Monday 27 July 2015

Back to the issue of Singaporeans and their accent

Hello everyone. You know I love a good article that stimulates an active debate and this was one I came across today about Singaporeans and their accents: Why We Find Singaporeans Who Speak With Fake Accents So Annoying. I do like the article - however, there are some points in her piece which I do not agree with and I'd like to offer my take on the issue. I am amazed that she actually got through her entire article without once mentioning Amos Yee - undoubtedly he is the Singaporean with the most annoying fake accent. After all, Amos has ever never lived or studied in America - his fake American accent was picked up via TV, movies and pop music, hence it is clearly not authentic and comes across as rather grating and crass I'm afraid!
But then again, is it fair to expect Singaporeans to speak a certain way, say like our parents? Well my father doesn't even speak English to begin with - so am I supposed to blindly follow in his footsteps and not speak English as well? But oops, the moment I set foot in primary school, the Singaporean education system dictated that I must be educated in English. Chinese was but a second language in school, so I was always going to have a different relationship with the English language as a result of the education system. Singapore has evolved dramatically in the last 50 years, as no doubt the SG50 celebrations will remind you, is it any wonder that the way we speak has evolved too?

The fascinating thing about Singapore is that it is linguistically diverse: whilst English is the lingua franca, a wide range of languages are spoken at home including Malay, Mandarin, Hokkien, Cantonese, Teochew, Hainanese, Tamil, Tagalog and many others. The mix of languages we end up having as a result of the languages spoken by our other family members is always going to affect the way we speak English and Singlish. So even amongst those Singaporeans who have never ever lived outside Singapore, they will have a range of different influences affecting their accents - the most obvious one is the way Chinese, Malay and Indian Singaporeans often have different accents as their English is most influenced by the languages that their parents speak at home. As such, there isn't one standard Singaporean accent when it comes to English, but a whole multitude of different accents amongst the 5.4 million inhabitants of Singapore - some of whom speak English extremely well, some of whom struggle with English.
I come from a very Hokkien speaking family - everyone in my family is fluent in Hokkien and I adore using loanwords from Hokkien. I am very frustrated however, when other Singaporeans stare at me blankly when I use a loanword from a language they simply do not understand at all - take my good friend Bryan for example: his Mandarin is excellent but his parents speak Cantonese, not Hokkien. So he simply does not understand my loanwords in Hokkien and by the same token, I struggle to understand his loanwords from Cantonese given how limited my Cantonese is. What we end up doing is defaulting to standard Mandarin and English to understand each other when we converse, which is something one gets used to when communicating in Singapore. There is no point in me trying to project my Hokkien identity onto Bryan this way: using words from a language that he doesn't understand only alienates and confuses my friend - so I have to put his needs before mine and speak in a way that makes complete sense to him.

This is when I part company with her on the issue though: she finds it annoying when Singaporeans speak with 'fake western accents' to other Singaporeans. Oh dear. She is going to hate the way I talk as I have spent half my life in Europe and I sound distinctly Angmoh when I speak English. But gimme a break, I live in London, not Singapore: if I spoke with a very strong Singaporean accent in London, nobody is going to figure out what the hell I am saying. Everyday tasks like getting medicine from the pharmacy to buying a ticket at a train station would be difficult, if not impossible if the locals cannot understand me without subtitles! It is out of pure necessity that I have modified my accent to sound a lot more like the locals here, because I want to speak in a way they can understand easily, that they are used to. I am putting their needs before mine. I can switch to a Singaporean accent if the social situation required it, but those situations tend to be only in Singapore. Singlish is very hard for non-Singaporeans to understand.

Hence that's why I am somewhat disappointed in her article because she works in sales - this is something I have learnt after having worked a long time in sales. You should always put the client's needs before yours, you are not as important as the client, you should be humble and treat the client as a VIP. If the client wants to speak the Queen's English, then you jolly well stuff your Singlish where the sun don't shine and you speak proper English. And by the same token, if the client wants to speak Hokkien (which was the case when I dealt with a Taiwanese client in London who was thrilled to meet a fellow Hokkien person), then I stuffed my Queen's English where the sun don't shine and spoke to him in Hokkien (his Taiwanese Hokkien wasn't easy to understand). Either way, you let the other party decide what kind of language they want to speak, you don't impose your preferences on them.

