum actually passed this website on to me, and I was able to cook some of my childhood meals. Probably that also triggered a desire to immerse myself in it a bit more.

Sadie: We’ve talked about your Czech side and then obviously you left Bulgaria quite early on in life as well. So could you tell me a little bit about what that was like leaving Bulgaria for the first time?

Maria: The first time I left Bulgaria was when I was 17. I went on a year abroad in the States. It’s a scholarship that I won that I hadn’t really had the ambition to win. I had just entered the competition because I just entered all the competitions that came up at that time. So that was quite surprising. I hadn’t planned or had any particular desire to go to the States but going there was probably what led to me to later move to the UK. The first couple of months of moving were very difficult because, prior to then, I was living quite a sheltered life, I guess. I was really connected to my family, spending a lot of time with them. It was my first really abrupt separation from my family, and I was really sad for the first three months, but then I think, probably because I was quite young, I somehow adapted and then really enjoyed myself.

Towards the end of that school year, I felt really sad to have to leave as well. So over all it was a really positive experience and it led me to feel more comfortable speaking English and feel, I guess, the bravery that I can manage on my own.

When the time came to decide where to go for university, I felt the pull of the adventure of leaving Bulgaria and see what it is like if I can look after myself and make it on my own. [laughs] Well not really on my own because I still am very much in touch with my family and have their support but yeah. It’s still something I felt I would really like to do.

Sadie: What was it like -- because you spoke a bit about feeling a little bit Czech and feeling a bit Bulgarian, but then when you went to America did people see you as Bulgarian? How did that feel in terms of who you were in your identity? Do you know what I mean?

Maria: That was interesting in several respects because at that time I had already started drifting away from my Czech identity. I felt much more Bulgarian having gone to high school and primary school and I felt very Bulgarian. But in the States no one had heard about Bulgaria, so for them I was European. --

Sadie: -- Of course.

Maria: -- I was in that school with two German girls, so I think more people were familiar with Germany as a concept. So they were German, I was European. And I find that actually fit me quite well because also at the time I had to travel with my Czech passport. It was the first time I had to formally use my Czech surname, Dokovova, which is what I ended up having to use now as well, as opposed to the Bulgarian one which is Docheva. At the same time when I was feeling the most Bulgarian, I ended up being forced to have a different name which I didn’t necessarily identify with. I was forced to use my Czech passport which, I guess, legally was my nationality but I didn’t feel it. So I guess being considered European was very fitting for that time.

Sadie: [laughs] That’s really interesting because then when you moved to the UK later, was being European in America then different from being Bulgarian in the -- did you become Bulgarian in the UK again?

Maria: Yes, yes, I did actually because I -- one of the reasons I came to Edinburgh is because I had a friend from my high school who I knew well, and he was going to study in Edinburgh. So I thought if he is going to do it then I can do it. I already had some connections with Bulgarian friends here. When I arrived, I discovered that basically the IT department in the university was an informal embassy of Bulgarian/Romania because there were so many Bulgarian/Romanian students.

There were plenty of opportunities to meet up with Bulgarians and I think at some point I had more Bulgarian friends in Edinburgh than I had Bulgarian friends back in Bulgaria. Just because there is such a huge population of Bulgarians here. So yeah, definitely felt more Bulgarian here.

Sadie: That's really interesting. Have you found that in Edinburgh -- have you kept in touch with what's going on in Bulgaria, kept in touch with Bulgarian culture and traditions and things?

Maria: I have but probably not as much as some other people have. I think I'm one of the rare cases of people, from what I know, who don't miss Bulgarian foods, or I don't get cravings for them. When it comes to different traditions I would only do them if I -- if there are enough people I know around me who would also engage in them. So I’ve missed many Easter preparations just because I would have been the only person to do something, and it just didn't feel like there is any point to do all the Easter traditions.

Also, there is another tradition. In the beginning of spring Bulgarians give each other little bracelets made of red and white string, which is a very delightful, I think, tradition. I really like it but when the majority of people around me don't know about it, it just becomes really tiring. It just doesn't feel as special as having to explain the same thing over and over again to people who kind of get it. Also, sometimes I would just give maybe one of these bracelets to a Bulgarian I know or someone who is very close to me and that would be it. I won't bother spreading them to the whole world as I used to do in the first years when I arrived here. So yeah, I think I just wear -- wore down a little bit with my enthusiasm for traditions.

Sadie: Although you have Bulgarian friends in Edinburgh you don't -- you're not like completely immersed in Bulgarian culture or?

