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English isn’t the first language for a large majority of Indians. And while this certainly highlights the prevailing wonderful diversity of languages in our country, the presence of a <keyword id="21448850" type="General" weightage="20" keywordseo="regional-accent" source="keywords">regional accent</keyword> can be a major source of anxiety for citizens hoping to land a job at international firms. This paranoia isn’t totally unwarranted either. International studies have already shown that there is a high chance you might be discriminated against if your potential employers hear Indian, Chinese or Mexican accents in telephonic interviews, compared to British-accented candidates. And now, more research has just confirmed the same. Analysing data from 22 individual studies comprising 3,615 participants, the research team made two significant discoveries: applicants who communicate in nonstandard language are perceived as less competent compared to their standard language-speaking counterparts, even when qualifications are identical. Secondly, the study found that this perceived incompetence can markedly reduce the "hirability" of accented candidates, indicating a pervasive bias against nonstandard language speakers in the <keyword id="20026305" type="General" weightage="20" keywordseo="recruitment-process" source="keywords">recruitment process</keyword>. Further, South-Asian, Indian and Mexican accents were treated more negatively than other accents in the US. Moreover, the study debunked the notion that professional human resources managers are immune to these biases, highlighting that both professionals and nonprofessionals alike exhibit similar discriminatory tendencies. Even when interviews are conducted by fellow nonstandard language speakers, the disadvantages persist, underscoring the deep-rooted nature of <keyword id="21448849" type="General" weightage="20" keywordseo="accent-bias" source="keywords">accent bias</keyword> in <keyword id="20900666" type="General" weightage="20" keywordseo="hiring-practices" source="keywords">hiring practices</keyword>. In light of these findings, the researchers propose practical recommendations to mitigate accent-based <keyword id="19933076" type="General" weightage="20" keywordseo="discrimination" source="keywords">discrimination</keyword> in personnel selection. The authors advocate for the implementation of structured interviews with predefined questions focusing solely on job-related criteria. By prioritising qualifications and suitability based on the content of responses rather than accent or language usage, organisations can foster a fairer and more inclusive selection process. "Evaluations should be made with regard to the candidate's qualifications and suitability for the position — as demonstrated by the content of their answers, not their accent or the language they use," asserts lead author Niklas Schulte. “This could help us to reduce the negative effects of bias or misplaced judgments and ensure a fairer selection process.” The findings of this research have been published in Applied Psychology and can be accessed <a href="https://dx.doi.org/10.1111/apps.12528" data-type="tilCustomLink">here</a>.

Having a regional accent can be bad for your interviews, especially an Indian one: study

<ul><li>This bug seems to be affecting users in Canada according to several tweets.</li><li>The <keyword id="1764218" type="General" weightage="20" keywordseo="google-maps-navigation" source="Orion">Google Maps navigation</keyword> voice randomly switches to an Indian accent from the default one.</li><li>It happens briefly for some users and switches back to the original but stays on through the entire in some cases.</li></ul><keyword id="97416" type="General" weightage="20" keywordseo="google-maps" source="Orion">Google Maps</keyword> navigation voice is randomly turning into an Indian accent for some users. The navigation voice turns from the default voice to the one with an Indian accent, and at random. In some cases, the navigation voice changes briefly and in others, it stays for the entire ride. <a href="https://www.businessinsider.in/tech/mobile/news/google-pixel-6-and-pixel-6-pro-key-specifications-revealed-ahead-of-launch/articleshow/86253342.cms">Google</a> has acknowledged that this is a bug and is working on a fix for it. It’s not confirmed if this <a href="https://www.businessinsider.in/tech/news/how-to-set-or-change-your-home-and-work-addresses-in-google-maps/articleshow/86006968.cms">Google Maps</a> bug is area-specific but according to tweets of people sharing the same experience, it seems to be happening mostly in Canada. According to some tweets, users who have their Google Maps navigation voice set to English experienced it suddenly switch to the Indian accent. More specifically it’s changing to the voice of a man with an Indian accent. In some cases, the navigation voice changes and switches back to the original one. For those unaware, Google offers English in different accents for the US, the UK, and Australia. <div type="twitter" handle="solygolly" handlename="sol125" image="http://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images/1279670879492935680/Pvaf_dg2_normal.jpg" favoritecount="0" retweetcount="0" status="@googlemaps what’s up with the Indian accent intermittently jumping in for Canadian direction lately?" createdat="1631815150000" id="1438563122806239232"></div> <div type="twitter" handle="Hbnumbertwo" handlename="Mike!" image="http://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images/1219510649799106561/xo_1jF5B_normal.jpg" favoritecount="4" retweetcount="0" status="my google maps, without any setting changes, decided that half my directions today were going to be delivered in an… https://t.co/2mRwWwAIc2" createdat="1631631596000" id="1437793240858701826"></div> <div type="twitter" handle="ShutUpCoyote" handlename="sam" image="http://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images/774211582071037952/0VxuWdPS_normal.jpg" favoritecount="4" retweetcount="0" status="Why does my @googlemaps voice keep randomly switching from a female Canadian voice to a male voice with an Indian a… https://t.co/GWEoaKArzD" createdat="1631570640000" id="1437537572805169154"></div> <div type="twitter" handle="h3rly_" handlename="roldy" image="http://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images/1428784577431101445/mp7YkmLd_normal.jpg" favoritecount="3" retweetcount="1" status="Canadians, your Google Maps has an indian accent rn 😂" createdat="1631669644000" id="1437952826169348098"></div> The same issue is being talked about on Reddit as well, 9to5Google <a href="https://9to5google.com/2021/09/16/google-maps-voice-weird-bug-indian-accent/">reported</a>. It looks like this has been happening for the past two days, and Google is yet to roll out an update. Google did acknowledge the issue by replying to these tweets through its Google Maps Twitter account. Google said it is working on a fix for this bug and it will be rolled out soon. Some users said that changing the navigation voice helps fix the bug. You can do this by going to the settings menu in Google Maps and selecting navigation settings. Under voice selection, you can choose which navigation voice you want from the list of options. This could be a temporary fix till Google rolls out an update. SEE ALSO: <a href="https://www.businessinsider.in/tech/mobile/news/google-pixel-6-and-pixel-6-pro-key-specifications-revealed-ahead-of-launch/articleshow/86253342.cms">Google Pixel 6 and Pixel 6 Pro key specifications revealed ahead of launch</a> <a href="https://www.businessinsider.in/tech/enterprise/news/how-you-can-login-to-your-microsoft-account-without-a-password-check-here/articleshow/86251793.cms">Microsoft accounts can now go passwordless — here’s how to login without a password</a>