I remember when I lived and worked in France, I always allowed my French friends to decide if they wanted to speak to me in French or English. Some of them were keen to practice their English with me or some English very well - others were either unwilling or unable to speak much English at all, but either way, I allowed them to decide which language they wanted to use because I was polite enough to put their needs first. Sure my French isn't as good as my English, but to me, it was more important to make the other person more comfortable in the language of his choice and I would rather be the one made to work a bit harder if I realized that my French was going to be undoubtedly better than his English. This is why it irks me to read the way most of her friends seem unwilling to compromise even a little by modifying their accents for foreigners to understand them a bit better and facilitate communication. I'll like to try to see them try to live in France or work in Germany and see how far their stubborn attitude gets them!
Why would you want to inflict your Singlish on Angmohs?

Is changing your accent a sign of insecurity? Not necessarily - it all depends on the context. If I met an elderly British couple in Singapore who were hopelessly lost and needed directions, I would alter my accent and sound as British as possible so as to make sure they understood my directions as clearly as possible. My priority in that context would be to make sure I communicated in a way that was most easily understood by them - it would be the wrong time to give them a taste of what Singlish sounds like. If I met a taxi driver who was more comfortable speaking Singlish or Mandarin, then that would definitely be the wrong time to speak English like an Angmoh, even if I have spent half my life in the West. As always, context is everything.

Hence in Singapore, the situation is not as straight forward - there is a sliding scale between Singaporeans who speak standard English with a slight hint of a Singaporean accent right through to those who speak epic Singlish (remember the famous hail lady from Jurong West whose video went viral?) Should those who speak epic Singlish demand that those who speak standard English to change? Let's not forget - we tend to write in standard English; if a child were to write in Singlish say in an English essay for school, the teacher would certainly go mad. We are taught from a young age that there is a certain 'proper' way to use English and that does lead some Singaporeans to consider Singlish as less proper than standard English.  This has been going on for decades. Thus what Singaporeans do is the classic code switch: we alter the way we speak according to the social context. This is easier said than done of course - but it is an asset to be able to change one's accent at the flick of a switch: it is however plain unreasonable to assume that all Singaporeans must speak English a certain way otherwise you are going to call them fake or insincere. That's crazy, come on guys: decide what is right for yourself by all means but stop trying to impose your judgment on others.
So in her piece, she talked about a fellow Singaporean who corrected her Singlish - now I can see why her felt irritated, I would have been irritated too as well! It was certainly uncalled for - if someone else chooses to speak Singlish, it is either because they like Singlish (and hence you should respect their choice to speak it) or they can't speak English properly (in which case, correcting them would do little good unless you're willing to offer them long term English tuition). But let's try to turn this around for the sake of the argument - what if you met another Singaporean like Amos Yee who wants to speak American English, what do you do then?

1. Berate him for choosing American English, tell him that he is wrong and that he sounds stupid like that.
2. Try to understand why he has made that choice and respect his choice to speak American English.
Please note that if you chose option 2, it doesn't mean that you have to speak American English like him, you simply accept that he prefers to speak like that and basically live and let live. As for her assertion that some Singaporeans find a 'fake accent' a turn off, well I think that's regrettable. It shows that they are seeking friends who speak Singlish/English just like them and are intolerant of even of a slight difference in accent. Good grief, I find it shocking that Singaporeans can be this intolerant of differences in this day and age! Let me tell you a little story about my parents when they met.

My parents met way back in 1965 - my Hakka father spoke Hakka, Cantonese, Malay and Mandarin. My Hokkien mother spoke Hokkien, English and some Malay. They had to communicate in a mix of Hokkien and Malay when they first met: being Hakka (his first language is in fact Hakka), my father spoke Hokkien with a funny accent but his Malay was very good as he was from Malaysia. Being born and bred in Singapore, my mother spoke Hokkien as a first language, but her Malay was far from perfect as it was pasar-Malay which she picked up from her friends and neighbours (she never studied Malay at school). Yet with this mishmash of Hokkien and Malay, they communicated and fell in love. My mother learnt a bit of Mandarin from my father, my father learnt a bit of English from my mother and today, they speak in a very Singaporean rojak-mix of Hokkien, Mandarin, Malay and a little English. Note that it's not even Singlish as it contains very little English. Even after so many years, they still sound totally different in the way they talk because they have different mother tongues: but who cares? Do their accents matter to each other? No.
I've worked in Germany... let's see you guys try your Singlish in Germany.