Maria: No, I think as the years went by and we graduated from the University of Edinburgh many moved away. I had moved away for a bit as well and then I came back. So my group of Bulgarian friends here is much smaller now and that definitely is a factor in this. Also, even back then when I had lots of Bulgarian friends, I actually actively avoided --that's probably something bad to say -- but I actually actively avoided going to Bulgarian society events because I -- not that I dislike the people, I was still friends with the majority of people who enter the Bulgarian society but I just felt like I was more curious to explore other societies and spend my time actually just doing other things, as opposed to actively and formally maintaining that side of me. I felt like it's not threatened in any way. Why should I? I'm not particularly missing Bulgaria, I'm quite excited to be here. So in my first years in Edinburgh, I didn't necessarily fully immerse myself in everything Bulgarian because I didn't feel it’s threatened.

Sadie: That's really interesting the way you phrase it because I know my PhD research was with a group of kids who’d moved from Poland to Glasgow. And one of the main things to come out of it is that all of them were quite different in the way that they engaged with their Polish identity and Polish language as well, and culture and things like that. And I did definitely, definitely get a strong sense that a lot of it was to do with how threatened they felt in their identity as a Polish person. They definitely experienced different levels of hostility, for example, as migrants in the UK. They talked about having different experiences of that and I wondered if some of them engaged more with their Polish identity because they felt it was something that might make them be unwelcome kind of thing. And I don't know, it's interesting when you talk about your migration -- well you talked about the first move to America being quite traumatic in the first couple of months, but in general you talk about it -- I don't know if I'm wrong but it sounds like it's something quite exciting and maybe quite a positive experience.

Maria: Yes.

Sadie: Have you ever felt because -- so how long have you been in Edinburgh now?

Maria: Well, I've had some breaks, but I arrived in 2011.

Sadie: So I suppose you’ve been in the UK through Brexit and there's -- I think there's been a bit of a shift in terms of how welcoming the country is to people, to migrants, and people moving around, and the idea of migration in general. Is that a shift that you've noticed or have you -- have you felt that -- has it affected you in any way that change in the discourse around migration?

Maria: No, and the reason for that I think is firstly, that until now I've spent almost all of my years in the UK in some way engaged with the university. Universities are generally very positive of international students and welcoming. And the other reason is that I've spent also most of my years in Scotland, especially in Edinburgh, which is again a very welcoming town. I remember this one case; I was in a pub and this older lady asked me where I'm from and I told her I’m from Bulgaria. Then she said “good on you. Well, you're welcome here. We the Scottish people are not like those down in England. [laughs] We didn't vote for Brexit.” So I've actually felt super welcome. But I have heard from friends who live in England that maybe they have noticed a shift of attitudes there, especially in smaller towns, but that's not my experience.

Sadie: I'm very, very pleased to hear that that’s not been your experience. [laughs] That makes me very happy to hear. So you’ve been in Edinburgh for what nearly 10 years around about?

Maria: Yeah, yeah.

Sadie: Yeah, yeah.

Maria: This September it will be 10 years.

Sadie: Does any part of you -- do you -- in terms of what your cultural identity is now, does any part of you feel Scottish?

Maria: Yes, but that's also a bit -- I don’t know. I forgot the word I wanted to say. I guess a cheeky thing to say because I'm not Scottish in many ways. I think only the last maybe four years I’ve started to actually engage more with Scottish people because when I was at the University of Edinburgh, there were very few Scottish students in the courses I was studying and that I met directly and then ended up being friends with. I was surrounded by a bit more Scottish people when I started my PhD at Queen Margaret University. Now in the last year and a half, when I’ve been doing my course in speech therapy at the same university, is when I ended up meeting even more Scottish people. All my placements and my part time work have been with more Scottish people. So I feel a bit more connected to Scottish people and I really like almost everyone I've met so far. I do feel very at home here and very welcomed, but I don't sound Scottish. When someone looks at me, they wouldn't think that I'm Scottish or that I behave in a Scottish way, whatever that means. It's really hard to define so yeah. But when someone looks at me, they won't think this person is Scottish but that doesn't prevent me from feeling really at home in a Scottish environment.

Sadie: It's so interesting, isn't it? Because I always think your identity is this is who I am, and this is who I want to be, and this is where I want to make my home, but it is also how you see other people seeing you, if you know what I mean? [laughs]

Maria: Yeah, absolutely. And on that note, actually I remember now that I've been told that I don't act like a Bulgarian. I don't look particularly like a Bulgarian either. When I arrived here my fellow Bulgarians have told me that I’m very not stereotypical in many ways. Not sure what that is necessarily due to, but I think it's probably related to the fact that my mindset is probably more closely related to the people I've met here than to the people I grew up with in Bulgaria. I think it's probably mindset.

