Code-switching: My Voice Heard Best
“Tell me about school,” my mom ordered.
Trying out my new voice, I responded, “They handed me a computer today, and let me tell you…”
My mom formed a face, half utter confusion, half complete disappointment, before snapping: “Stop this nonsense and talk normally.”
That was the last time I intentionally faked an accent.
I speak the same words, in the same language, with the same spelling, but change the audience and my tongue flips from American to Indian without even so much as a notice. When I finally reflected on the habit, I was ecstatic to find that the linguists had already given it a name: “Code-Switching.” I was less excited to read the dozens of articles (I remember this one in particular) holding back no punches for the practice, throwing around scary words like “Forced Conformity”, “Imposter Syndrome”, and, scariest of all, “Inauthentic”. For me, like I suspect for many of you, the switch isn’t faked or forced. The code-switched voice is the real me.
Now, this wasn’t always the case. After 9 years in India, I was plopped into an American school (SAIS, for those curious) for the first time in my life, right before Covid started. A culture which I’d only caught glimpses of on Netflix suddenly enveloped every desk, hallway, and classroom. From teachers’ lessons to the hallway chatter, everyone’s voice was ripped straight out of High School Musical.
Everyone except me.
Out of fear of blank stares and not “fitting in”, I took note of their w’s and v’s and t’s, building a library of voices to call my own. Come attendance, I took a random voice off the shelf, rushing to scrub away anything foreign woven in as the teacher slowly got to my name.
“Hi, I’m Sidharth” Phew.
For the next three weeks, my imitation was so thick, so inconsistent, so incomprehensible, that practically everything I said was promptly followed by “Sorry?”, “Huh?”, or worst of all, a silent, blank stare. Each raised hand had my teachers decrypting my answers in real time. Heads tilted, brows raised, shoulders leaned in. Most unmistakably, that polite half-smile which signalled “I want to understand… but I haven’t the faintest clue what you’re trying to say.”
Somewhere between those puzzled looks and another week of “Pardon Me?”s, I realised this wasn’t sustainable. My faked voice alienated both me and the people I was trying to appease. Slowly, I stopped trying to pass off someone else's voice and started trying to be understood. At home, my cadence slowed again, sanding off the bits that tripped other people off. At school, my voice rested again, focusing more on getting my point across and less on fitting in. I paid attention to making sure I was understood first — pausing here, rolling there — until I was understood best.
My voice split, one for home, and one for everyone else. Without so much as a warning, my voice would switch so that it was heard best. Code-switching became how I adjusted to fit the room, not a mask but a volume slider.
Plates clink, glasses fog, and the smell of home-cooked food fills the room. Consonants soften, timing relaxes. The dinner table has me saying “please”, “thank you”, “Can I have more…?” in the same cadence and voice my family’s always been familiar with.
Bustling hallways, sneakers squeak and the bell rings for A1. Vowels flatten, r’s sharpen. At school I hear my “what’s up”s and “how’d that go”s turn brisk, “water (vawter)” becoming “water (wahder),” my voice tuned to the room .
The voices may be different, but neither is any less me.