I wish to take her up on a point she made, she wrote that speaking with an Angmoh accent is "a sign that you perceive the Singaporean culture as inferior". Since when have you guys become ambassadors of Singaporean culture? Duh. No, newsflash people: no, you're not an ambassador of Singaporean culture, you merely represent yourself and everyone has a different cultural identity. Your cultural identity is a result of your education, your upbringing and the experiences you've had - your cultural identity is as unique as your fingerprints. Some people are more cultured than others, some people enjoy the opera whilst others prefer action movies. Some people prefer reading Shakespeare and Chaucer whilst others prefer watching clips of people falling down on Youtube. The way you speak, the topics you choose to talk about, the way you present yourself to the world is a function of your personal cultural identity - so it is plain silly to jump to any kind of conclusion or judgement about Singaporean culture vs Angmoh culture. What if I prefer to have sushi instead of laksa for lunch? Are you going to accuse me of perceiving Japanese culture to be inferior to Japanese culture? I just feeling like having sushi today - it's got nothing to do with any kind of value judgement on the relative merits of the cultures.

I also have a problem with the way she thinks that one must speak English the Singaporean way or else s/he is somehow false or unauthentic. What about the wide variety of other languages that define Singapore: Malay, Mandarin, Hokkien, Cantonese, Teochew, Hainanese and Tamil are but some of the many other languages which have been spoken in Singapore for a long time. I think it is far more important to embrace all these languages - to learn some Malay, Tamil, Cantonese and Hokkien if you really want to feel a true sense of the full cultural and linguistic diversity that defines Singapore. I'm not sure if she speaks any Tamil or Malay (I speak conversational Malay to a decent standard and did make a valiant attempt to study Tamil before, but my Tamil is very limited), but I find it ironic that she would get irked about people who don't speak English like her whilst she has neglected to make a genuine effort to appreciate the languages of her Malay and Indian friends in Singapore. After all, the national anthem of Singapore is in Malay - you are surrounded by Malay and Tamil speaking people in Singapore all the time, yet you Chinese Singaporeans seem to have this blind spot in refusing to make any effort to learn their languages which are as much a part of the fabric of Singaporean society. You wanna feel more Singaporean, why not try learning Malay? 
Do you know what this means?

In any case, I cringe at the way Singlish has evolved in the last 20 years. I no longer recognize it and when I try to speak Singlish to Singaporeans these days, they do not understand me. This is because when I learnt Singlish back in the 1980s, it was such a rich mix of English infused with Mandarin, Hokkien, Cantonese, Teochew, Malay and Tamil - it was beautiful to listen to and a joy to speak. Nowadays, Singaporean-Chinese people tend to speak only Mandarin and English, so the moment I use a loanword from any other of those Chinese dialects, Malay or Tamil, I am met with blank stares. For example, I like to use the phrase 'akan datang' - that's Malay for 'coming soon' , but you'll be amazed how many younger Singaporeans don't even know Malay words like that. It is frustrating to see that Singlish is evolving in the wrong direction - it is become sterile and stripped of what makes it unique to Singapore. Without all these interesting loanwords from other languages, it just looks and sounds like bad English. She bemoans the way new migrants are not picking up Singlish - but I have news for your, Singlish is dying a slow death because of the refusal of younger Singaporeans to embrace the full linguistic diversity that defines Singapore. Younger Singaporeans are the ones who have killed Singlish by refusing to learn Hokkien, Malay and other local languages - it has very little to do with the migrants. Singlish or Singaporean English is a lot more than having an accent or dropping in the odd 'lah' at the end of your sentence - the vibrant nature of Singlish is a microcosm of our multilingual, mutlicultural Singaporean society. Hearing the very sterile 2015 version of Singlish, stripped of so many Malay and Hokkien words, just leaves me sad and disappointed. 

