Different types of English

Lokes sent this to me and I think it best exemplifies what I try to explain to my American friends all the time, when they say “Wow, how come you don’t have an accent??”.

I do have an accent, as Ruby says. An American accent!

The truth is, many Malaysians and Singaporeans can ‘do’ what Ruby Pan here does (although not as smoothly, and imagine the Singlish as Manglish, with no ‘lors’ and a lot more ‘lahs’). We can dial our “English-ness” up or down according to what is required in any conversation, depending on the person(s) we’re talking to.

Amazing, isn’t it? It’s an innate ability, I tell you. Try it!

This entry was posted on Sunday, May 13th, 2007 at 7:46 am and is filed under Imperfect Everything. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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  1. pelf

    Whenever we have visiting scientists to our Turtle Project, they are almost always amazed by how quickly we switch from one language to another, one dialect to another.

    And guess what I tell them?

    “It’s an innate ability.” (serious!!) LOL.

    May 13, 2007 @ 9:20 am


  2. Hammerhead

    She is absolutely brilliant!! Lots of us overseas do have some accent from the adopted country, but naturally switch back to native when going back for holidays. Me…well 100% natural Malaysian even after more than 20 years.

    May 14, 2007 @ 2:56 am


  3. Kelantan Gal

    This is so true! It’s funny how Americans don’t recognise that they have an accent!

    May 14, 2007 @ 12:02 pm


  4. Tatiana

    Wau lau, this is ho sei, man. I’ve been here a year (me from S’pore) and I get the “no accent” thingy so often, I always wonder if they hear themselves speak. And when I speak in Singlish to my family, they think I’m speaking in a foreign language which sounds a little like English and “not really, I can’t seem to catch all that you’re saying.” What is it? Haha LOL

    May 15, 2007 @ 2:21 pm


  5. domesticgoddess

    This innate ability, doesn’t only apply to English. It applies to Mandarin as well; the Chinese-ness (if there is such a word) can be tuned depending on whether the person one is holding conversation with is from China, Taiwan, Malaysia or Singapore LOL! I do it all the time without realising until my co-worker sitting beside me tells me that “hey, just now you spoke with beijing accent!” hahah!

    May 17, 2007 @ 7:47 pm

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