Google Maps navigation voice switching to Indian accent at random for some users

<ul><li>Indian filmmakers believe that a ‘big’ Indian superhit movie like Oscar-winning Parasite is waiting to happen.</li><li><keyword id="46758" type="General" weightage="70" keywordseo="RRR" source="Orion">RRR</keyword> and Elephant Whisperers’ Oscar win has helped Indian filmmakers cross the bridge, they believe.</li><li>India has the talent and technicians to tell a story-on-screen that the whole world will wake up to, says producer Guneet Mongia.</li><li>A Parasite-like record-breaking success is waiting to happen, says Vishal Bharadwaj. </li></ul> <keyword id="122490" type="General" weightage="50" keywordseo="film-critic" source="Orion">Film critic</keyword> Anupama Chopra had one thought when she watched the Chinese movie Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon in 2000, “When will India make a crossover movie like that?” Since the 90s, many Hindi movies have been released in the US and UK, entertaining Indians abroad and bringing in forex. A few even found success at film festivals, but no Indian movie could capture the hearts of people across countries – not the way Ang Lee’s movie did. UK-based Gurinder Chadha too made superhit movies like ‘Bend it like Beckham’ and ‘Bride and Prejudice’ about Indians, but they were told from an immigrant Indian perspective. Even when Mumbai stories like Slumdog Millionaire were told, they were told by US-based directors like Danny Boyle. Desi movies were far from achieving any kind of acclaim or success. Chopra was further disheartened when director Anurag Kashyap told her once that <keyword id="20382" type="General" weightage="90" keywordseo="indian-movies" source="Orion">Indian movies</keyword> were just a comic relief. She never believed that, she shared at Zee5 Global’s panel discussion on ‘Coming of Age of South Asian Entertainment: The Time is Now’ in Mumbai. 2023: The year that changed it all Then Rajamouli’s RRR happened, and its song-and-dance number Natu Natu won an Oscar in 2023. That’s victory for the Indian way of story-telling on-screen that was once made fun of. “RRR changed the way Americans saw <keyword id="35703" type="General" weightage="100" keywordseo="Indian-films" source="Orion">Indian films</keyword>. People in the US were having watch parties for RRR. We were no longer that awkward brown guy with a strange accent. There was a sense of crossover taking place and that got us ambitious,” said Archana Anand, chief business officer of ZEE5 Global. Guneet Monga who also won the Best Documentary Short Film at the Oscars in 2023, believes that the path has been charted, and better things are waiting to happen. “We'll soon have our very own Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. We have the talent and technicians,” she added. The director of Maqbool, Vishal Bharadwaj also chimed in, saying, “At the rate we are going, a Parasite is waiting to happen here. An Indian film that will break all records and make it big all over the world.” Parasite is a South Korean black comedy which created history by becoming the first non-English language movie to win the Best Picture academy award. It swept the awards that year, bagging three more Oscar awards for Best Director, Best Original Screenplay and Best International Feature Film. Movies that went as ‘series’ Before the Oscar wins, Indian movies have been breaking through slowly albeit steadily, reminisced the film-makers. The West started looking at Indian movies differently after the iconic movie-maker Shekhar Kapur’s Bandit Queen which released in 1994. He later went on to make a full-fledged international movie Elizabeth, starring Cate Blanchett. “We’ve had AR Rahman’s success with his music in Slumdog Millionaire. I’ve had my own experience with Maqbool going to Toronto. With humility, I want to say that many people are doing doctorates on my Shakespeare trilogy,” said Bhardwaj. Music composer AR Rahman shared an Oscar for his song ‘Jai Ho’ with song writer Gulzar for the movie Slumdog Millionaire. Distribution is key to taking Indian movies to lands afar, believes Monga, adding that streaming services play a role. “Gangs of Wasseypur was the first Indian five-and-half-hour film that was released as an eight-part miniseries in the US,” she told the audience.

RRR a stepping stone — The great Indian crossover film is still a ‘crouching tiger’

<ul><li><keyword id="43706" type="COMPANY" weightage="20" keywordseo="Honeywell">Honeywell</keyword> is developing a new software for <keyword id="31907" type="COMPANY" weightage="20" keywordseo="Aviation">aviation</keyword> at the request of the <keyword id="44734" type="ORGANIZATION" weightage="20" keywordseo="Indian-Government">Indian government</keyword>. </li><li>Their linguistic software will decode pilot’s <keyword id="1598899" type="PERSON" weightage="20" keywordseo="accents">accents</keyword> for air traffic controllers. </li><li>If the software is successful in India, Honeywell may expand its implementation to other parts of the world.</li></ul>With the world’s second highest number of <keyword id="6360075" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="20" keywordseo="Languages">languages</keyword> within its purview, it’s not surprising that India is an attractive destination for Honeywell International Inc. to test their <a href="https://www.livemint.com/Companies/NxfZoV7GoC9XHxtO1AT3XM/Honeywell-to-make-flying-safer-with-tech-to-decode-regional.html">new</a> linguistic software. The project aims to aid communication between pilots and air traffic controllers by making it easier to understand pilots who speak English but have heavy overlaying accents. Accents are extremely diverse, especially in a country like India, which has 22 official languages and 780 languages overall. At the request of the Government of India, the program is going to analyse accents and <keyword id="1696544" type="PERSON" weightage="20" keywordseo="Transcribe">transcribe</keyword> them for the controllers on the ground. Prime Minister Narendra Modi has been pushing for more smaller <keyword id="43661" type="ORGANIZATION" weightage="20" keywordseo="airports">airports</keyword> in the country to increase connectivity. That, in turn, requires more manpower, specifically more pilots. Neelu Khatri, the president of Honeywell’s aerospace business for India, says that the move will result in more regional pilots since it’s a regional connectivity scheme. And, therein lies the problem of accents. In an interview with Bloomberg, Khatri <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-06-05/honeywell-to-make-flying-safer-by-decoding-100-accents-in-india">claims</a>, “One of the biggest problems in India has been that we Indians don’t understand each other’s English because of the dialects.” And that’s not too-far off the mark since past <a href="https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/the-indian-air-crash-tapes-point-blame-at-kazakh-pilot-1352266.html">incidences</a> have already proven that miscommunication is a global safety threat. If the software is successfully implemented in India, it may be applied worldwide to help airports in other nations.