Linguistically, I am probably more Singaporean than most Singaporeans like her (I doubt she speaks Malay as well as I do despite the fact that she lives in Singapore whilst I live in London) in that I speak English, Mandarin, Malay and Hokkien - I also struggle on in Cantonese and even understand a little Tamil. Yet because I am capable of speaking English like a British person after having spent half my life in Europe, most Singaporeans would rush to judgment and assume that I am somehow ashamed of the fact that I was born and bred in Ang Mo Kio. And that really, really irks me so much. Why are you guys judging me by how well or poorly I speak English, rather than checking if I speak Malay or Hokkien or any of the other local languages of Singapore? Why do you demand that Singaporeans must speak English a certain way and be totally intolerant of others who may be somewhat different? 
How dare you have a different accent?!

That's why I think it was a bit of a cheap shot for her to have wrote an article like that, I almost get the feeling that she was trying to get in on the SG50 spirit and celebrate all things Singapore including the Singaporean accent - it was also a cheap shot to attack Singaporeans who do not speak English with a Singaporean accent. Most of all, she had failed to differentiate between those who spoke English with a genuine accent and those like Amos Yee who are trying to copy the American accent but not very successfully. I had a Singaporean classmate in RI who grew up in Germany and he had a very strong German, his family moved to Germany when he was two years old and hence he spoke German fluently, English with a German accent and virtually no Chinese. Now surely you have got to treat this guy differently from someone like Amos Yee who was born and bred in Singapore. But she seems to tar them all with the same brush - which seems unfair to say the least.

Lastly, I find it irritating that people should be so judgmental about whose accent is genuine and whose accent is fake. That's so arrogant. Perhaps the experience of learning a foreign language would make one feel a bit more humble about the whole issue - I have very fond memories of learning French at l'Alliance Française at Newton Circus back in the day. As beginners in French, we all struggled so much with the pronunciation of the French words and needless to say, we all had a very strong Singaporean when we tried to speak French. I didn't want to pay good money to end up sounding like a Singaporean struggling to speak French but failing miserably because I had mispronounced all the words - no, I wanted to speak French fluently like a French person without any errors in my pronunciation. Having been put through that process in French, it made me re-examine my relationship with English and question if I really needed to deliberately mispronounce so many words the way Singaporeans do just to be considered 'authentic' by my peers. Are you really going to reject me as a friend if I don't make the same pronunciation mistakes as you do?
English will enable you to communicate with people around the world

So that's it from me on this issue. I hope to spark a debate on the issue here and I would love to hear from you on the issue. What do you think abouther article and the points I have made in response here? Do you have a strong Singaporean accent? How fake is Amos Yee's accent? How do you feel about people like Amos Yee who have a different accent then? Please let me know what you think in the comments section below, many thanks for reading. 


31 comments:

  1. I don't technically find Amos Yee's accent grating. He picked it up from television, and it is common when the media is proliferating with American programs and shows, and what you hear as a teenager is mostly American, not Canadian, British, or Australian. Plus, some argue that the American accent is supposedly the clearest to understand compared to the Australian or some regional British or Irish accents, although I disagree, because the American accent spoken on television originated from Cincinnati, Ohio, and does not vouch for the broad division of accents in America between west coast, upper east coast, midwest, Southern (including Southeastern), and plains, as well as everything else in between.

    I seriously have no idea where the Singaporean notion that 'if you do not speak in Singlish, then you are not truly Singaporean and hence pretentious' comes from. It could be insecurity, but in lieu of this insecurity, I would rather be snubbed as being pretentious and speak correct English, even if it is with an accent. After all, everyone has an accent, and it is just a matter of whether it is acceptable or not. I care more for accepting the way I speak, not others accepting or rejecting me if I do not speak Singlish.

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    1. I think is rather patronizing to switch to Singlish for us on our visits. It's like saying to the other person that that is all he/she knows and we have to accommodate because we are gracious.

