I don’t worry too much about losing my accent. The longer I live overseas, the more neutral my accent becomes, but I wouldn’t say that it’s becoming stilted. Bear in mind that I am from Tennessee. I don’t think many people would feel culturally naked if they lost their Tennessee accent.
I do worry about not being as articulate as before. My active vocabulary has shrunk. I still read a lot, but I just dont’ have many sophisticated conversations in English.
For a while, my grammar was becoming quite dumbed down so that Chinese speakers of English would understand me. I don’t do that as much as before, though. I think it’s because now, if I am talking to a Chinese person who isn’t so likely to understand proper spoken English, I will just speak Chinese to him or her.
My wife is from Hong Kong. I don’t really speak Cantonese, but I notice that we both use a lot of Cantonese words in or conversations, whether we are speaking English or Putonghua. A lot of Cantonese words mean the same thing as words in Putonghua but use fewer syllables. I guess it is just faster to say it in Cantonese. When visiting the states, if my wife and I are just speaking English with each other, my family sometimes can’t understand what the hell we are talking about. I worry that our kids are going to be messed up.
A Pom would probably suggest that you lack ambition & also contend that to teach an Aussie to speak decent english is like trying to teach a pig to sing ie It wastes your time & annoys the pig. I wouldnt say that of course.
My accent has deteriorated to the point where I now sound so much like a whingeing English dandified fop that I can’t stand to hear recordings of my voice. Glottals simply don’t cut it here. But it only takes a week or so at home for the accent to return. I’ve always been susceptible to taking on the accents of those around me – when I worked in Orkney I soon started sounding like an Orkneyman. Thank fuck I never had to work in Dagenham!
I’ll ask the wife tonight when we get off the car if I’m any easier to understand.
The scary thing is I remember talking to my friend who was here a couple of years and asking him ‘what the hell’ happened to his accent, when he read out a telephone number it took 10 seconds, ONE, NINE (nasal american nine) FIVE etc.
Well now it’s happened to me. I must sound so weird to my friends. Most of them have (graciously) not referred to my ‘american’ accent. One bloke asked me where I was from when I went home. When I told him I was a local he gave me ‘you dumped your culture’ sort of look. When I told him I lived in Taiwan for years he didn’t get it. I didn’t get pissed off until later about it. He was the ignorant one, not me.
Funnily enough, after having my accent decimated from living here I am more accepting of other peoples accents. In a strange way it may have made me a more open person! And maybe more anonymous which is good and bad. I knew a guy who moved to England and had a strong english accent although he would freak out if you said it to him directly. Now I can see it is basically inevitable. The reason some Brits here don’t lose their accent is that they have ‘strength in numbers’ and often hang out together. Other Brits just hate sounding like americans. But if you don’t have a british or N.american English accent you will be squeezed in the middle! A spell teaching English will kill it for sure.
Now most people think I am an Aussie…or some strange hybrid.
But when I swear it’s still like the old days, i morph into another creature in front of my girlfriend. Jayzussssss…For Fuck’s sake
It’s not just the fact that I’ve picked up a bit of an American accent, it’s the vocabulary that scares me. I can’t stop saying shite like “I’m going to the bathroom”, my roommate, garbage/trash can, candy or other ridiculous Americanisms no normal self-respecting Koiwoi would say to another. Alos my friend say I speak slower.
Hey, it’s not like us Americans start thinking in the metric system after too much time here, say “Cheers” when we “get pissed”, unconsciously start adding unnecessary u’s to words like “labor”, and think to ourselves, “My, what a fit bird!”
“American English”, such as it is, in Taiwan is a very much simplified and dumbed down version of English which no-one outside Taiwan speaks. I certainly can remember over the years both American and Canadian teachers having the same complaints as I have, of a shrinking vocabulary, and disappearing grammar.
We non-American English speakers tend to blame America (or Americans) for this, but I think it is a Taiwanese problem. Because the government doesn’t give a toss about English language teaching here as long as buxiban laobans can make a fortune out of it, you have a pidgin “Taiwan English” which is gibberish to all native speakers.
Next time you think the Taiwanese speak anything approaching General American, listen to the non-rhoticity of their accents, and the similarity of their vocalic phonemes. All those little pointers that define and make comprehensible a General American accent are missing in Taiwanese English. We can’t blame the Yanks for that!
Mind you, I shudder to think what sort of an accent I have developed in order to make myself understood here… a sort of Anglo-Irish mishmash with bits of Belfast and grunting. But a bathroom is still a room with a bath in it.
Thank god we don’t have to deal with that Ebonics crap here in Taiwan. No Redneckese, either. Or the intentionally obnoxious grating of the NYC/Boston ‘whaddaya lookin’ at?’ accent. When I go back to America, I’m going to have to deal with all those Americans who sound like they have IQs of 85 when they open their mouths to talk. Shudder. At least the Americans and Canadians here in Taiwan seem to talk like normal people with neutral, non-obnoxious and clearly understandable accents for the most part. Compare how your average English teacher in Taiwan sounds compared to Dubya’s Texan drawl, for example - it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out which one is preferable for most people to hear, and which one makes the speaker sound more relatively intelligent and less of an uncultured hick.
mind you, it’s a tough break if you are a native speaking teacher with a strong regional accent in Taiwan. It goes without saying that just cuz u have an accent doesn’t mean you can’t teach or that you’re dumb.
I used to have a fairly standard British accent but know of people from Scotland, Newcastle and other places up north who’ve had a hard time. They’re all bright people and able teachers. I like their accents too.
They’ve learned to tell students that clear pronounciation is more important than accent. Try telling that to the parents of students though!
Clear pronunciation of the English language is NOT difficult, not like some overly-regionally-accented people try to make it out to be. I can put on an authentic Southern drawl or Appalachian hillbilly twang with the best of’em. The way you speak is a matter of choice for the most part. Some are just too stubborn and full of parochial pride to admit that heavy accents can be turned on and off with ease. It only takes a little bit of effort for a native English speaker to speak proper, clearly understandable English, and it’s not too much to ask - especially if they’re forking over $17 American dollars per hour for the privilege of hearing your voice. When I first started teaching here, I kept being told to slow it down because people couldn’t understand what I was saying. So, after several years in Taiwan, I have naturally adjusted to the slow, measured speaking pace expected of me in the classroom. Am I going to whine about that? - that I had to change my rate of speed so that people could understand me? What a silly thing to get so upset about.
I am not a native speaker of english either. The first day I came to Taiwan, I already switched to speaking chinese, though not fluently. Over the years, I’ve acquired taiwanese english and how they speak english. I think it’s fun. I’ve never worried about accent though, I do not have an original accent and even if I have it’s a very weak one. I slipped from taglish to inglish and singlish when my spore, philippines, and indian friends was around.
Non-native speaker is an entirely different kettle of fish. Speaking a foreign language is tough enough; speaking in a foreign tongue without traces of your native language in syntax, grammar, & accent is next to impossible for most people. How many waiguoren can speak Mandarin (or Taiwanese!) without butchering their tones? Maybe a dozen foreigners on the entire island, I’d wager.
I often find myself in the company of a group of translaters who are pretty outstanding speakers of Mandarin. What you write about one’s Mandarin always having traces of non-native accent, grammar, and syntax is absolutely true. No matter how good any of us are at speaking Mandarin, it isn’t realistic to think that we’ll ever be on par with a native speaker. But then, that isn’t what most people who get along well in Mandarin are after.