Honeywell’s new software aims to help air traffic controllers decode Indian accents

<ul class="summary-list"><li>Tech startup Sanas has been accused of racism for its 'accent translation' technology.</li><li>AI and tech industry experts say the startup's mission legitimizes racism and is a form of "digital whitening."</li></ul>"Accent translation" startup Sanas has faced allegations of racism and discrimination this past week after being accused of manipulating non-American accents to sound "<a href="https://www.sfgate.com/news/article/sanas-startup-creates-american-voice-17382771.php">more white</a>." The company uses speech recognition technology to change the user's accent in near-real time; their primary target seems to be foreign call center employees. Sharath Keshava Narayana, co-founder and COO of Sanas, denied that the startup's technology is discriminatory, telling Insider the company has always intended to expand its translation model to include other accents. The demo on its website, where the technology translates an Indian accent into a standard American one, showcases only its initial model, according to Keshava Narayana. "It's not just an American having trouble understanding someone from India, but vice versa as well," Keshava Narayana told Insider. "As we keep scaling the product, and as we start seeing more and more target accents, we believe that this will be a localized solution."Sanas has been testing translation models in other countries, like India and the Philippines, and plans to introduce accent translation to Latin America and Korea as well, according to the startup.However, some experts within the tech industry have accused the startup's product of being a form of "digital whitening." AI and tech angel investor and CEO of women-led computer programming group FrauenLoop Nakeema Stefflbauer told Insider the problem with Sanas' response is that "accents signal power and belonging.""When this is commercialized, there's only one direction in which everyone gets herded," she said. "It's not about comprehension so much as it's about comfort — for the groups that don't want to understand, empathize, or engage with people who are different at all. This tech does nothing to ensure the hypothetical call center worker's comfort."She added that until Sanas advertises this technology to customers in the global South as a tool to better understand and communicate with Americans and Western Europeans, then "it's a one-way 'solution' that reinforces racialized hierarchies, whether that's intended or not."AI and tech industry experts and call center workers spoke with Insider about what they saw as the cultural costs, as well as the potential benefits, coming out of Sanas. While the company says its technology's aim is to make people on the phone all over the world sound more "local," Stefflbauer and others in the AI field have concerns that it's another step towards homogenizing the startup world — something Silicon Valley has been <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/bodega-startup-to-replace-corner-store-backlash-2017-9">repeatedly</a> <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/emily-chang-silicon-valley-sexism-exposed-in-new-book-brotopia-2018-2">accused</a> of <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/silicon-valley-has-its-own-long-standing-systemic-racial-problem-2020-6">perpetuating</a>. "What is this trying to tell us in terms of what the future sounds like and how we all ought to be experiencing voices online and communicating with people?" Stefflbauer said. "Who are the people that we're meant to be communicating with, and who are the people that we never hear from?"<div type="image" title="Sanas founders" height="1845" width="2460" msid="93987183" hostid="261" sizebytes="433388"></div><h2>Tech industry experts say accent 'translation' is a form of 'digital whitening'</h2><a href="https://www.sanas.ai/">Sanas</a>, which has raised $32 million in funding, says its aim is to help people sound "more local, globally" on its website. In an <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-62633188">interview</a> with the BBC, Keshava Narayana said that 90% of the company's employees and all four of its founders are immigrants, and denied the criticism that the company is trying to make the world sound "white and American."But Mia Shah-Dand, the founder of Women in AI Ethics and Lighthouse3, told Insider that as an immigrant from India with a non-American accent, she found the announcement of Sanas "very triggering," especially as someone who has been "teased and discriminated against because of [their] accent."She said the technology is trying to erase what makes people unique, and is telling them that who they are "is not good enough.""It feels like everything in Silicon Valley, as long as it's legitimized by the Stanfords or the MITs, it's OK," she said. "People will accept racism, accept sexism, as long as the people doing it belong to one of these prestigious universities."Shah-Dand added that Sanas' product reinforces a power dynamic that "harkens back to the time of colonialism." Rather than addressing the root causes of racism and discrimination, "accent translation" leans into a form of "whitening" — a power dynamic seen in many countries that were historically colonized where people felt pressured to make their skin whiter to fit European beauty standards."It's Silicon Valley's version of digital whitening," Shah-Dand said. "Instead of technology making the world a better place, it's amplifying, it's helping, it's just monetizing all of that hate and racism rather than actually trying to fix anything."Stefflbauer told Insider she found Sanas' technology "really disappointing and unsettling," especially in the growing culture of bringing one's "whole self to work.""Only certain people can bring their whole self, everyone who's outside of this mythical norm is not invited to bring any of themselves," she said, referencing the 2018 dark surrealist comedy "<a href="https://www.insider.com/sorry-to-bother-you-language-discrimination-2018-6">Sorry to Bother You</a>," where a Black telemarketer finds that new doors of professional success are opened to him only after he adopts a "white" sounding voice."It's really another example of just what we're up against in terms of trying to get the tech industry and the products and services that come out of it to reflect the real world," Stefflbauer said.She added that she doesn't see how this technology would actually address racial biases in any way."It doesn't even attempt to approach that in its solution," she said. "It basically offers support and cover for people who will behave badly with accented individuals that they have any kind of dealings with to continue to do so."<h2>Call center agents told Insider they face racialized hostility</h2>Sanas' founders <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/pitch-deck-startup-sanas-funding-accent-translation-google-ventures-2022-6">said they came up with the idea for the startup</a> after a college friend from Stanford underperformed at his job at a call center because of his thick Central American accent.Call center agents Insider spoke with said their jobs can be brutal — and are doubly so if they have a racially-distinctive accent or name."Unfortunately in this world, there are a lot of people who are going to feel like they're better than you or will choose to speak down at you when they hear your accent," Dafina Swann, who has worked at call centers for more than five years, said.Swann, who's from Trinidad and Tobago, said she received a lot of "hostile" and "negative comments" from callers who demanded they speak with someone who's American. She had also heard of instances where colleagues were called racist names, like the n-word, and told that they were "not human, but Black."To minimize the racialized backlash they face, some call center agents told Insider that they already try to mimic customers' accents, and even change their names. Sometimes, the directive to change their names comes from the agents' managers or employers."After I started introducing myself as Michael O'Connor, my performance ratings from customer surveys increased — all green, green, green," Osama Badr, a call center agent from Egypt, told Insider.Sanas co-founder Keshava Narayana said he also had a similar experience when he worked at a call center, where he underwent six weeks of accent training and was told to change his name to "Ethan.""There are certain incidents that stay with you for a long time, and this was one of them," he told Insider.<h2>Some fear that manipulated voices could signal a homogenized future in tech</h2>Shah-Dand said she isn't convinced by defenses of the technology, saying that people are exposed to and can understand different accents, but it's only because call center workers are treated as "lesser than" that they receive unfair abuse. "There are a lot of folks who have very heavy accents, like Boutros Boutros-Ghali for example," Shah-Dand said, referring to the former Secretary-General of the United Nations. "But because they're in powerful positions, you make an effort to understand."Stefflbauer said in her work, she's always thinking about what digital life will be like 10, 20 years into the future, and she's concerned about what technology like Sanas foretells. "I see more and more examples of a digital life where no one is Black, no one is brown, no one has an accent, no one has a history outside of the North American mythical ideal," Stefflbauer said. "And the question is: do we want to export this mentality and bring this misery to everyone? Because that's definitely what this is." Other AI technologies, including <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/facial-recognition-racial-bias-federal-study-2019-12">facial recognition</a> technologies, have also faced accusations of racism and homogenization."Who would be comfortable taking a selfie on Instagram and having their face automatically altered to look like someone of a different race?" she said. "That's essentially what this is."But call center employees who have to deal with racist comments in their daily jobs say that a solution like the one Sanas offers could be a blessing."It definitely would've made my job easier. Everyone wants to be understood," Swann said. "There's a job that needs to be done, and if there's something that can be implemented to make that job easier, then that's great."