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  2. Jeraldine has to accept that not everyone wants to speak Singlish. Also, not speaking Singlish does not mean we are snobs or fakes. That's saying we all have to fit into pigeon holes built for us by others. If Jeraldine wants to speak Singlish herself, she should not be irked by those who don't. I find it insulting and presumptuous of her.

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    1. I prefer to practice my (somewhat rusty) Hokkien when I am back in Singapore - I have little desire to speak Singlish really.

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    2. I personally will practise my Teochew and speak English the way I speak everyday. Singlish is very grating, but I don't begrudge others of using it .

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  3. I struggled with the issue for a bit when a Singaporean friend openly showed disdain for my habit of speaking with an American accent to locals in the US (he found it deceitful and overly fawning on American culture), preferring instead to speak standard English to everyone. But in the end I just decided, heck, if it makes other people so much more comfortable and more open with me, it makes me more comfortable, so I'll stick with it. Besides, it really isn't just the accent but an entire set of lingo/mannerisms that gives the chameleon effect. Interestingly, though I never had trouble turning on and off Singlish, I have huge trouble with Singaporean Mandarin, since I had gotten used to speaking standard Mandarin with my numerous mainland Chinese colleagues in the US, and got flak from my mother about speaking "Beijing-accented" Chinese after coming back!

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    1. Hmmmm. Do you know how people can use language to either identify with a group of people or show that group of people that "I'm not one of you"? Let me give you an example - when I was in JC, I was queuing up at a Snack Bar at Marine Parade when the auntie behind the counter served someone else who jumped the queue - feeling pissed off with her, I chose to speak to her in standard English instead of Mandarin or Hokkien to asset some kind of superiority over her. Likewise, when I am arguing with my mother, I would switch from Singlish to British English to send her the message, "I'm far more educated than you, so just accept that you're wrong and I'm right."

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  4. You know what really grinds my gears (http://i.imgur.com/p1oZh0q.jpg)? Previously while studying Japanese there was this one guy who kept speaking Japanese to everyone regardless of nationalities even outside class.

    I mean it's good he wants to practise and all that but i find it just too weird to speak a foreign language to someone who can clearly speak better English or Mandarin.

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    1. One should always seek the consent of the other party when trying to practice speaking a foreign language - I get that a lot with my friends who wanna practice their French, Spanish, Mandarin, Welsh etc with me.

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  5. To be honest, I find Singlish pretty grating (as with fake Western accents). I prefer the sound of Singaporean English as was spoken by LKY and a few others. It is fluently spoken English, with a tinge of Asian accent,

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    1. I just don't understand those who are so obsessed with Singlish - I am far more interested in speaking Singaporean/Southern Malaysian Hokkien. Now that's my mother tongue, spoken by just around 1.5 million people fluently in the area stretching from KL to Batam/Bintan including Singapore. The fact that Jeraldine totally ignored the prominence of Hokkien in Singapore society is somewhat disappointing - I love the way Singapore is so multilingual and it's not like, oh there's one national language called Singlish; rather, there is a complex mix of different languages and they all have their rightful place in Singapore.

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  6. Maybe these Singaporeans like Jeraldine believe in this illusion of a "Singaporean identity" and view those who do not conform to Singaporean traits as traitors or phoneys who have rejected this Singaporean identity. Perhaps there is also a bit of self-centeredness on their part, which means they are of the opinion that "since I cannot/will not adopt a foreign accent/speak English properly, others are also not allowed to do so."

    Or maybe it is their inferiority complex rearing its ugly head. From young, Singaporean students have always been told to speak and write proper English and those who do not do so would do badly in English and would be criticised by the English teacher. Thus some of those people who find it hard to master English develop a sense of resentment or jealousy towards those who speak good English and/or have an ang moh sounding accent. So said people engage in a chest-beating exercise to try to put down those who speak English in a "posh" manner in order to feel better about themselves, whether they are aware of it or not. Just my two cents based on my observation!

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    1. Right WJ, I agree with you. Those who have not managed to master standard English do feel a strong sense of resentment against those who have - that's why I'd much rather show Singaporeans just how local I can be by speaking Hokkien fluently rather than attempting Singlish. It's just too contentious.

