i speak with an accent in english

[SunWuKong]

so this past weekend this white girl i met at a party told me i have a cool accent. and i thought, "i have an accent?!?"

then later my chinese friend confirmed to me that i indeed have a cantonese accent when speaking in english. what the hell? how come i can't tell?

[kimpossible]

eh, my husband does too. More British than Taiwanese though. Be thankful that you don't do the Chinese grammar in English like he does though. He has a hard time with singular/plural, third person prounouns (it's all ta to him) and he couldn't get an English idiom correct if my life depended on it.

He likes to say "Come sit on my laps."

[deez nuts]

I think mine kinda faded. I haven't gotten an "oh you have an accent in awhile." I think in mandarin and translate it in my mind then speak in english when conversing.

[Chris]

My accent is so prevalent. Especially when I speak english catonese, manadarin and japanese every day. I have an accent in all the language i speak. It really hard for me to get it distinguish accent in each one.

[thaite]

I thought I had gotten rid of mine long ago. But then a few months ago I got braces. So either speak like I normally would and it comes out all mumble and lisp, or I enunciate and the accent shows up.

Freakin' weird.

[karizma]

>> heh i lost my accent and then regained it when i moved from my hometown...now im kind of immersed in an all chinese community...im fobbin it man :D

[igcognito]

My experience, with Asians an accents. Two female Chinese friends. Who speaks poor chinese, but has a STRONg accent when speaking english. Other speaks chinese, but has bad english grammar. So yeah, accents are an odd thing.

They can affect jobs, but they are not life and death situations.

[BeTheReds]

I have an accent when I speak English according to all the Brits I've spoken to. :dance:

[loserbutt]

hmm, how do you speak with an accent anyways? I've been thinking of developing a chinese accent just for fun :)

[atyc]

I speak English with a HongKie accent and life was hell when I was in high school. (I moved to Aust when I was 15, so I attended 3 years of High school.) The first two years (year 10 and 11), I just didn't feel like going to school at all. Everytime I opened my mouth, my friendly fellow schoolmates would follow whatever I said (in Hongkie accent of course). Man, it drove me crazy and I was so depressed (I wish girls would come to me and said that's a cute accent though). As for year 12, it was much more better, most of the friendly guys had left and I started to speak better but I still speak with a Hongkie accent (it didn't help when I went back to HK to work for almost two years...). Anyway, the reason why I am replying to this is that Igcognito said "They can affect jobs, but they are not life and death situations. " . Recently, there had been a shooting incident happened in Aust which killed two HongKie uni students (and 5 or 6 students hurt). And the shooter was a mainland chinese. This has not be proven yet but it's believed the shooter speaks English with a very thick accent and that might have been picked up by those two students and hence the shooting incident as a revenge from the chinese student. Again, this hasn't been stated as the motive for this incident but the news article did mention it. Looking back, I am glad I didn't go as far as that guy. I mean, yeah, I was angry but there wasn't much I could do and it was the time that I really learned how to live without too many friends (I guess it didn't help too, I was the only two Asians in that year with the other one being born in Aust).

[DaBestSpooner]

People tell me I have a manhattan accent and I think to myself "great they think I'm another shithead from the midwest trying to live out their "friends" lifestyle"

I can fake accents pretty well, I do almost any asian country, this comes in handy with telemarketers and survey people.

[bluecollarjap]

when my mom was around i was fluent in japanese, thats how we spoke to each other, but since i was really young i didn't have an accent. i could speak german english and japanese flawlessly. but now i can't remember any japanese. just stuck with this damn w virginia accent for my english, and koelner deutsch.

[lethal]

I speak English with a slight southern drawl. Apparantly I speak Vietnamese with that same slight southern drawl, in addition to the rare central accent. It freaks people out.

I couldn't fake an Asian accent in English if my life depended on it. I've no idea why. There is this one guy in my law school that the socratic method does not apply to because the professors are deathly afraid to call on him, his accent is so thick. His English, as far as I can understand it seems fine gramatically, but you have to concentrate really, really hard to understand him.

[VV o n g B a]

where did u grow up lethal? i grew up in northern alabama and nobody has said i have an accent. i've met several asians from southern alabama that have a strong southern drawl. it was weird talking to them when i first met them.

the strangest combination i've heard is the southern ghetto viet accent. viet grammar and ghetto vocabulary with a twist of southern twang. although a japanese raised in brazil i met comes in a pretty close second. i hadn't met any portugese speaking ppl b/f so that accent kinda caught me off guard.

[kimpossible]

Originally posted by VV o n g B a@Oct 30 2002, 12:21 PM
the strangest combination i've heard is the southern ghetto viet accent. viet grammar and ghetto vocabulary with a twist of southern twang.

That would drive me nuts.