An AI startup is selling tech to let call center agents change their accents. They say it's to protect workers from racism, but critics say it's a form of 'digital whitening.'

<a href="http://www.businessinsider.in/searchresult.cms?query=tripadvisor&amp;sortorder=effectivedate">TripAdvisor</a>, the travel planning and booking site recently announced its Travellers’ Choice™ awards for <a href="http://www.businessinsider.in/The-10-best-fine-dining-restaurants-in-the-world-according-to-TripAdvisor/articleshow/54915178.cms">top restaurants around the world</a>, which also included a separate list for the 10 best fine-dine <keyword id="34615" type="ORGANIZATION" weightage="100" keywordseo="restaurants">restaurants</keyword> in India. 
 
Overall, this year’s awards recognizes 528 restaurants. Award winners were determined using an algorithm that took into account the quantity and quality of reviews for restaurants around the world, gathered over a 12-month period. 
 Chef <keyword id="210922" type="PERSON" weightage="100" keywordseo="Manish-Mehrotra">Manish Mehrotra</keyword>’s <a href="http://www.businessinsider.in/Foodies-unite-Here-are-the-20-best-restaurants-in-India/articleshow/52093823.cms">Indian Accent</a> continues to reign on the no 1 spot in the Indian ‘Fine Dining’ List, while <keyword id="348483" type="COMPANY" weightage="100" keywordseo="Zorawar-Kalra">Zorawar Kalra</keyword>’s Farzi Café, the latest entrant to the capital makes a surprise appearance as well. The other awardees include <keyword id="165020" type="CITY" weightage="100" keywordseo="Bukhara">Bukhara</keyword>, New Delhi, Peshawri in Mumbai, to name a few. 
 Moreover, three Indian restaurants have also been awarded at the Asia level. These are, <keyword id="307169" type="ORGANIZATION" weightage="100" keywordseo="Indian-Accent">Indian Accent</keyword>, New Delhi(#13); Villa Maya, Trivandrum (#15) and Peshawari, Mumbai (#25). 
 
Without further ado, here’s presenting the 10 best<a href="http://www.businessinsider.in/searchresult.cms?query=fine+dining+restaurants&amp;sortorder=effectivedate"> fine-dining restaurants </a>in India. How many of them have you been to?

Here are the 10 best fine-dining restaurants in India

<div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image on-image"><a href="http://www.apimages.com/metadata/Index/APTOPIX-Trump-United-States-India/c635706bb5144bec9386352d86f2a0ea/17/0">Susan Walsh/AP</a>President Donald Trump and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi hug while making statements in the Rose Garden of the White House in Washington, Monday, June 26, 2017.</div></div></div><ul><li>According to a new report, President Donald Trump is known to imitate Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi by putting on an Indian accent.</li><li>But a comment about the US strategy in Afghanistan that Modi made last year stood out to Trump, and indicated to him that the world sees the US as being mired in the country with few results to show for it.</li><li>Trump has pushed Modi to engage with the US more in Afghanistan in the past, while India is hoping to make Afghanistan a part of its own regional sphere of influence.</li></ul> President Donald Trump reportedly often imitates Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi's accent - but according to <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/up-to-1000-more-us-troops-could-be-headed-to-afghanistan-this-spring/2018/01/21/153930b6-fd1b-11e7-a46b-a3614530bd87_story.html?hpid=hp_hp-cards_hp-card-world:homepage/card&amp;utm_term=.a88d6478e3d4">The Washington Post</a>, some of the prime minister's recent comments have changed Trump's entire outlook on how the world views US policy.Senior administration officials told The Post that Trump puts on Modi's accent when imitating him in the White House. But Modi's comments on America's presence in Afghanistan reportedly changed Trump's view of the war."Never has a country given so much away for so little in return," Modi reportedly told Trump in the Oval Office sometime in 2017, referring to the lack of results the US has gotten from its war in Afghanistan, which has been dragging on since 2001.Trump took the statement to mean that the world views the US as having been taken advantage of by its enemies in the country, but continued to leave most of the decision-making to the Pentagon.Trump has previously engaged Modi on the issue of Afghanistan, demanding that India <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/ap-trumps-afghanistan-strategy-includes-new-ultimatum-on-india-2017-8">play a stronger role</a> in providing stability in the country as part of his "regional" approach. But India's own <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/india-steering-a-tricky-path-through-us-allies-and-foes-in-south-asia-2017-11?r=UK&amp;IR=T">regional strategy</a>, while including Afghanistan, is centered more on creating an economic zone of influence in the Indian Ocean and building closer ties with Iran. Trump and Modi will likely <a href="http://www.firstpost.com/business/prime-minister-narendra-modi-cant-ask-for-a-better-marketplace-than-davos-to-pitch-india-as-a-hot-ticket-item-4313817.html">cross paths again</a> at the Davos World Economic Forum later this month. <div class="margin-top"> <h3>NOW WATCH: <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/eurasia-groups-top-risks-of-2018-2018-1">The biggest risks facing the world in 2018</a></h3> <div> </div> </div>

Senior officials say Trump often puts on an Indian accent and imitates Prime Minister Modi