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    2. I was wondering if Jeraldine was actually the girl with a terribly strong accent reeking more of Singlish than Singaporean English that represented Singapore in some beauty pageant event abroad? That beauty queen wannabe did not speak very well, and her accent was worse than Ris Low's!

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  7. I cringe when I read some of Jeraldine's writing. She uses Singlish here and there for ... ? It reminded me of Ris Low (thanks for bringing her up, Kevin! Yikes!). That is too bad because she does have good topics sometimes and seems earnest in her social comments. Singlish should never be written if you want to be taken seriously. Heck, it should not even be spoken if you want to be taken seriously. Do you see it in the Straits Times? Even the Lee clan avoids it.

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    2. Maybe it is a generation gap thing (I am older than Jeraldine after all) but I prefer to use Hokkien, Malay or Mandarin to make that connection because it shows I am making more of an effort to switch to a different language or them - the greater the effort, the greater the gesture, the better (I hope) it will come across as a means of establishing a rapport. Singlish just doesn't have that same effect. I remember once in a class in JC I used the Malay word 'malu' and an Indian classmate protested and said, "do you realize you are alienating me when you're using a word from Hokkien that I don't understand?" And I said, "that's actually a Malay word" and she replied, "Either way, how do you think you're making me feel if you're excluding me from the conversation like that?"

      Sure I could bitch that most Indian-Singaporeans would actually know the word 'malu' (to be embarrassed) but I had no idea what Hokkien or Malay loanwords she would understand and thus defaulted to standard English when speaking with her (or in her presence) - so Singlish can alientate people as well and it is important to get it just right - so you can establish rapport with those who do speak Singlish without alienating those who can't understand it. A pretty tall order - so I prefer to just use loanwords from other languages when writing in standard English. My writing is littered with plenty of loanwords all the time, but I always put the translation in brackets just to make sure that I don't alienate anyone.

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    3. As an aside, the winner of Miss Singapore Universe was a girl who spoke with a North American accent. Allegedly, she had spent at least 7 years in Canada and the USA, did her high school in Canada and graduated from New York University. Detractors claimed that she ought to speak Singlish to represent Singapore. I beg to differ, because beauty pageants are not discriminating against women based on accent, and want a candidate who is beautiful, intelligent and has a clear vision of what she wants to do as am ambassador of women once she wins. Her accent, or lack thereof, is not relevant at all, so she can speak in an American accent as much as she wants to, especially if she was brought up there and also had an extensive social circle there.

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    4. Jeradline --- I had no idea you were actually in a pageant! I compared you to Ris Low because Kevin Jang mentioned her above, and I was thinking, "Yes! I cringed when I watched Ris Low's interviews, and I also cringed when I read some of your Singlish."
      I wonder why you think you need to use Singlish to connect to your readers? Again, isn't it patronizing and presumptuous that your readers prefer Singlish? Oprah WInfrey and Barack Obama both grew up poor. They can speak "ghetto English" if they wanted to, They don't. Yet, they are able to transcend across all demographics. Oprah at times (rarely) spoke like a Southern black person just to crack a joke, but 99.99% of the time, she spoke like any other talk show host. Yet, people from all backgrounds (privileged or otherwise) were able to relate to her. Same for Barack. Same for LHL. Do you hear the royal family speaking with a cockney accent when they are shaking hands with their under-privileged subjects? In fact, that would be quite insulting if they did.
      Basically, it's your blog, and you are free to write however you want. If you think it works for you, great! If that is the kind of readership you want to attract, why not? Just unsolicited food for thought coming from me.

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    5. I wonder if Jeraldine is aware that she is insulting her readers by claiming that they are from unprivileged backgrounds?

