I'm "cool" because I fake my English accent

I’m dead sure we have had the misfortune of talking to fellow Malaysians who speak in unnatural accents. If you haven’t, you are one lucky bastard. Come on, you can’t be serious; at the very least, you would have overheard these fools making a mockery of themselves in public unashamedly.

Woe betides you if you are one of these fakers (and I’m not talking about orgasm here).I’m constantly amused by strangers who try to speak like native British, American or Australian yet mispronounce simple words. There had been times I wish I could interrupt their comical conversation and advise them to get their basics right before trying to act all high and mighty.

Pretenders always try to speak with certain twang, depending on which country they have affinity for. For example, someone who’s an Anglophile will try to speak like a Briton or someone who’s enamoured with American pop culture will naturally try to speak like a Yankee. To me, these people are just highly insecure about themselves.Instead of providing us with cheap entertainment, they should take a leaf out of the French, Spaniards’ or Italians’ books because these people speak English in their native accents, proudly! Ironically, these unwitting entertainers always find the Europeans’ accented English very sexy.

Have you ever noticed that when native English speakers of various countries meet up, they do not try to mimic the others’ accents? Instead, their natural accents are more pronounced than ever. I hazard a guess that individually, they proudly embrace their own accents. So, why can’t Malaysians do the same?

Don’t get me wrong, there are indeed many Malaysians who can speak English in foreign accents yet sound natural but these people constitute the minority group. Usually, these Real McCoys have been abroad for a reasonable time. Therefore, it is only natural for them to pick up the localised accents by mingling with the locals. Unfortunately, there are some who have only gone abroad up to a year and when they return, will try to impress their peers by speaking in accents. Worse still, there are those who have never left our shores but strive to speak in accents, nevertheless. For me, picking up an accent is not easy due to 2 factors, the environment they are in and duration of time spent abroad.

Allow me to explain, how can one speak in foreign accented English when their fellow countrymen speak in localised accent all the time? Naturally, they will pick up the localised accent without their knowing. This is what I call the “environment factor”. Please bear with me while I attempt to illustrate this point further, I have friends who used to struggle a great deal stringing proper sentences in English when they were in Malaysia because they spoke in dialects most of the time but they improved leaps and bounds once they moved overseas.

As for duration of time affecting one’s accent, someone who has been spending a considerable time in another country, will unconsciously pick up the general accent in that place and this is brought upon by the “environment factor” as stated in the previous paragraph. Again, I would like to augment my argument; when the very same friends came back from overseas, initially they did speak naturally in foreign accented English but as time passed by, they reverted to Malaysian accented English. How was it possible? It’s the “time factor”, baby!

To make matters more acute, we also have radio announcers who try to outdo each other by speaking in unnatural accented English and again, they sound pathetic in doing so. Believe it or not, they also tend to mispronounce simple words. Some newscasters are equally guilty.

Really, I exhort Malaysians to speak English naturally and only then, will you gain respect. If you are still adamant in speaking unnaturally, please consider my well-being because by doing so, you will only torture my ears.