<ul class="summary-list"><li>As an Indian woman and a twin, I expected more from <a href="https://www.insider.com/harry-potter-diversity-problem-with-indian-representation-of-patils-2021-9">Padma and Parvati Patil in "Harry Potter."</a></li><li>I ended up relating more to Hermione, the white female lead, than the actual Indian characters.</li></ul>Like many middle-class Indian kids, I was used to neatly reimagining my life into Western stories.My reading habit developed on the backs of white, mainly British authors - from Enid Blyton and Agatha Christie to Charles Dickens and Jane Austen - so the series of my generation, "<a href="https://www.insider.com/harry-potter-little-known-facts-2019-1">Harry Potter</a>," was a natural progression.I thought I was finally going to get the Indian representation I longed for, because "<keyword id="12067470" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="60" keywordseo="harry-potter" source="Orion">Harry Potter</keyword>" had an element my wildly Anglophone reading diet lacked: Padma and Parvati Patil, Indian, brown-skinned, identical twins, just like my twin sister and me.I was willing to take this <a href="https://www.insider.com/harry-potter-lack-of-disability-and-illness-representation-opinion-2021-11">smidgen of representation</a> - but I never found a way to read myself into the underdeveloped characters.<h2>The Patil twins were part of a cultural touchstone but weren't sketched well enough to offer real representation</h2>On paper, the Patil twins seemed like they were in for an interesting time at <a href="https://www.insider.com/harry-potter-unique-things-about-hogwarts-trivia">Hogwarts</a>.Parvati was sorted into Gryffindor with Harry Potter, Ron Weasley, and <a href="https://www.insider.com/harry-potter-interesting-things-to-know-about-hermione-granger">Hermione Granger</a>. Padma became a Ravenclaw prefect. In "Goblet of Fire," Harry and Ron took the sisters to the Yule Ball, where Seamus Finnigan and Dean Thomas dubbed them the "prettiest girls in our year." They were part of Dumbledore's Army, and they went on to fight in the Battle of Hogwarts.Unlike even lazier attempts at Anglicized representation, their names were also actually Indian. Padma is the shortened name my mother goes by, and their surname, Patil, is hugely common in Maharashtra, the state where I grew up.But even with a broad canvas to deepen two of the Potterverse's most visible characters of color, the <a href="https://www.insider.com/jk-rowling-transgender-comments-show-reality-wizarding-world-harry-potter-2020-6">series' controversial author, J.K. Rowling</a>, just ... didn't.Representation has never been about the existence of a brown face in a crowd or a hard-to-pronounce name on a roster. It's about reflecting reality and appreciating the tangible presence of identities often sidelined in white narratives.Parvati's arc in Gryffindor could've been sketched lovingly, like Neville's or Luna's, but instead she was made the archetypal giggling "silly girl" foil for Hermione.One of the few things we know about Parvati was that she was fascinated with Divination, which is painted as superstitious, mystical mumbo jumbo. To me, this brought to mind Orientalist descriptions of <keyword id="11892747" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="60" keywordseo="india" source="Orion">India</keyword> as the realm of unscientific hocus-pocus (and snake charmers) that still rankle our collective Indian soul.Worse off, Padma essentially disappeared from the narrative.<div type="image" title="parvati and padma patil at the yule ball harry potter and the goblet of fire" height="1191" width="1589" msid="87609965" hostid="261"></div>The one moment of poetic justice that Rowling offered the twins in the books was at the Yule Ball, where Parvati "looked very pretty indeed, in robes of shocking pink, with her long dark plait braided with gold, and gold bracelets glimmering at her wrists." Padma "was looking just as pretty as Parvati in robes of bright turquoise."But <a href="https://www.insider.com/big-differences-between-harry-potter-books-and-movies">the movies undid</a> the little that Rowling did.The <a href="https://www.insider.com/harry-potter-diversity-problem-with-indian-representation-of-patils-2021-9">twins' Yule Ball costumes</a> spawned <a href="https://www.buzzfeed.com/regajha/harry-potter-and-the-prisoners-of-bad-fashion">articles</a> and rants on <a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/harrypotter/comments/76bgeg/horrible_yule_ball_attire_of_patil_sisters/">Reddit</a> and <a href="https://harrypottermovieproblems.tumblr.com/post/156148006938/cho-chang-and-the-patil-twins-in-ethnic-attire-at">Tumblr</a> because no self-respecting Indian would wear those garish orange-and-pink lehengas to the biggest event of the year.<h2>I was so disappointed in the Patils' portrayal that I looked to Hermione for self-representation</h2>I have to wonder if Rowling examined the British Asian experience at all when she was writing the books. After all, the Indian community is a vibrant part of the UK, making up <a href="https://www.ethnicity-facts-figures.service.gov.uk/summaries/indian-ethnic-group">2.5%</a> of the population in 2011.It would've taken more than a plate of chicken tikka showing up in the Great Hall to paint meaningful representation. But peddling stereotypes and questionable sartorial choices is evidently easier than creating fully sketched characters.I never expected book characters to look like me, because that wasn't my experience growing up. So I was already used to choosing my heroines out of a cast of white characters based on qualities alone.Jo March and Maggie Tulliver became kindred spirits of my youth. And when it came time to read myself into "<a href="https://www.insider.com/harry-potter-makes-feminine-characters-evil-opinion-2021-10">Harry Potter</a>," Hermione outshone Padma and Parvati.<div type="image" title="hermione granger at the yule ball in harry potter and the goblet of fire" height="1126" width="1501" msid="87609966" hostid="261"></div>Hermione was a brave, whip-smart witch painted in bold strokes: an adventurer, a book-loving nerd, a fiercely loyal friend. Most importantly, she's the reason Harry made it through seven books alive.It was a pity, though, that I related more to Hermione than to Indian twins - a Gryffindor and a Ravenclaw, just like me and my own sister.If I wasn't the target demographic for these characters, who was?<h2>Beyond 'Harry Potter,' there's a gap in nuanced portrayals of South Asians in Western media</h2>British literature never quite captured the complex life and identity of a non-Western kid for me.Half-baked South Asian representation from white creators has largely led to cultural stereotypes in place of real narratives - evidenced by Apu's thick Indian accent on "The Simpsons" and Raj's social ineptitude on "<a href="https://www.insider.com/big-bang-theory-most-memorable-moments-2019-5">The Big Bang Theory</a>."But English's colonial legacy as the lingua franca means those character tropes get read or seen more widely than our own versions.Parvati and Padma were likely never meant to be more than harmless background characters, but their mere existence in the Potterverse made them powerful.For once, it would've been nice to see a white author allow them to wield that power in a meaningful, awe-inspiring way.

