Language, Accents and Being Understood

A surprising number of first-date disappointments come down to language, and not the kind anyone puts on a profile.

It is not about English. Almost all of us speak it, some of us more elegantly than the people who correct our accents. It is about the other language: the one your mother speaks, the one you dream in, the one you drop into when you are angry or joking or praying. Yoruba, Igbo, Hausa, Twi, Ga, Ewe, Krio, Wolof, Pidgin, French. Whether you want a partner who shares it, or is willing to learn it, or at least understands why it matters, is a real question, and it is better asked early than discovered late.

So put it in your profile, in your own words. "I speak Igbo at home and would love a partner who does too, but it is not a deal-breaker." "My Twi is terrible and I am embarrassed about it, and I would like to fix that with someone patient." "Pidgin is my love language." These are lovely sentences. They tell people who you are and they give the right people a reason to write.

Ask about it early in conversation, and listen without judging. Some people who grew up here carry real grief about not speaking their parents' language, and a partner who makes them feel it as a failure will not last. Others speak it fluently and are quietly tired of being told their English has an accent, and a partner who teases them about it will not last either.

Think, too, about children, if you want them. Which language will they hear at home? Will grandparents be able to talk to them? This is one of the most common regrets we hear from older members, and it is decided, without anyone deciding, in the first years of a marriage.

And then there is the daily business of being understood at all. The joke that lands in Lagos and dies in Mississauga. The proverb your partner has never heard. The word for a feeling that has no English. A good partner will ask what it means. A great one will start using it.