When I was a kid, I read a lot of books that had American slang and watched a lot of Hollywood movies. I remembered that my first movie experience was watching Independence Day at the cinema. I avoided watching Chinese movies without English subtitles as I didn’t understand what the characters were talking about without them. As I advanced in the grades in primary school, it became apparent that English was my best subject. Because of the media I’d consumed, I soaked the language like a sponge. By extension, I took in the accent, too, and the result was strange.
I was in a land of Singlish, with “lahs” and “lors”, but 12-year-old me spoke with an annoying and fake American accent. I’d also gotten the idea that one had to speak proper English, thanks to what the teachers have tried to impress on me. (I supposed it was easier to grade me during my oral examinations back then.) It was also easier for me to do both debate and drama, which I still love to this very day.
But of course, my pretentious accent was one of the causes of my bullying. I went to a secondary school where nearly every single kid came from a Chinese speaking household, and I was the anomaly. The freak among everyone else. I was teased and mocked relentlessly for my accent and bullies would talk down to me because I didn’t understand their Chinese (but that is for another blog post). Over time, because of the bullying, I made my pretentious, Americanised accent disappear. In fact, to fit in, I once sprinkled Singlish in passing, only to be scolded by the teacher who headed the English department. I was damned if I spoke Singlish and damned if I spoke English with my fake American accent, so I had to make a compromise. I listened to what sounded like a neutral accent and copied. That didn’t make the bullying go away, but at least, I had a more neutral accent. It was one thing less for the bullies to fault me for.
I neutralised my accent because I didn’t want to be bullied. And previously, I had a western sounding accent because of this neo-colonial mentality–i.e., it just sounded like I was speaking proper English and in order to sound like I was, I had to sound white. I don’t know where this idea came from, to be honest. No one ever told me that I had to sound white. No one ever said that my Singaporean accent was bad, but all the TV hosts, and actors I’d watched on television changed their accent. The radio DJs spoke with an American accent. The idea was subliminal, but it was there.
Somehow, I started talking in a neutral accent simply because of the environments that I was in. Debate and drama were CCAs that catered to students from schools whose parents were well-off, and even though my teammates and I were from neighbourhood schools, we did not want to sound like dopey kids form a lower income stratum. The debaters from better schools would look down on us and make snarky remarks about us, so it was really about defending ourselves before we could be insulted. Debate, was especially classists in this aspect, and I internalised this mindset. I was also guilty of judging others. Later, when I became an adjudicator, I judged this debater who had a Singaporean accent. He sounded like an Ah Beng and had trouble stringing his ideas together, even though they were great. But why did I feel the need to tell him to correct how he sounded just because it was more acceptable to sound like a British lord?
And therein lies the rub. We disguise our accents because we’re ashamed of who we are and where we come from. As long as we feel ashamed of who we are, then we will disguise our accents to hide where we come from. Too often I have grinned in glee that someone overseas couldn’t tell where I was from because of my accent. It happened in Paris, Colombia, Spain, and many faraway places, some of which had people thinking that all Asians were one and the same. I liked escaping a heritage that I wasn’t proud of. I liked the anonymity that came with playing this guessing game of, “Where are you from? No, really? Is that in China?” I could forget about what I disliked about my country for a minute and pretend to be a citizen of the world.
But yes. Shame. It is a difficult emotion for me to unpack because you feel bad about yourself for no reason. Funnily enough, I felt ashamed of my Singaporean accent. Back then, I could not pinpoint why, but I felt ashamed to sound pedestrian, to sound like I was someone from a lower class. Perhaps it was a shallow reason. Then, when I changed my accent, I was shamed for it as well because I didn’t sound like a local. Either way, I could not win. I still don’t like the typical Singaporean accent, which is partly due to a colonial hangover, but I connect this accent to the country, which I’m still ashamed of. I connect this accent with how this country is run politically, with its narrow-minded, insular, racist, and sexist systemic discrimination. These policies pander to the narrow-minded locals who are perpetually fearful of foreign talent and in their privilege, complicit of racistm and sexism.
Like the two accents I switch from, I feel like I’m caught in between worlds. I am Singaporean but I want to distance myself from the unhelpful policies that divide our people when it comes to race and class. I want to sound like someone from another country but I’m not sure what country it is, hence the supposed neutral accent. I use Singlish with my friends ironically, to mock how we can act like panicky, narrow-minded people. With accent comes identity, and sometimes, I am neither.
Every day, when I wake up, I choose my accent and I choose how I present myself. At work, I need to speak properly, or I will not be taken seriously. An accent is part of a persona we put on to ensure we put on, inextricably entwined with political stances that we cannot run away from.
Photo by israel palacio on Unsplash