J.K. Rowling's attempt at Indian representation was so bad that I related more to the white female lead in 'Harry Potter'

<ul class="summary-list"><li><keyword id="723980" type="PERSON" weightage="60" keywordseo="Hank-Azaria">Hank Azaria</keyword>, who voiced <keyword id="340114" type="ORGANIZATION" weightage="60" keywordseo="Apu">Apu</keyword> in "<keyword id="6483447" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="60" keywordseo="the-simpsons">The Simpsons</keyword>," wants to "personally apologize" to Indians in the US.</li><li>Appearing on the "Armchair Expert" podcast on Monday, he said the character is "practically a slur."</li><li>Azaria, who is white, stepped away from the role in 2020 after 30 years voicing the character. </li></ul>Hank Azaria says he wants to <a href="https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/simpsons-actor-hank-azaria-feels-he-needs-apologize-to-every-indian-for-apu">apologize to every Indian in America</a> for his racist portrayal of Apu Nahasapeemapetilon, an Indian convenience-store worker, on "The Simpsons." During Monday's episode of actor Dax Shepard's <a href="https://armchairexpertpod.com/">"Armchair Expert" podcast</a>, Azaria, who is not South Asian, opened up about voicing the controversial Indian character (who has a thick, fake Indian accent) <a href="https://www.insider.com/controversial-tv-casting-roles-2018-12#the-character-of-apu-on-the-simpsons-has-been-called-a-racist-portrayal-made-worse-by-the-fact-that-hes-played-by-white-actor-hank-azaria-4">for 30 years</a>."There were very good intentions on all of our parts. We tried to do a funny, thoughtful character," Azaria told Shepard and cohost Monica Padman. "And just because there were good intentions, it doesn't mean there weren't real negative consequences that I am accountable for." Azaria came face-to-face with one such "real negative consequence" of Apu, he said, when he visited his son's school a few years ago and met a 17-year-old Indian American student who knew about Apu without having watched a single episode of "The Simpsons.""It's practically a slur at this point," Azaria said of Apu's portrayal on the podcast. "All he knows is this is how his people are thought of and represented to many people in this country still.""With tears in his eyes, he said to me, and it was so sweet the way he put it," he continued. "'Will you please tell the writers in Hollywood that what they do and what they come up with matters in people's lives? Like, it has consequences?'""I apologize for my part in creating that and participating in that," Azaria added. "Part of me feels like I need to go on to every single Indian person in this country and personally apologize. And sometimes, I do."<h2>Azaria said that it took a while for him to understand structural racism in Hollywood </h2>Criticism surrounding Apu first <a href="https://www.insider.com/apu-the-simpsons-racism-controversy-2018-4">gained traction</a> with the release of "The Problem With Apu," a 2017 documentary by Indian American comic Hari Kondabolu, which examines <a href="https://www.insider.com/aziz-ansari-addresses-hollywoods-race-problem-in-master-of-none-2015-11">the stereotypical character's</a> negative impact on South Asian communities. In order to avoid a "knee-jerk" reaction to the criticism, Azaria told Shepard and Padman that he took time to educate himself on his "blind spot" around Apu.He explained that he read books, attended seminars, and spoke to Indian Americans while trying to make a decision on whether he <a href="https://www.slashfilm.com/apu-voice-actor/">wanted to continue to voice the convenience-store worker</a>.<div type="image" title="hank azaria" height="1328" width="1771" msid="82041163" hostid="261"></div>"I was unaware of how much relative advantage I had received in this country as a white kid from Queens," Azaria said. "I didn't think about this stuff because I didn't have to."Azaria first confirmed that he was leaving the role <a href="https://www.slashfilm.com/apu-voice-actor/">in an interview with /Film</a> in January 2020. He told the publication he "won't be doing the voice anymore unless there's some way to transition it or something."<a href="https://www.insider.com/hank-azaria-quits-apu-the-simpsons-racist-criticism-2020-1">His decision to leave the role came</a> after 30 years of voicing Apu."Once I realized that that was the way this character was thought of, I just didn't want to participate in it anymore," <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/25/arts/television/hank-azaria-simpsons-apu.html">Azaria told The New York Times the following month</a>. "It just didn't feel right."Azaria also voices <a href="https://www.insider.com/hank-azaria-quits-apu-the-simpsons-racist-criticism-2020-1">other characters on the show</a>, like bar owner Moe Szyslak, police officer Chief Wiggums, and Comic Book Guy. <h2>White actors on 'The Simpsons' no longer voice characters who are people of color</h2>After Azaria stepped away from voicing Apu, producers on "The Simpsons" issued a statement in June that white actors would no longer voice POC characters, <a href="https://variety.com/2020/tv/news/the-simpsons-will-no-longer-have-white-actors-voice-non-white-characters-producers-say-1234691910/">Variety reported</a>.A few months later, actor Alex Désert <a href="https://deadline.com/2020/09/the-simpsons-new-voice-hank-azarias-carl-alex-desert-1234584979/">replaced Azaria</a> as the voice of Homer Simpson's coworker and friend Carl Carlson (who is Black). Deadline reported at the time that it was unclear if Désert was a permanent replacement.Around the same time, a number of other white actors on other animated shows (like Mike Henry, who voiced Cleveland Brown) <a href="https://www.insider.com/dr-hibbert-actor-harry-shearer-questions-the-simpsons-casting-rules-2020-8">stepped away from voicing non-white characters</a>. However, not everyone was thrilled with the change. Insider reporter Zac Ntim <a href="https://www.insider.com/dr-hibbert-actor-harry-shearer-questions-the-simpsons-casting-rules-2020-8">previously wrote</a> that actor <keyword id="794907" type="PERSON" weightage="60" keywordseo="Harry-Shearer">Harry Shearer</keyword>, the voice of Black "Simpsons" character Dr. Hibbert, questioned the producers' decision to stop having white actors voice non-white animated characters.<div type="image" title="The Simpsons voice actor Harry Shearer Dr Hibbert" height="1200" width="1600" msid="82041164" hostid="261"></div>"I have a very simple belief about acting," Shearer said during <a href="https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/actor-harry-shearer-questions-simpsons-race-rules-qddwm20x2">an interview with Times Radio</a> in August. "The job of the actor is to play someone who they are not. That's the gig, that's the job description." He added that while he supports the representation of people of all ethnicities and backgrounds in the production and writing process for a show, it should not be conflated with acting performances. As for Apu, "The Simpsons" series creator <keyword id="686650" type="PERSON" weightage="60" keywordseo="Matt-Groening">Matt Groening</keyword> <a href="https://www.usatoday.com/story/entertainment/tv/2021/03/21/the-simpsons-creator-matt-groening-talks-700-episodes-future-apu/4754144001/">told USA Today in March</a> that they have "ambitious" plans for the character despite Azaria's departure from the role.

