I knew I was different when I was 10.

Besides my immediate family, I was the only Filipino I knew growing up in Camberwell. For those who don’t know, this is one of the most white-bred suburbs of Melbourne. It’s more diverse nowadays, but it’s still not exactly a cultural melting pot. I was keenly aware that I wasn’t like the other kids at school. Well how could I forget? They kept asking if I was American.

See, like everyone everywhere, I learned to speak from my parents, and my parents spoke English with a pronounced accent. To an untrained ear, the Filipino accent contains enough similarities to the American dialect to lump them together. Ten year old ears aren’t trained. Ten year old minds couldn’t find the Philippines on the map. Ten year old mouths could barely say it.

I distinctly remember at some point making a conscious decision to craft a less different me. I understood that I was stuck with the colour of my skin and various other physical features, but with a bit of work I could at least sound the same as the people around me.

And so I did.

I consider myself nowadays to be (amongst other things) a keen observer, a quick study and a fairly stubborn perfectionist. I believe these traits have been with me from a young age, and assisted in the willing transformation of my voice.

Today I speak publicly with a fairly flawless Australian accent. I slip back to my native accent in a heartbeat when talking to my family, and my dialectical shift is the source of much amusement to my girlfriend when she witnesses it. It’s a shift that I have little to no conscious control over. It’s internalised to the point that I couldn’t give an example of my Filipino accent to an Aussie friend without a great deal of concentration and an odd feeling that it’s not me speaking.

I believe that the experience of taking on a second accent at a young age has ultimately given me an ear for phonology and a malleable mouth for producing a wider than normal range of vowel and consonant shapes that has served and influenced my personal development in a number of ways.

I once said as an introduction to myself to a drama class when I was 17 that “I’m an actor because my entire life has been an act.” A joke, but only by half.