Alex the Lion

I just have to share a wonderful conversation that I had with a few children at an early learning centre this week.

We were cooking fish and chips in the sandbox, when one of the children asked, “Why do you talk so funny?” I said, “I do talk differently than you. That’s called an accent. But I came from a long, long way away from here, and where I’m from, everyone talks like me.” We had just finished building Emirates Team NZ’s yacht and winning the America’s Cup, so I thought that might be a good way to explain it. I told them that I was from the same place as Oracle, so I talked like them. They asked where that was, and I said America. One of the children, who had only partially been listening, jumped up and said, “Alex the Lion is from America!” (For those of you who don’t live in preschool-land, Alex the Lion is one of the main characters in Madagascar 1, 2, and 3. He is originally from a zoo in NYC, and he is a charismatic and beloved character.) The child continued, “Alex the Lion has a different voice, and it’s not like my voice!” I explained that since Alex is American and I am American, we have the same accent. He was begrudgingly willing to accept this, but insisted that Alex the Lion and I are not the same, “because Alex has a boy lion voice, not like you.”

My take-away from this, (other than that children are fantastic), is that different accents are a bit hard to process for children. However, despite the imperfection of his understanding, I love the fact that he was able to think of something from his life that connected with what I was talking about. This child was able to distinguish between “like me” and “not like me,” but he was not able to figure out that it was the accent that was different. I think that makes sense, because for children, accents can be difficult to distinguish from unique voices, speech patterns, gender, and even the physical appearance of the person. Or the lion.