Hank Azaria feels he needs to 'personally apologize' to every Indian in America for voicing Apu in 'The Simpsons'

This past weekend was <a href="http://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/west-indian-day-parade-nyc-pols-big-chance-court-voters-article-1.1443955">the West Indian Day Parade</a>, and with the election a mere week away, naturally the folks running for mayor made an appearance. 
Former congressman <keyword id="209183" type="PERSON" weightage="60" keywordseo="Anthony-Weiner">Anthony Weiner</keyword>, indeed still running for mayor, was one such parade attendee. 
In a video posted by the New York Daily News, you can see Weiner - <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/bill-de-blasio-eliot-spitzer-polls-mayor-comptroller-2013-8">currently polling a distant fourth</a> in the race - affect a Caribbean accent in an attempt to ingratiate himself to the community.
"Anybody here from Jamaica?" Weiner <a href="http://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/west-indian-day-parade-nyc-pols-big-chance-court-voters-article-1.1443955#ixzz2dpNeRiFV">was quoted as saying</a> in the mock accent by the Daily News. "Anybody here from Barbados? Anybody here from Guyana?"
See the video here:

<a href="http://www.reddit.com/r/nyc">(H/t) /R/NYC on Reddit.</a>

CRINGE: Anthony Weiner Faked A Caribbean Accent To Pander To Voters At A Parade

<keyword id="143" type="CITY" weightage="20" keywordseo="Bollywood">Bollywood</keyword> actresses are having a gala time. Never ever in the history of <keyword id="4636" type="ORGANIZATION" weightage="20" keywordseo="Indian-Cinema">Indian cinema</keyword>, Indian actresses enjoyed power like they enjoy today. Women-oriented films are on the rise, and audiences accepting them whole-heartedly. Recent success of Queen testifies the fact. But who would be the queen of Bollywood in 2014—and get the coveted ‘Heroine No. 1’ title? Let’s take a look. 
	 
	 

	1. <keyword id="6354526" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="20" keywordseo="Alia-Bhatt">Alia Bhatt</keyword> With three back to back hits in a year, Alia is on a roll. Her first release of the year was Imtiaz Ali’s Highway, which brought pride and appreciation her way. After this coming-of-age story, we saw Alia in 2 States next, where she enacted the role of a Tamilian to perfection. Alia’s third movie was Humpty Sharma Ki Dulhaniya, where she was at the top of her act. 

	2. Kangana Ranaut

	Queen proved to be a game changer for Kangana Ranaut. This unconventional movie not only won her accolades for her powerful acting, but also changed contemporaries’ perception about her. 
 

	3. <keyword id="89958" type="PERSON" weightage="20" keywordseo="Shraddha-Kapoor">Shraddha Kapoor</keyword> The Aashiqui 2 girl too had a great run at the Box Office this year. Her film, Ek Villain was a hit and she won appreciations from all corners for her brilliant performance. She will soon be seen enacting the role of a journalist in director Vishal Bhardwaj’s Haider, based on Shakespeare’s Hamlet. 
	 

	4. Vidya Balan

	Vidya appeared twice on screen this year. While her first movie, Shaadi Ke Side Effect failed to impress audience, Vidya managed to make up for the loss with Bobby Jaasoos. The story of an aspiring girl detective struck a chord with the audience and set cash registers ringing at the Box Office. 
	 

	5. Rani Mukherjee

	It won’t be wrong to call Rani Mukherjee’s Mardaani as the movie of the year. After a dud called Aiyya, Rani bounced back with this movie. She excelled in the role of Shivani, a crime branch inspector, and won accolades and adulation from all corners. Not just that, the film was declared tax free in some parts of the country. A Hero-ific act indeed!
 

	6. Priyanka Chopra

	Seems Priyanka Chopra will earn many awards and honours with Mary Kom, a film based on the life of Olympic legend. Critics and junta are going gaga about Priyanka’s performance that packs a punch and lots of power. A well-deserving name for the coveted number one title?
 

	7. Deepika Padukone

	Last year, she was the queen of Bollywood and delivered four back to back mega hits. However, this year Deepika seems to be in a relaxing mood and has only two movies in her kitty. First up is Homi Adjania’s Finding Fanny, where she is playing a Goan girl and next is Farah Khan’s multi-starrer Happy New Year. Will Deepika be able to replicate her last year’s success this year as well? Only time will tell.
 

	8. Parineeti Chopra

	After Hasee Toh Phasee, Parineeti will soon be seen playing a Hyderabadi girl in Daawat-E-Ishq. News is rife that Parineeti took formal training from actress Elaahe Hiptoola to get the deccani accent right. Hope her hard work pays off!
 

	9. Katrina Kaif

	After last year’s Dhoom 3, Katrina will be seen in Bang Bang next. In this much-awaited movie, the sexy lass would be seen romancing Hrithik Roshan and performing some kickass action. Will this bring Katrina back in the ‘number one’ game?

Alia, Kangana, Deepika: Who will be on Number 1?

