I first heard of Hadar Shemesh going down the rabbit hole of looking for new podcasts to listen to and her Influency Podcast caught my eye – or ears in this case. Her passion to have her listeners own their voice was very much aligned with mine and I kept hearing myself say, yes, yes! Agreeing with her content and how her words were very similar to my own passion and values of empower women’s voices and creating a diverse voice in podcasting. So I had to reach out and I am so glad that she decided to come on the show!

Hadar is an Israeli entrepreneur who helps non-native speakers of English find clarity and freedom in English. She is committed to dismantling the notion that English belongs to native speakers with a standard accent and shares her work on her YouTube channel Accent’s Way English with Hadar and her podcast which I mentioned earlier – the InFluency Podcast.

Today we chat about owning your voice (with a non-standard accent), impostor syndrome, showing up publicly (whether on a podcast or video) when English is not your first langauge, the lack of diverse voices and the impact it has on how we perceive our own voices.

Hadar is so inspiring and I know you are going to find a lot of great insight from listening to this episode. So let’s get started!

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Our Conversation:

Mary Chan
So I have a lot of conversations with podcasters and some are uncomfortable with their voice because they have an accent or they speak “differently” than everyone else so they don’t want to start their podcast or they don’t want to be a guest and share their expertise, or even like they’re hiding behind their voice when they’re on social media, doing their lives or whatnot. So my point of view though is that accents are a positive thing it shows diversity and that I don’t want you to get rid of your accent because it shouldn’t stop you from sharing your passion, and we all have an accent, depending on where you live. We’re going to New Zealand, and they were all like, Oh, I love your accent I’m like no, no, no, you’re the ones with the accent. So, can you explain native English, what that really means and maybe some of the myths around that.

Hadar Shemesh
Yes. Okay, so that’s a great question and I definitely see that a lot in my work. There is this assumption that native English is like one way of using the language. It’s usually associated with standard English let’s say if it’s American English than its standard American, British English Received Pronunciation, Standard Australian. That is the ideal of the language right like how the language is used. Now, to be honest most speakers don’t have a standard accent, it’s something that is usually acquired because everyone has an accent, you know, whether it’s an accent, or a dialect of English or whether it’s a foreign accent, everyone has an accent and that idea of I’m ashamed of my accent is like, I’m ashamed of who I am or my, it’s like being ashamed of how you look, you know your external features where you’re from. The thing is that people associate non-standard as inferior. And that is the main problem, because being a native speaker of English is basically being born into the language so you grew up hearing your parents speak English but in so many countries that are non, you know, that are not the US or Canada or Australia for example Nigeria or in India, people aren’t born into English, yet they don’t have the standard English and they’re not considered to be native speakers. So being a native or speak like a native or that whole jargon of, you know how to use the language properly and how to sound good.

Mary Chan
Yeah, proper exactly.

Hadar Shemesh
Right what’s proper English anyway, that doesn’t make any sense and standard is something that someone once upon a time, the standard accent someone created. We need to ask questions around who is that person anyway that decided that that’s standard English and that’s the people who were in power and usually you know the dominant culture has created a certain standard accent and that’s not aligned with how people actually use English. So let’s first understand that there’s no such thing as native English or standard English, because there is this variety in the language. I think that understanding that creates a little more freedom and permission to sound different than what you think should be. But I also think that there is a lot of criticism, around people with accents, with foreign accents people get comments people hear other people commenting on other people’s accents so they develop the sense as if they cannot be perceived as the authority, while having a non native accent, or non standard accent. And that implies on a person’s intelligence or fluency, which is not true, right, like it doesn’t correlate with fluency. It doesn’t correlate with confidence like the way you pronounce sounds. It’s more technical.

Mary Chan
Yeah, I get that too because I was born in Vancouver, but my parents immigrated from Hong Kong and China, but because I was born in a community of English speakers I don’t have a Chinese accent I mean I, I can put one on and mimic my parents, but I don’t. So you know even when I was in radio, I got my first radio gig, I would be on the radio and speak, and then I would be out on location meeting the community and they’re like, oh you’re Mary, because they see my face and then you don’t have an accent. You know, and I’m like, what does that mean I’m less than you like what, why did you say that and what what is that connection there?

