'Accent can't be hidden!': Αccent as a means of heterodetermination

A humorous story about the desire of Greek Canadians not to be recognized as 'Greeks of diaspora' in Greece.

D.L.: Ultimately, their efforts are fruitless, as their accent is distinguishable!' Well, to tell you the truth, my Greek is the same and I think it’s the same except for something that happened once. I went to Greece with my bestman, who is also a lawyer. We wanted to go out and I said: “I'm going to shop because people here will understand I've come from abroad, they will see my shirt, my pants, my shoes”. So, what I did? I bought shoes, pants, a shirt from Greece, the same as the others wear, following the same fashion. And we went swimming, close to the airport, where there are some beaches, if I remember, Vouliagmeni, Voula, maybe Glyfada, I don’t remember well. Glyfada must be there. And we went swimming. I had a camera with me and some other things, and I asked a girl to keep them and that I will get them back when we leave, yeah. Well, we went swimming with my bestman. When I finished, I took my stuff and went out to get into the car to wait for my bestman to get dressed. But he did not know I went out and he was looking for me inside. He went to the girl who had the things and said: "A gentleman who gave you a camera and something else to keep, did he come? Did he get them?" She said: "The man with the foreign pronunciation?" My bestman came out full of laughters. I told him: "What?" "Νο matter what you wore, they understood you from your pronunciation." Well... at this point, I want to give an answer to what you have asked me. Oh, without knowing it, all of us who have learned and speak English here, or French, or something else, we develop a new accent that we are not aware of. We speak Greek, purely Greek for us, but for the others there is a pronunciation, which is different. But we speak Greek normally, and we speak our Zante dialect, we speak normally. We have no problem here, among us. But for the Greeks, we have an accent according to the Greek standards. We have a pronunciation.