It didn't take long for Donald Trump to <a target="_blank" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/lindsey-graham-says-trump-stop-attacking-harris-over-race-2024-8">play the race card</a> on Kamala Harris. Only days after she became her party's presumptive nominee for president, Trump declared that her racial identity was nothing but an act. "I didn't know she was Black until a number of years ago, when she happened to turn Black, and now she wants to be known as Black," he <a target="_blank" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/trump-kamala-harris-turned-black-nabj-interview-2024-7">told the National Association of Black Journalists</a>. "So, I don't know, is she Indian or is she Black?"Racist? Sure. But on a deeper level, Trump was calling into question the vice president's <a target="_blank" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/trump-complains-kamala-harris-calls-him-felon-court-docs-2024-8">authenticity and truthfulness</a>. In this construction, Harris is a phony — someone who uses her race for personal gain. To Trump, the way she <a target="_blank" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/inside-life-and-career-of-kamala-harris-bidens-vp-pick-2020-8">presents herself through multiple lenses</a> — the Indian and Jamaican ancestry of her parents, her upbringing in California, her education at a historically Black university — is just some DEI grift.Nicole Holliday knew this was going to happen. A sociolinguist at UC Berkeley, Holliday specializes in how people construct their social identities through the way they speak. She had studied the way Barack Obama crafted his biracial image through political speech, and when Harris ran for president in 2020 Holliday understood that she presented a persona unlike any other candidate. Years before the MAGA knives came out for Harris, Holliday set out to study how the vice president speaks — and what her linguistic patterns reveal about her racial identity.Like anyone, Harris' speech patterns and pronunciation come from where she spent her formative years and who she spent them with. Harris is a self-described "daughter of Oakland, California" who grew up in the Bay Area, spent time in Montreal, and went to college at Howard University. That's a familiar American story, but it means Harris exhibits a combination of a California accent and what linguists like Holliday often refer to as African American English.To study Harris' pitch, Holliday collected <a target="_blank" href="https://www.isca-archive.org/speechprosody_2022/holliday22_speechprosody.pdf">audio clips from debates during the 2020 primaries</a>. The results were revealing. When Harris criticized her future running mate Joe Biden for his positions on school integration and busing, for instance, she famously ended an anecdote about a little girl who had benefited from those policies by saying "that little girl was me." On the word that, Harris' pitch had a noticeable fall, followed by a rise. That low-to-high shift, in linguistic notation, is called an L+H* pitch accent. And it has different meanings in African American English versus the Mainstream US English more likely spoken by white folks. (Don't @ me: These are the <a target="_blank" class="" href="https://www.cambridge.org/core/product/identifier/S0047404500020893/type/journal_article">terms linguists use</a>.)"White people only have that when they're doing contrastive things," Holliday explains. "You get this L+H* when they're trying to correct you. But Black speakers across the United States just put it all over the place. It doesn't mean contrast." So when white people unfamiliar with African American English hear that rise and fall, they think the speaker is being kind of argumentative. "The rises and falls happen in places that are unexpected for your average white listener," Holliday says, "so they try to make sense of it using the way they would talk." How "Black" Harris sounds, in other words, is in the ear of the beholder.Another element of Harris' accent that gets heard differently is called a "phrase-initial falsetto" — a little squeak she often uses at the beginning of a sentence. When that sentence starts with I, something self-referential, it can sound to folks unfamiliar with Black speaking patterns as if Harris is contradicting them: "No! You're not the one. I am." But that, Holliday says, is not what Harris is doing. What she's actually doing, in a completely authentic way, is what Trump accuses her of faking — she's speaking in the Black linguistic patterns she grew up around. Holliday's data, in fact, shows that Black women have a much wider pitch and frequency range than other folks — particularly in emotionally charged situations.This, in linguistic terms, may be where Trump's audience finds justification for the idea that Harris is "crazy." "People are hearing her do these things that could be described as emphatic to an average white listener," Holliday says. "And if they're overlaying racist ideologies on top of that, that's where you get to 'unhinged.'"Those pitch variations Holliday studied are very hard to fake; Meryl Streep wins Oscars for a reason. Which is why Holliday deployed a novel methodology to analyze Harris's speech pattern. In 2022, she compared the way Harris talks to <a target="_blank" href="https://www.isca-archive.org/speechprosody_2022/holliday22_speechprosody.pdf">audio clips of the comedian Maya Rudolph</a> doing her <a target="_blank" class="" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/kamala-harris-maya-rudolph-snl-memes-reactions-2024-7">impression of Harris</a> on "Saturday Night Live." What, Holliday wondered, could we learn from Rudolph's spot-on mimicry?The comparison is particularly apt. A lot of research on African American English focuses on younger people, or poorer ones. But not only is Rudolph a gifted impressionist, she's also a demographic match for Harris. As Holliday notes, the two women are roughly the same age, and both have one Black and one non-Black parent.In clip after clip, Holliday found, Rudolph nailed Harris' speech pattern, but exaggerated it for comic effect. Her low-to-high rise on the that in "I was that girl" is peakier, for instance. In her "I'm also America's cool aunt" joke, she hits the phrase-initial falsetto on the I'm, and the L+H* accent on America's. Just about anything Harris does, Rudolph does, too, but more so. Rudolph actually does the falsetto thing twice as often as Harris, Holliday found.Holliday also delved into the diverse influences that shaped Harris' accent. She didn't study the Indian features of Harris' vocal patterns, because she felt the Asian American community surrounding Harris as a child was too small to have much of a linguistic impact. But to look for signs of Harris' Californian upbringing, as well as her time at Howard, Holliday studied <a target="_blank" href="https://read.dukeupress.edu/american-speech/article-abstract/99/2/135/382797/Complex-Variation-in-the-Construction-of-a">thousands of individual phrases she used</a> in the 2020 debates. In many cases, she found that Harris has a classic California Vowel Shift — when she makes an "oo" sound and "oa" sound, like in "cool" and "goat," they're produced more forward in the mouth, in linguistic parlance.In other areas, Harris deviates from the California Vowel Shift. Many Californians, for example, pronounce the words "cot" and "caught" the same, as homonyms. Harris does not. Neither does she pronounce "pin" and "pen" the same — what's known among linguists as an African American Vowel Shift. In fact, when Holliday went looking for 28 standard features of African American English in Harris' syntax — stuff like substituting ain't for have not, or saying finna for I'm fixing to — Harris didn't do any of it. In other words, you can take the girl out of California, but you can't take the California out of the girl.Holliday found that Harris does use some features of African American English. She'll leave out the copula, the to-be verb, in front of the vernacular words gotta and gonna. ("Dude gotta go," referring to Trump, was a catchphrase for a while.) And she occasionally says I'mma, as in "I'mma let you finish." But here's where the roots of Harris' identity are harder to parse, because those elements of African American English are also <a target="_blank" href="http://doi.wiley.com/10.1525/jlin.2003.13.2.211">spread through general pop culture</a>. So what part of Harris' heritage or history is she drawing on when she uses those constructions?Holliday thinks those usages are "camouflaged" — recognized as informal political speech by all audiences, but also coded as a signal of shared identity for Black audiences. Like every politician, Harris wants to connect to as many audiences as possible. That's how you get votes."Every politician throughout history does it," Holiday says. "The fact that people have different styles is not an indication of inauthenticity. The issue is that when people perceive it as inauthentic, then that can be politically damaging. When your styles are scrutinized by the entire country — including people who are not doing it in good faith — that is another layer."And therein lies the real rub. As a multiethnic woman, Harris is facing an assault on her identity unlike any other presidential nominee in history. When Trump and his surrogates describe her as an undeserving "DEI hire," and use her speech patterns to mock her as inauthentic, they're taking an age-old tradition of race-baiting to a whole new level. Holliday's work puts the lie to Trump's warped and pernicious ideas about what makes us who we are."We become ourselves in the space we inhabit," Holliday says. "I don't think Harris is inauthentic. I think she's just inhabited a lot of spaces."<a target="_blank" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/author/adam-rogers">Adam Rogers</a> is a senior correspondent at Business Insider.

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