      As for me, I am extremely privileged since I am a reader of Limpeh 's blog. Thank you Alex ;)

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    6. By the way, Jeraldine, just to clarify, I was not trying to insult you as much as point out that you had a strong tinge of Singlish in your speech patterns as compared to many. You sounded more informed than Ris Low on the whole in the way you think, but surely, at least from another point of view, if you speak with a neutral accent, you get your message across to more people. Then again, if you are comfortable with that accent, I should not take it away from you! It is the same way in which Singaporeans and some other Asians, such as Japanese and Koreans, ask me about my accent and cannot figure out where I am really from, despite trying to guess that I am Asian-Canadian or American. I was educated by British, American and Canadian teachers throughout my years of studies, and am proud of my speech patterns as it is, because I believe no one should use that against me to claim that I speak "bad English", when in fact, every "native speaker" understand me perfectly and clearly. As the saying goes, "Whatever makes you happy!"

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  8. Tell me about it, dude!

    Went for Reservist last year. I was one of the last few soldiers from that generation - in our mid to late 30s. We were surrounded by baby-faced soldiers fresh into their first ICT. All in their early 20s.

    These guys spoke primarily English. No Mandarin, no Hokkien, no nothing. What's worse, they spoke in TEXTSPEAK! Great loopy linguistics, Batman!

    "El-oh-el"

    "Oh-em-gee"

    I felt like such a dinosaur. This next upcoming one should be my last. Just as well, I'm not sure I can take anymore of that crap.

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    1. I'm currently classmates with mostly millennials so tell me about it. Just this week i overheard someone walking past saying gee-gee which i think is just wrong. Gg is abbreviation for good game and unless your context is some online gaming event all other usage is just so wrong. Even at a sports event you don't walk up to tell your opponent gee-gee.

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  9. Another great read! I find that even tough it is true that Amos Yee speaks with an American accent that was picked up via TV, movies and pop music, a stranger would simply have the first impression that he indeed had a long period of stay in America just by the way he delivers it. It was annoying as heck to me of course but it's just the matter of not being used to hearing it regularly. One of his videos 'How to speak Singlish' demonstrates a fine insight to his grasp of his learning ability to learn language. I had learnt great deal from it and share it with my friends.

    I had observed a magical moment where two seniors (an Indian and Chinese Singaporean) conversed in Malay! Their level of mastery in Malay puts me to shame haha ��

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    1. Yup, my Malaysian-Chinese father is of that generation. His English is non-existent but he is totally fluent in Malay.

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  10. Jeraldine's article is not an insightful exploration of SG accents or Singlish or whatsoever, but just a meaningless rant on how people CHOOSE to speak in a different way.

    She mentioned the concept of superiority, that really threw me off the chairs lol. Accents are just bloody accents, no comparison is ever needed therefore notion of superiority is never extant.

    UNLESS, she is the one actually unconsciously acknowledges that foreign accents are 'superior' and she too recognizes that SG accent just doesn't sound appealing to ears, therefore defensive mechanisms kick in due to inferiority complex: insteading putting effort to change the way she wanted to speak, she just taints whoever wants to speak in a different accent (which is closer to standard pronunciation) with the same brush that they are 'fake, pretentious and think SG accent is inferior.'

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  11. There's nothing wrong with Singlish. It's just another language that Singaporeans use. It isn't 'bad' or 'wrong', so people who find it 'grating' are indeed projecting a kind of negative view onto Singlish, thereby opting for a 'higher' variety of English. They don't realise it, but they are in fact judging Singlish as a lesser variety. Perhaps I'm trained to think this way because I'm a Linguistics major.

    That aside, I studied 4 months on exchange in an international university. The lecturer was American, most of the students American and I had to give a presentation for final CA. Did I use Singlish or even Singapore Standard English? Nope. I picked up the American accent within two weeks of arriving there and used it everywhere. I got great marks for my presentation. But when I came back to Singapore, I switched back to Singlish and Singapore Standard English immediately. That American accent never surfaced again.

    I don't completely agree with what Jeraldine says, but it is true that a 'fake accent' in Singapore by Singaporeans who grew up in this lovely country connotes that you reject the linguistic culture of the place you grew up in. If I met someone like your RI friend, however, I would be very excited to hear how he speaks English and not condemn him. Younger Singaporeans just don't like it when Spore born and bred people put on a fake accent for the purpose of attempting to be more 'classy' in the wrong contexts. There IS a concept of superiority because everyone subscribes to the notion of a 'standard' language especially if, taking myself for example, I wanted to tell the world that I had a fantastic experience overseas and start speaking with the American accent to show off. If we are convinced that you spent long years overseas such as in America, we would be less critical of the accent, but it is my belief that having come back to Singapore, one should be able to effortlessly pick up the Singaporean accent again. It's natural for people to code-switch when they need it. Not doing so means the person is making a conscious effort to stand out, and that says something about his attitudes towards that particular language/accent.