Sadie: What's different do you think? I know this is like talking about big, big groups of people who are all different --

Maria: --Yeah, absolutely.

Sadie: -- but what do you think is different in the mindset that you mean?

Maria: Again, these are just very broad generalisations. I think actually these are changing in the younger Bulgarians, that I'm definitely not in touch with anymore, but from my scarce observations I think it's got to do, I guess, with how optimistic you feel. Bulgarians are generally quite negative and there are very good reasons for that considering the history of the country. Especially when the two decades when I was growing up and the one before, the ‘80s and ‘90s, were really difficult for the country. Also, before I was born, during the communist times, people were aware of basically a majority of population being involved in some way in spying on each other, which I think is really corrosive for a community. I guess in Bulgaria there is this sense of you have to take care of yourself and your family first. Again, very much not in everybody. I know many people who don't feel that way. This is very much changing especially since I've left Bulgaria, so my views are very outdated in that way.

Sadie: You mentioned that younger Bulgarians think maybe -- start to think differently and things are changing in Bulgaria without you being there. Is it strange to see the place where you're from moving on without you?

Maria: Yes and no. I have been visiting quite regularly except for the last two years. So I've been keeping an eye on Bulgaria in a way [laughs]. I think I got used to the fact that every time I come back something looks better. There have been improvements of -- usually in the appearance of the cities being slightly better maintained or renovated. Think new things being built, new buildings. I got used to the fact that every time I come back something’s slightly better and that's my normal now. I got over the feeling of people are moving on without me.

Sadie: Do you see yourself staying in Scotland at this point or is that too big a question for the future?

Maria: [laughs] Hope my mum is not listening to this podcast. [laughs]

No, we have discussed that with her. I see myself staying in Scotland for the foreseeable future, but I also see myself going back for at least a couple of years as a speech therapist. Even before that when I was doing research, I was always interested in bilingualism and multilingualism. I would really like to maybe use some of the things I've learned, or some of the speech therapy practises, or resources that have been cultured here, and maybe see if I can translate some of them or adapt some of them for use in Bulgarian communities. But I think I just need slightly more first-hand experience working in that profession before I decide what's the best way to approach that. But yeah, it's kind of on my mind.

Sadie: So you're probably going to be doing some more moving in the future at some point?

Maria: Yes, yeah.

Sadie: Moving around.

Maria: But this time between homes as opposed to from home to a foreign place.

Sadie: Yes. [laughs] Will that be strange moving to working in Bulgarian after being away for so long? Because I'm sure you still -- I'm sure you haven't lost your Bulgarian, but will you be having to take vocabulary that you've learned in English into Bulgarian?

Maria: Yes, I have already noticed that remembering some nouns because takes me a few more milliseconds than remembering the English nouns. But having already experienced a loss of Czech once I'm very familiar with how it works. I'm kind of starting to see the first signs of that in Bulgarian but the antidote to that is just using the language with people who don't understand English, or I wouldn't mix English in with. So that's one thing that I tried to do. In terms of word vocabulary, I've just learned it in English, and I haven't learned the Bulgarian equivalents and I just have to make peace with that and just worked on reading this similar kind of style publications in Bulgarian. Which exist, I just have to sit down and find them and start reading them. It's something that is definitely possible to achieve, it's just finding the time and purpose to do it

Sadie: You mentioned that multilingualism is something that you're very interested in in your work and obviously it's something you have a lot of experience of. Is it something that's quite important to you personally, multilingualism?

Maria: Yes of course. Yeah, because I think what I like the best -- it's really cheesy -- but you get access to so much more information, experiences, people stories, when you speak the native language. In terms of, I guess, the languages I’ve studied I now mostly use to watch TV or listen to podcasts, and it does make a difference when you can hear people expressing themselves in their own native language. You just end up picking up a lot about the culture which might not necessarily come across in the translation as easily. I think my family is very multilingual: I have Russian relatives, I have Czech relatives, Bulgarian relatives. In order to be able to talk to all of these people we have to at least have some basic knowledge and on the personal level I think that's probably the main aspect of it.

Sadie: And it's probably worth saying that there is some misinformation about multilingualism that is in circulation a bit in the UK. Where even people who aren't anti-immigration -- sometimes you'll hear people say, for example, when children are learning to speak it's better for them to just hear one language at time. Which doesn't line up with the research on multilingualism right but it's -- I think sometimes there are well intentioned people, who want the best for kids, who are a little bit nervous about multilingualism. Whether or not it's their own background they feel like having too many languages might be confusing for children and things like this.

