On Talking With or Without an Accent

I recently read a blog post from Louis Yap, an 18 year old Malaysian, on the topic of putting on a fake American accent when talking to foreigners. Apparently a lot of Malaysians drop their typical Malay accent and go for an American or English accent when approached by a non-Asian.

His reflections on this topic made me think about how the way I talk has been a major influence on how people react to me when they first meet me. While I was born in Taiwan, I moved to the U.S. when I was just shy of three years of age. I picked up American English easily, and while Chinese was my first language, I speak English completely accent free.

When I was younger and I lived on Long Island, I would regularly have people approach me, and say things like “Wow you speak English so well”. I always had the immediate gut reaction of wanting to say “Of course I do you dimwit, I was raised here”, but usually kept my mouth shut instead. These people were clueless, because there were few Asians if any on Long Island at that time (unlike today).

So, I grew up thinking I didn’t have an accent, until I went to college in Philadelphia, a short 2 hour train ride from New York City. As soon as I stepped foot in my freshman dorm, I was teased mercilessly for having a Long Island accent. So much so, I learned to speak with out it by the time I graduated. Like Louis Yap, who affected an American accent to non-Asians; even I learned to speak differently to fit in to what was expected to come out of my mouth.

But it wasn’t until I was older that talking without an accent really affected the way people treated me. In the working world, other Chinese, would automatically assume I was ABC (American Born Chinese) based on my lack of an accent, and that was enough for them to leave me out of their social circles. While the native Chinese speakers hung out in cliques, I always felt like an outsider, even if I could speak a dialect of Chinese flawlessly.

Of course there’s also an upside to speaking perfect English. Everyone assumes I have no knowledge of Chinese, and will tend to make remarks they don’t want me to hear in Chinese. This too has happened to me on more than one occasion, usually when I’m traveling in Asia, and has led to quite some embarrassment for the other party.

So, what’s the moral of the story? Don’t judge a person based on their accent. You may get more than you bargained for.