how important is language & speech to success? is code switching necessary?

[Admin]

hashi mohamed tackles this and more in his new book People Like Us: What It Takes To Make It In Modern Britain.

i haven’t read the book myself but i found this review very interesting.

“As the book veers from addressing society’s structural failings into a self-help manual, there are valuable prescriptions, especially on the importance of language and speech. He laments the reluctance of people within the Brent community he grew up in to consider speaking as he does, using received pronunciation, and criticises the way both ends of the social scale expect him to talk the language of the street.

He views this as a trap and insists that those from disadvantaged backgrounds must learn to “code switch” and speak well when needed to improve their prospects.”

https://www.standard.co.uk/lifestyle/books/people-like-us-by-hashi-mohamed-review-a4342426.html


for all those interested in purchasing the book, it is available on amazon:

 

[Admin]

Raising the bar: Hashi Mohamed’s journey from child refugee to top lawyer

He defied a life of poverty and hardship to reach Oxford and become a barrister. Now Hashi Mohamed has written a book which aims to rethink the stalled project of social mobility.

Hashi Mohamed is a 36-year-old barrister. He has the accent, a mentor once told of him, of someone who’s “been to Eton” and the confidence of a natural orator. If you had to place him within the complex matrix of the British class system, you’d probably say he was the son of wealthy Africans who attended an independent school and Oxbridge.

In fact, Mohamed is a Somali who was born in Kenya, where he lived in a rundown part of Nairobi with his four siblings (another having died), his mother (who also had six children from a previous marriage) and his travelling salesman father. When his father died in a car accident in 1993, Mohamed and three of his siblings were sent to England as refugees.

They lived with an aunt and then in various low-rent housing, some of it rat-infested, and were eventually reunited with their mother. A confused and alienated boy, he spent most of his teen years in a state of geographical and psychological dislocation. He went to a struggling comprehensive in north-west London where the headteacher was beaten up and laughed at, but he eventually managed to get a place at the University of Hertfordshire to study law and French.

From there he was awarded a postgraduate scholarship to Oxford, gained a position at No5 Chambers, noted experts in planning law, became a successful barrister, an accomplished public speaker and a broadcaster – he’s made two well-received documentaries for Radio 4. And he’s just written a book. To complete the picture of all-round achievement, he recently bought a house for himself. It’s in Wembley, not far from where he went to school. And that’s where I go to meet him.

He greets me with a big smile and a polite request that I remove my boots, before making tea and talking me through his story. Even in bare outline, Mohamed’s is an impressive tale, but he turns it into something much larger and far more resonant in his finely written memoir, People Like Us. The subtitle of the book is What It Takes to Make It in Modern Britain, which sounds like a how-to guide to success. In a sense it is, as Mohamed proffers advice from his own experience. But it’s also a rather ambitious and far-ranging attempt to rethink the whole stalled project of social mobility.

https://www.theguardian.com/society/2020/jan/12/hashi-mohamed-child-refugee-barrister-people-like-us

 

[Medulla]

Code-Switching is vital due to many factors such as racism ,classism and Xenophobia . It's just not acceptable to speak a certain way in many industries , you risk limiting your job opportunities due to subconscious biases from employers regardless of your abilties .Institutionalized discrimination exists don't make life more diffcult for yourself especially if you live in the west, there is no reason why you shouldn't be able to sound like your white peers.

 

[Xasusi]

My natural accent sounds like Prince Charles. I code switch to sound road when im with my friends.

Most somalis I know dont have a discernable difference in accent from the native population. But at the same time most of them have good degrees.

 

[Admin]

Code-Switching is vital due to many factors such as racism ,classism and Xenophobia . It's just not acceptable to speak a certain way in many industries , you risk limiting your job opportunities due to subconscious biases from employers regardless of your abilties .Institutionalized discrimination exists don't make life more diffcult for yourself especially if you live in the west there is no reason why you shouldn't be able to sound like your white peers.

should code switching be encouraged in the somali community? i think some people see code switching as a cooning or selling out but hashi makes a convincing argument about why it’s necessary for success.

