Y Thursday, March 20, 2008
1:20 am
This ees jus' een!I wrote my first damned essay in frick'un ages.
It ended up laced with an assortment of spelling errors and assloads of grammatical errors. That or microsoft word is full of fail.
Either way, it shot way past the word limit, like 1000 words or something, and doesn't seem to be too pleasant to read. Yes, I judge my own essays on whether they're "nice" to read or not. LOL. Sorry my eeeengelish is teh fail.
Yeah anyway, on a related note, I chanced upon Singapore-based forum and there was a thread about people with "fake" accents.
There was a link to an old video regarding Xiaxue, Mia and some other random bloggers who had this catfight thingy on national TV.
Here's my basic stance on fake accents. It's good for a joke, since I'm pretty sure not many can pull it off without sounding absolutely retarded. That's about it. Maybe you modify your pronunciations a little when speaking to a foreigner to facilitate understanding. What the hell, that was a bloody long sentence. Essay after-effects.
SO. This Miss Izzy fellow had this really smashed accent. A mish-mash of British, American and Australian accent. What, once she lived in Amer-Tralia-Tain or something? Any one from either of those 3 parts can tell she was faking it >.>. I felt embarrassed for her.
Fail fake accent is fail.
What else on those forums? Oh yeah, that students from 'elite' schools tend to fake accents. Considering many of those forumers were poly-goers or grads, I suppose they refer to chaps from the top JCs or secondary schools. Prolly the more "westernized" ones like VS, RI and possibly ACS.
Can't really blame 'em. Humans take every opportunity to be different. Being exposed an english-speaking enviroment, they possibly feel "one-up" over their peers when they fake an accent. I know, I used to be an asshat like that.
What those people need to know, however, is that an English with Singaporean pronunciations minus the terribad grammar and singlish exists. It's usually adopted by the middle-upper class denizens of Singapore, and in formal situations, or when dealing with strangers. Some dub it the "middle-upper Singaporean accent."
I'll admit to using that. Somehow it instantly snaps a person to attention, I've noticed it many times in in shopping centers and whatnot. It works, they listen, I'm not complaining. Besides, don't our english teachers use it all the time?
Bottom line? Like most things, faking an accent is situational - it's not even necessary. You don't go talking to your friends 24/7 like you would in an interview, so there. Besides being good for fun times, (Lol Israeli playing WoW lawl) you can't deny that sometimes, foreigners just have problems understanding what we say >.>.