Hadar Shemesh 
Right. And why are you assuming that I should sound a certain way because they look a certain way like that assumption like people want to put labels and stereotype people and put them in groups. You are different than me, then I need to see. You need to sound different too. There was a really great research that I read about in the book, how we speak.

Mary Chan
Oh yes, Katherine Kinzler

Hadar Shemesh 
Yes, exactly, Katherine Kinzler.

Mary Chan
I interviewed her in the last episode.

Hadar Shemesh 
Yeah, that’s like I love that book. She said that people were listening to two groups of people, people who looked, you know, with the same accent from the same place exactly what you’re describing one group had Caucasian features so they looked like white Americans that were Americans, and the others were of Korean descent. The listeners, even though they had the same accent, said that they had a harder time hearing or understanding the people that didn’t look like a typical white American. Because they looked different than they had a harder time understanding them, even though they sounded the same. Which just shows that there’s all this filtering that goes on in our brain and all these ideas about how we need to sound or how people need to sound based on how they look, where they’re from, their names. So I think that this is definitely something that we, we need to check in with ourselves, if we do that towards other people. And if that happens if we feel, judgmental towards other people or we do hold some unconscious bias or biases, then I think that can definitely reflect back to us and then we can feel self conscious about how we sound because there is that like inner criticism going on.

Mary Chan
That sounds a lot like I’ve heard the phrase accent bias. Can you paint a picture for me about what accent bias is what it sounds like or what it looks like?

Hadar Shemesh 
I see that it relates to race and it relates to where you’re from. So there is like this accent hierarchy where certain accents are perceived to be more exotic or sophisticated versus some accents that, if people hear those accents, they automatically assume things about you. Or I can tell you a story that I have students from the US they’ve been living in the US for years. They have an accent, they have a foreign accent Spanish accent in the case of this particular woman and she works at a call center. Her English is super fluent. She’s very smart. And every time she answers the phone and people hear her accent, they’re like, can I speak to someone who speaks English, or can I speak right like or they speak to her like she is not that intelligent. Like they speak slowly they get angry. So just simply by hearing an accent, they already assigned certain characteristics around who this person is and so I think that people stereotype, other people according to how they sound. So, because as we talked about before, like people like to group people or label people and they think, how we sound definitely plays into that.

Mary Chan
Also that we’re human. And that’s how people figure out the world is to put people into these categories and judge them and then how do we get around that. I know this is maybe just a rhetorical question. It’s a big question like how do we fix accent bias?

Hadar Shemesh 
So I think it goes both ways. First of all, like we have to talk about the people who are the listeners right like we have to develop awareness. I think accents, should be normalized. Non standard accents, I don’t think we hear those enough, this is why like we need more voices that are different than the standard because people don’t hear it enough in the media and in Hollywood. Then they already have opinions about the people hearing those accents and I think that that needs to be normalized right, we need to see more of that. And I think that we constantly have to have that conversation around if I have that a lot with my students that people comment on their accent, or on their English or you sound. You sound a lot better than I thought or you sound really, you know, good for a non native speaker for a person who has been living in the US for 20 years. So I think that it needs to be acknowledged. So our job is to always, you know, say yeah, you know, thank you. I grew up here, or I’ve been learning English for 20 years. And to not just take that role of, okay, thank you, or not to say anything but I think we need to speak back and when we get negative feedback and negative comments. I think that it’s important to speak out and to call people out when they are. It’s like it’s still politically correct to talk about people’s accents, and I think that’s wrong, like I think that we need to start setting some boundaries around how much you can talk about my accent or how I sound or my English because it’s my own personal journey, and if I want to share that with you I will, but I don’t want you to assume anything about me based on how I sound.

Mary Chan
Yeah, so okay so for an example, I was in a women’s networking group, and there was a guest that showed up, who had a name I couldn’t pronounce. Most of us in the room couldn’t pronounce and she had an accent, and then the conversation skewed to different accents, and I felt so uncomfortable and I felt uncomfortable for her too. So, what could I do to speak up, what should I say, to make it aware to the group, and you know in the future whenever this happens again because I’m sure it will. What should I say?

