March 28, 2007
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And I thought I have a Cantonese accent…
According to someone I met today, I have a Vietnamese accent.
That can’t be right! I can’t possibly have a Vietnamese accent! May be my Cantonese accent isn’t as exaggerated now, but surely I don’t have a Vietnamese accent? I don’t like my Cantonese accent, but having a Vietnamese accent would be worse. Not that I have anything against it, but that just wouldn’t be right! I’m from Hong Kong, and only last year I had someone tell me how heavy my Cantonese accent is.
Is it? I probably say [θ] or [ð] as [f] or [d], but that’s what it can sound like to me. Even in a song American singer I hear “though” pronounced as [doʊ] (as in “though he’s way too young to drive”). Then again, I don’t think I have a problem with liquids, and I definitely don’t exaggerate final consonants.
I’m so glad I chose to study linguistics. I’ve wanted to learn IPA for a few years now, and I never quite got it. At the time, I tried to read all those articles on Wikipedia and I only got confused.
May be it’s actually part of the reason why my accent changed? It probably made me pay more attention to how I pronounce words, especially since I had to transcribe words in IPA for an assignment.
Either way, I don’t want a Vietnamese accent! I do sit next to a Vietnamese person in all my maths lectures. I can’t exactly avoid him either, because I always sit at the front. Hmm… I guess I’ll have to try and balance it out.
Today I’ve also told a group of friends about SSP. They like it so much that they tried to say it even when the group has only been silent for like, two seconds. It’s so funny! Look, Xumbra! I’m telling my friends about #ennui!
