My Little English Corner
A new accent is an adventure. Be bold! Exaggerate wildly!
Our recent discussion on accent reminds me of an interesting article I read a couple of months ago on current education. In order to make the point that the new generation， which was born into the digital age and grows up with computer, internet and social media， is very different from those of us who have “learned” or “adapted to” the new technology, the article humorously calls the two generations “Digital Natives” and “Digital Immigrants” respectively. It goes on expanding the concept of “accent” by giving examples of digital immigrant “accent”, such as printing out your email, asking someone to come to your office to show him an interesting website instead of sending him the URL, and calling someone on the phone to ask: “Did you just get my email?”.
I know you are probably laughing at these examples, and you should be, because accent, in its extreme form, is funny. In light of this article, however, I start thinking that maybe we have way more “American Immigrant accent” than we think we do if we expand the definition of “accent” to include the blunders related to the content of our speech, grammatical errors and logical flaws. I couldn’t help but wonder whether we are running the risk of appearing funny or even ridiculous by working meticulously on pronouncing “mountain” in the so-called “美味” (american accent) way and losing sight of a whole “mountain” of English knowledge and American culture. Is our avidness in pursuing the much coveted “美味” in pronunciation overshadowing our efforts in reducing our other “accent” in the content?
I laughed whole-heartedly at a scene from Ha Jin’s book A Free Life, when the protagonist, Nan Wu said to a potential employer in a job interview, “We got laid all together” leaving out the “off” after “laid”. This is surely funnier, and a “thicker accent” than someone pronouncing “laid off” without the lianson.
Another instance in the book that cracked me up is about the use of the idiom “play hooky”. Nan’s wife Pingping “almost gasped” at the phrase used on their landlord’s daughter because she assumed “play hooky” had something to do with “hookers”. Again, this is funnier and Pingping surely has a much “thicker accent” than her husband Nan, who pronounces “th” as “s” or “z”. (Throughout the book, Ha Jin actually reproduces Nan’s speech by writing phonetically, for example, using “zat” for “that”. ).
What I am trying to do here is rehash what selfselfself said three months ago when I, like i999 now, ecstatic about the progress I had made in a short period of time. I didn’t quite agree with him at that time. But after I went to toastmaster to “try out” my newly “remodeled” pronunciation, I realized what I had been missing: content and interesting topics. Recently, NewVoice, Lilac and 小千 have also touched upon this subject/concern in their posts. And I just saw 金迷’s post along the same line of thinking.
Anyway, maybe I am just trying to justify my slacking off on the reading of 900 sentences; Maybe I am just trying to rationalize the ebbing of enthusiasm at the reading; Maybe I am just venting my frustration at the standstill of my progress; Maybe I am just being a sour grape, green(haha, pun!) with envy at 小千 and 泡泡’s talents; What it is, ultimately, is that I have just finished the writing for next week and have practiced my writing with an “accent”. As always, “bricks”, the enemy of “accent”, are welcome.