    No one will say anything though, if you're speaking to an Ang Moh over the phone and really need to adapt to his way of speaking for communication purposes. The point here is knowing when to use what. :)

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  12. Hi, I think it is important to understand differences between Standard Singapore English (SSE) and Colloquial Singapore English (CSE or Singlish). While both involve the Singaporean accent, one is more easily understood than the other.

    English, when spoken well with a Singaporean accent, should be generally more easy to understand than when spoken poorly. Good spoken SSE is well received, and usually can be observed in those belonging to higher social classes in Singapore. A good example would be Lee Kuan Yew, who managed to speak so fluently in a English while using a Singaporean accent. His pronunciations and intonations are in no way unfamiliar to us Singaporeans, yet he is able to bring to us speeches so articulate even on an international level while remaining similar to our speech patterns. https://www.overseassingaporean.sg/en/stories?ArticleId=%7BF33D74ED-F4DA-4A08-9981-D32FEA8C8D16%7D

    Hence I think what you should be critical of is not the accent, but the use of Singlish to foreigners. Our accent is okay.

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    1. I agreed with you Sheng until the point where you used LKY as an example. Now one thing that's clear is that LKY is extremely highly educated and intelligent of course and has a masterful command of the English language and just for clarification, yes I am very familiar with the way he spoke. But whilst you insist on calling that SSE just to have the stamp of the word 'Singapore' on it, I disagree on that part. I think that he spoke with a kind of international standard English that barely had any hint of a Singaporean accent. If we were to just play a part of an interview he did out of context, without actually showing the listener the video of whom was speaking, most listeners (who would otherwise recognize his voice) would struggle to place him as Singaporean or even from roughly this part of the world. Why? Because he spoke clearly without a specific regional accent that tied him down to Singapore. In fact, I actually did my homework and watched a number of LKY speeches on Youtube and his accent does vary with his audience - he can sound more Singaporean when addressing a local Singaporean audience whilst he sounds more 'international'/neutral when say being interviewed by a foreign journalist. Does he sound like a white person from England or America? No he doesn't. But does he sound particularly Singaporean? No, he doesn't either. Well, it's just not something we do as Singaporeans when an Angmoh reporter sticks a microphone in our faces for an interview, we automatically switch to a more neutral brand of standard English - it's called code switching (you must have heard that a thousand times already) and we do not speak the same way in a formal interview compared to say when we chat amongst our Singaporean friends at a hawker center.

      There is a sliding scale as to how strong the Singaporean accent can be and most of us who do have a masterful command of English are in control of where we want to set that dial and we can adjust it to suit the occasion. Being a politician, LKY is an expert when it comes to that, but to label his international standard English as Standard Singapore English is misleading as he has clearly stripped away a lot of his Singaporeanness from it. And yeah us Singaporeans, we understand that brand of standard English well - but then again, we can watch a Hollywood movie and understand American accents without subtitles perfectly well. Understanding an accent comes from practice and we've had plenty of practice consuming Western media in the form of music, movies, TV, youtube, social media etc. We have no problems understanding Angmohs when they talk - so saying that Singaporeans understand LKY's brand of standard English doesn't back up your argument since Singaporeans never had much of a problem understanding international English anyway. The problem as you have pointed out, is when Angmohs can't understand what the hell Singaporeans are saying - not till they forcefully strip out all the elements of the local accent, the way LKY has learnt to do so well when addressing a world stage. His standard English is not Singaporean, or at least it is barely Singaporean at all.

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    2. Sheng, I noticed you posted this on an old article from 2015. I have written more on this issue this year:

      http://limpehft.blogspot.com/2018/10/q-what-is-wrong-with-singaporean-accent.html

      http://limpehft.blogspot.com/2018/10/your-voice-how-do-you-find-your-accent.html

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