 

[Macalin M]

If this is who I think it is then this guys been to my school before. Lol

 

[Ayubi]

Code switching is necessary. How you act/talk in front of your friends is not how you talk like in the work force otherwise you risk getting your employment rejected.

 

[Admin]

If this is who I think it is then this guys been to my school before. Lol

this is hashi.

 

[Xasusi]

should code switching be encouraged in the somali community? i think some people see code switching as a cooning or selling out but hashi makes a convincing argument about why it’s necessary for success.

I don't know. If you cant speak proper Somali you rightly get clowned. The same should be any language you speak. Speak like the best natives. Ive never heard people calling it coonery or selling out besides african americans.

 

[Macalin M]

this is hashi.

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[Medulla]

should code switching be encouraged in the somali community? i think some people see code switching as a cooning or selling out but hashi makes a convincing argument about why it’s necessary for success.

Of course it should be encouraged or we should make it our default way of speaking. We already have a mother language it doesn't really matter how we sound in English. The West has a class system if you want to climb the ladder it is neccesary to speak like the upper and middle class. How else will you make contacts and mingle with other potential partners and clients? It's not cooning those who make such statements only do it out of ignorance , saying things like " you sound white " isn't an insult it's allowing white supremacy to exist freely. By us putting each other down with statements like this ,the elites don't have to do anything as we are doing there job of supressing change .

 

[Shmurda]

I code switch but some words I say so much that I unconciously say them in the wrong environment like for example I said to my hooyo one time "I don't know my nigga" and I got beat up

Most people code switch but the thing is most people also say certain words so much that they say it regardless of the environment so might aswell let them talk how they want my nigga

 

[Admin]

I don't know. If you cant speak proper Somali you rightly get clowned. The same should be any language you speak. Speak like the best natives. Ive never heard people calling it coonery or selling out besides african americans.

my personal experience has shown me otherwise. being told you sound white is not a compliment.

 

[Helios]

Idk if you speak non-standard accents it's looked down on. That's why we always clown Indians and fob Chinese.

 

[Admin]

I code switch but some words I say so much that I unconciously say them in the wrong environment like for example I said to my hooyo one time "I don't know my nigga" and I got beat up

Most people code switch but the thing is most people also say certain words so much that they say it regardless of the environment so might aswell let them talk how they want my nigga

it’s not just language but speech / accent. even if you change the words you use, it’s not really code switching unless you change your accent too. as a representative of the street abdi, how do you feel about other somalis who change accents when around white people?

 

[Xasusi]

it’s not just language but speech / accent. even if you change the words you use, it’s not really code switching unless you chance your accent too. as a representative of the street abdi, how do you feel about other somalis who change accents when around white people?

Somalis generally dont have an attachment to specific accent like say jamaicans or nigerians. So I dont know who gets worked up about code switching. Where do you live?

 

[Shmurda]

it’s not just language but speech / accent. even if you change the words you use, it’s not really code switching unless you change your accent too. as a representative of the street abdi, how do you feel about other somalis who change accents when around white people?

Okay I see what you're saying and I think its appropriate to change your accent if you feel you should do so for the situation but if you change it to please others than thats some coon behaviour

 

[Gambar]

I switch through Somali and English. I don’t switch through accents.

 

[Admin]

Somalis generally dont have an attachment to specific accent like say jamaicans or nigerians. So I dont know who gets worked up about code switching. Where do you live?

in the uk.

Okay I see what you're saying and I think its appropriate to change your accent if you feel you should do so for the situation but if you change it to please others than thats some coon behaviour

it’s not to please others but for success in the job market. hashi argues this will allow you to better integrate into society vs retaining an accent because you feel comfort with it. if you had to speak like justin trudeau to be successful, would you do it?

 

[Xasusi]

in the uk.




it’s not to please others but for success in the job market. hashi argues this will allow you to better integrate into society vs retaining an accent because you feel comfort with it. if you had to speak like justin trudeau to be successful, would you do it?

dont mean to pry, but did you go Uni? For example right now 99% of people I talk to are non somali in my field. So yes I do sound more white than I usually would.