Hadar Shemesh
That’s a good question, like I think that, in this case, in particular, I would ask, is she interested in discussing her accent and where she’s from? I think that that would be, because some people don’t mind right like some people are happy that, that this is a topic for conversation, but I can tell you that in my experience when I moved to the US, and I had a very distinct Israeli accent. Every time someone would ask me about my accent, I would want to leave the conversation I wouldn’t want to talk about my accent or my name or where I’m from,

Mary Chan
How to pronounce that properly

Hadar Shemesh
and how to pronounce it right like and I actually changed my name. I changed my name to Julia so I wouldn’t have to go into that conversation. Yeah, like right now I would, I would never do it again but that was me when wanting to immerse right in a culture and I didn’t want to constantly be reminded that I’m different.

Mary Chan
I kind of did the same where my parents knew that they didn’t want to give me an anglicized Chinese name so they went with Mary, it’s as generic is like a find. But then when I went on the radio. I asked my boss, could I just call myself Mary, I don’t want to use my last name. It was kind of the same reasons to whereas like I didn’t want to be heard as the token Chinese girl on the radio. I didn’t use my last name at all for many years.

Hadar Shemesh 
And I think that like we need to own our voices, and I think we need to celebrate the fact that we are different because I think this is the real power in us. Because when we feel like we are not enough because of our name or like when we feel like we need to hide something, then our voice, our accent by sounding like a native. Then, we’ll never feel 100% authentic will constantly have that voice, or that inner critic, listening, and reflecting back and judging, which will never give us that ultimate fluency or freedom that we want to have when speaking. This is really the thing that we need to work on, like owning our identity and owning our voice however we sound, and understanding that we have room and we belong, no matter how, no matter that we don’t sound standard. No matter how people might judge us or question our authority.

Mary Chan
Yes, that’s a big one. I find too you were talking about the inner critic earlier, that maybe, you know in the podcasting space, and I heard it a lot in radio, where I would be producing the commercials and I would get more feedback and criticism about a woman’s voice versus a man’s voice and I would have to redo all my work because they’re like, I want a man’s voice instead, she doesn’t sound authoritative enough or you know whatever is. So, in your work, how are women judged differently for their voice?

Hadar Shemesh
When it comes to talking about accents or English, I don’t necessarily see that women get more negative feedback, but I see that women have internalized that feedback or that negative or that judgment that women usually get and the need to prove themselves and the need to work harder to succeed, especially in the workplace. Where I absolutely see how women speak less, they’re more of a perfectionist right like they they’re afraid to speak before they have it all figured out, and they’re a lot more concerned about how they sound rather than their message, or how they communicate. Whereas with men and again like I’ve worked with hundreds and 1000’s of people, like in person and online and I, I don’t think that men don’t experience that they do fear, you know, getting stuck or you know not sounding, intelligent, but at the same time they speak more than women who will stay quiet or not show up or not if they are entrepreneurs, they won’t publish videos, or they won’t create a podcast because they’re afraid of what people are going to think about them. So there is a lot more sense of if it’s not perfect, or if it’s not right, I might as well not do it at all.

Mary Chan
Right, yeah. The, I’m not gonna even try. Why bother.

Hadar Shemesh
Exactly. Yeah, and it’s not gonna work and of course the fear of, you know, getting that negative feedback. Which between us, who cares what people think, right?

Mary Chan
Yes, I mean I was listening to your Influency Podcast episode 100 and it was describing a native speakerism, which I love because I didn’t go to academic school, university I went to radio school. So, having to talk to you now and putting words to what I’m feeling and thinking is great. So, you know in it, you were talking about how to respond to criticism, and that ties into what we’re just talking about here. And usually I’m to either A too shocked to say anything, like huh? That happened? Or I just ignore it because it doesn’t deserve my time I don’t have any mental energy for this so I’m just going to leave you alone.

Hadar Shemesh
Which is very smart, by the way like you we definitely don’t want to get in our way.

Mary Chan
But then how do I also, I want to respond to it too sometimes because it’s the after the fact you know it’s 20 minutes later, you’re like, oh I could have said this, oh I could have said, that would have been awesome. That would have been a great comeback. So how do you respond to criticism?