And you're involved in Bilingualism Matters a little bit. Is that right? This is a group that help spread information about multilingualism and spreads the science and the research to do with it. Do you want to tell us a little bit about Bilingualism Matters?

Maria: Absolutely and yeah, I would have tried to bring it up [laughs]

Sadie: I know. I didn’t really give you a chance earlier on. [laughs] I had in my notes to make sure we got it in there.

Maria: Perfect. Yes. So Bilingualism Matters. I actually remember when I was in my last year of undergrad I really wanted to join them. They had just started but I think they were quite yes still at the beginning stages. So I didn't end up becoming a volunteer then, but I kept an eye on them and a couple of years ago I saw another opportunity and I've now become a volunteer. It's an organisation with over 20 branches around the world which its main purpose is to do science communication of things related to bilingualism. That includes raising bilingual children or using different languages in education or in workplaces and it's organised by Professor Antonella Sorace.

It's a wonderful organisation that, as you were saying, dispels some of the myths. I've seen how reassuring it is for parents whose children who have different languages, for whatever reason in their household, and whose children are exposed to different languages and how typical it is that certain things happen in their development. That may mean having, for example, slightly smaller vocabulary in each of the languages but if the two languages, for example, are combined the child has a pretty difficult vocabulary for their age. And it's these small nuances that can be missed and that children can be incorrectly pathologized I guess.

So it's really useful to engage with the resources of Bilingualism Matters, if anyone has any concerns about how their child is developing or if they are doing the right thing by their child. I know that lots of speech and language therapists also sometimes referred to their resources to enrich their practise. It's just very fun organisation with lots of fun events that promote maintaining the minority culture in the home. Lots of storytelling events. Last year I was involved in the Refugee Festival of 2020, which had happened online of course. Lots of the events have been moved online but yeah, I really hope that we get to do some work in person again very soon. I would suggest that if you don't know where to start with engaging with Bilingualism Matters, you can check out their podcast as well. I've contributed to one of the episodes which is mostly run by a really, really dedicated team of volunteers.

Sadie: We will -- I will share a link with this episode --

Maria: -- OK.

Sadie: -- so we’ll make sure -- so it'll be in the episode description. There will be a little link to the podcast.

Maria: Excellent, excellent. Yes, it's a really fun podcast with lots of excellent guests from both a research background and a teaching background.

Sadie: I heartily agree. It’s really good. I wondered what did you -- what did you enjoy most about making your podcast episode? Did you -- did you learn anything about yourself while making it?

Maria: That's a hard question. I guess working on this episode really allowed me to think about my relationship with accents I speak and to what extent I genuinely, really want to change how I sound. Because I think if I think about it long and hard enough, I realise that I'm actually fine with our sound. I don't need to sound more Scottish or more Bulgarian or more anything. I'm just happy to sound the way I sound now as long as there is enough mutual comprehension happening when I'm talking to people.

I guess it's very easy to always think that you are always not enough when speaking with a specific accent. That seeking perfection and seeking the perfection of a specific sound and specific identity that you've heard somewhere, is kind of like shopping. Looking at the -- I don’t know -- the arrangements of clothes you see in the shop, and you think “oh that looks really nice I want to put it on” but when you decide to wear it you realise it doesn't really fit you very well. So you end up just going back to your normal clothes. I think that’s very similar with accents. We can be easily fascinated by something else but when we try to put it on it's not the best fit.

Sadie: That's kind of the perfect conclusion to come to, isn't it? [laughs] To be like “do you know what? Actually, my accent is good the way it is. This is just -- this is just fine.” I asked this because sometimes I think I don't really understand anything until I make a podcast episode about it. [laughs]

Maria: Exactly.

Sadie: Sometimes it's good to just work things through out loud for -- and as I was saying earlier your identity is -- a big part of your identity is what you show to other people and how you think other people see you. So podcasting is a really good way to work that I suppose, isn’t it?

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Sadie (voiceover): A million, million thank yous to Maria for her time and energy, her openness, and her story. Thanks as always to John McDiarmid, Martha Ryan, and Seb Philp: the Accentricity team of dreams. Remember to have a look in the episode description for a link to the merch page where you can get yourself a classy wee t-shirt and links to our Patreon and Steady pages, as well as a link to the Bilingualism Matters podcast Much Language, Such Talk. Thanks for listening.