Hadar Shemesh
So I think, first of all, is to understand that it’s meaningless. I think it’s hard to respond to criticism, if there is like that voice in you that says maybe it’s true. So, understanding wholeheartedly that this is BS right like it means nothing and that person is knows nothing about me. So, like that deep conviction is a must to be able to respond quickly and powerfully. Also it’s important to have that deep understanding that when we put other people’s opinions, before self expression, then that means that you know their opinions matter more than us. Because if we decide not to speak or if we decide not to respond or if we participate in, oh they’re saying something nasty and I feel ashamed that we’re participating in that we’re collaborating, we’re acknowledging that they’re right in a way right in in this weird, twisted way. Because we like to torture ourselves sometimes with all those negative voices. So it’s important to remember that their opinions are not more important than our self expression and our need to communicate and what we want in our lives. But also especially when it comes to native speakerism that when people use language to have power over us, then we need to draw the line. So when we get that criticism about how we sound about our accent or about our fluency or maybe we use the wrong word, even if it was on a podcast or even if it was public, we still first of all communicate in second language which is incredible. And not a lot of people are able to do that. And we need to draw the line where people think, or make us feel like they are better than us because we are not at that level. Native speakerism in general, is this assumption. Well it started from, like the ELT industry where like in English language teaching where native speaking teachers are considered more superior and better than non native speaking teachers because the language is intuitive and culturally and pedagogically like they, they are better than non native speaking teachers even the research shows that that’s actually the opposite because non native speaking teachers can explain things in a way that, for native speakers, like that’s just intuitive and for non native speakers like we have to learn it ourselves, to be able to explain it in a clear way.

Mary Chan
I know I used to host international students, and they would ask me like, about their grammar homework, and I would say, Oh yeah, well, the grammar is should be this way. And they’re like why I’m like, I don’t know exactly the way I’ve always said it so I think it has something to do with an adjective or adverb. I don’t know, that’s just the way I say it.

Hadar Shemesh
Exactly. It’s great but it doesn’t help the student that needs to make sense of thing. They need to organize things differently in their brain. That’s just how it is that doesn’t help. You know, even when I teach pronunciation people tell me that, like the way I explain it makes sense to them it’s the reason why that happens is because I had to learn that myself right like I had to learn what to do with my mouth, and what happens, like why I can’t do it repeatedly. And that’s how I explain it, which just kind of like clicks to them immediately. And yes, and that assumption that a select group of people because of their linguistic background and I would put that there, not just all native speakers but standard speakers right like because non standards are sometimes considered to be less intelligent or like depending on the dialect. So, you know, I think that we need to be very cautious of that, and when we recognize that someone uses that or when you experience that, it’s just like with any other type of bias or ism, you know, racism, or misogyny or something like that when you feel like someone is crossing the line because you are different than them, and you feel inferior to them I think that this is where you recognize it’s not just about you it’s about something bigger and to draw the line right there.

Mary Chan
So then okay when we are going to draw that line and we are going to use our voice. What are your tips to get podcasters to speak more effectively? If they have that fear of their accent.

Hadar Shemesh
So first of all to be prolific, just to create a lot, because you just get comfortable doing it, and when you create a lot. You also don’t have time to dwell on oh that worked well that hasn’t worked well. I remember that when I started creating my YouTube channel, I was, I made a lot of mistakes. Especially like typos or, You know I didn’t have a team I was doing everything on my own. And every time I would post a video, like, oh my god I did this and they did that and they get all critical, and then when I started creating more, I just didn’t have time I had to move on. I had, you know, one day, to think about it to feel bad and then. Okay, I gotta get ready for the next one so I think committing yourself to creating once a week or twice a week or whenever you do create or, I think that is really really helpful and you get comfortable with it. I think recording yourself and listening back, and then listening without being too critical but like with this as if it was your good friend, and you’d be like, okay, but I think that this is what you can do so because you don’t hear yourself in your head, the way you actually sound so it’s really important and a lot of people don’t like it, they don’t like to hear themselves recorded like the cringe factor, they’re like, I can’t believe I sound like. It makes sense in your head like your voice resonates inside your head when you record yourself it’s different. So I think that practicing getting comfortable with your voice or listening to your voice. So I have this exercise that I give my students of taking the same subject and recording it for two, three minutes, and then the next day to listen to it, ideally a video but audio can be great too. And then to listen to it and give yourself three notes, like three things that you’d like to improve. And do it again and again and to do that for an entire week or sometimes two weeks. How you introduce yourself, how you talk about something that matters, and then by the seventh day, it’s certain that it’s going to be better than the first day. So repetition and and constantly listening to yourself and being your own coach in a positive way. So just like a coach is not going to make fun of you. That’s the same thing you need to give yourself like recognize what’s working well, and also give yourself, kind of like some some points for improvement. And I do love everything around speech exercises, I think that the muscles are a huge part of our speaking. And when we speak a certain language than the muscles that are required to produce those sounds of our native language like their that we use them all the time and then when when we speak another language, we don’t use those muscles as effectively. So speech training, tongue exercises, tongue twisters, repetitions, I think this is really helpful. It’s just like working out so your voice is your muscle. Your voice is your instrument, and you have to understand that this is really like, you have to work on your voice and on your muscles to be able to produce the sound that you want and to be confident speaking.

Mary Chan
Yeah, I love those point. Then I started thinking about okay what about actual pronunciation like right or wrong pronunciation. I remember there was a time I worked with this voiceover artist at the radio station, and he would always pronounce the word Tuesday with a ch on the front choose-day, Tuesday. So you know it radio with the broadcast standard accent like no, it’s got to be a “T” sound. So, what about that? You’re the pronunciation expert. Should podcasters be making sure their pronunciation is correct or a certain way?

Hadar Shemesh
So when I teach and when I coach I like to get my students to follow the 80/20 rule. Which is focus on the 20%, that will get you 80% of the results. So you can’t work on all nuances of speech, because it’s impossible and that’s very crippling like you constantly think about your sounds and not about your message. But if you recognize what are the key sounds that are going to massively improve your pronunciation, and how you use your voice in a way that energizes what it is that you’re saying, not just the sound standard, but also because when you say “ah” instead of “ih”, the voice is more energized and this is like the and it’s clear and the quality is crisp. So, if you change that it can actually change the presence of your voice so focusing on that rather than the T’s, for example, if you have a lot of and the T’s are really important when you’re speaking to the mics too so maybe the T’s are part of your 20%, but let’s say that people with a few challenges that prevent them from sounding clear. So I only work first on the things that prevent them from sounding clear. Because if you’re clear, and you’re communicating well, your good. Speak out, focus on your confidence and not so much on the nuances because the nuances can be very very inhibiting.

Mary Chan
And there could be a whole grocery list of them.

Hadar Shemesh
Exactly, so you know it’s going to end up being you just like dealing with, with sounds in your head and we don’t want that.

Mary Chan
Exactly. So, this has been so great. I do have one last question though. What would you say to a podcaster, who is concerned about their accent, and is preventing them from getting behind the mic?

Hadar Shemesh
So it all comes down to priorities, because if the fear of being judged, is preventing you from pursuing your dreams and delivering your message, changing people’s lives with your message, then maybe your message is not that important. Eventually, right, like if you feel if you’re afraid of what potentially, what people might say about your accent, then you need to rethink their priorities, because that’s what it comes down to. I’m sure that people who wants to speak on a podcast. You know when you compare those two things that they say, of course I want to speak, I of course I want to change lives. So recognize that if you’re afraid and you’re not showing up on video or behind the mic, then it’s just because that is more important like a few Joe’s that are sitting there and thinking, who does she think she is right like speaking to the mic, so that matters more than all the people that you might change their lives. So I think that focus on what really matters. Focus on those that don’t care about, you know, the fact that you pronounced a “T” this way or another way, And they just want to hear what you have to say because that it is really what matters.

Mary Chan
Thank you so much, Hadar. That was amazing. Thank you for sharing your knowledge and expertise and using your voice.

Hadar Shemesh
Mary, thank you so much for having me here. It’s been a true pleasure.