How Many Of You Have Developed An "accent" ?

Discussion in 'General Discussions' started by anika987, May 15, 2021.

  1. MalStrom

    MalStrom IL Hall of Fame

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    Ha! On the first day of grad school in the US more than 2 decades ago I went to the cafeteria with my new classmates. Back in those days it was not common to avoid meat. They seemed highly amused that I was vegetarian and sincerely convinced me that those red slices were dried tomatoes. There was no Gujju lady to the rescue and no one quite understood why I was so mad afterwards. :lol:
     
  2. Hopikrishnan

    Hopikrishnan Platinum IL'ite

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    This:
    RFLOL...
    Humble Brag !! hahaha... never heard of such a turn of phrase before... However, on googling I find out that there is indeed even a lesson on the matter with a title Humble Brag-101. Amazing how we come across new stuff.

    I thought that post was to segue the thread from acquiring an accent after migrating to the west to the wonderment about getting paler skin-tone after emigration to colder climates. India has a lot of pale skinned people -- in almost all the states. People who had migrated to UK leaving behind a sibling in (e.g., Nagpur) India would go a shade paler than the control sample suffering the tropics. UK is dreary and sunless most of the time; however, those who had migrated to USA would not bleach out as much.

    India has a lot of English accents within the nation. Each person's mother tongue, vernacular medium education in schools, and how much we practice speaking English in/outside classrooms all contribute to the accents. A bengali, telugu, or tamil all have different English accents, even when not mixing in words from their own local language by accident/intent.
     
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  3. Thyagarajan

    Thyagarajan IL Hall of Fame

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    I enjoyed reading your FB here.
    God bless.
     
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  4. nuss

    nuss Platinum IL'ite

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    One of my vegetarian lab mates almost exclusively bought pepperoni pizza from the cafeteria for lunch until someone told him that it wasn't red pepper.

    I still vividly remember the look of horror on my now-husband then labmate's face when I asked him if he needed his potato salad to be microwaved :).

    I also used to say "gnocchi" as the way it spells instead of "nu-key". Languages are fun!
     
  5. Laks09

    Laks09 Moderator Staff Member IL Hall of Fame

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    Nyo-key? No-key? I’ve heard so many variations of gnocchi. I’m still confused about this one!

    Reg accent, word usage etc, I’m still the same. Never lost my accent or my vocabulary. Even now people get confused with some of my word usage. My son fell ill - this confused someone the other day. Don’t you fall ill? Or is it get sick?
     
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  6. nuss

    nuss Platinum IL'ite

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    You probably spoke English frequently in India. I have seen this with my convent-educated friends, they are used to their pronunciations. Even though you think you didn't lose your accent (it's hard to know ourselves), if you record yourself and then play it along with some older recordings, I think you will notice the difference. After living in a country for decades, language changes naturally.

    I agree! It's confusing- no-key or nu-key. My Italian friend says it's "Nu-key" so I go with that :). Depending on how sick- I would probably say- "my son is a little under the weather" or "my son is not feeling well" If the child is quite sick (not just a common cold, cough, fever) then only I would say- he is sick.

    I also learned that "loose motion" is not how people describe diarrhea here. It's just diarrhea. Also, I once had a long discussion over the word "learnt". I used it in my write-up and my professor said that form doesn't exist. I had to show him papers from non-American English and of course, it does exist, just not in American English. I "learned" my lesson though and never used it again.
     
  7. nuss

    nuss Platinum IL'ite

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    "Humble-brag" is a well-defined phrase! Time for humble-brag :). I was interviewed by a reporter last week about our research. After the formal interview, we were just making small talks about the weather and stuff while she corrected her script for any inconsistencies. Then she said, "would you mind if I ask where your accent comes from?" I am doing a project on accents and am quite good at recognizing but I couldn't figure yours out. That led to another 10 minutes of fun-talk and I asked her to guess. It was fun learning about the project and laughing together at the guesses she made (She finally got to "North Indian" after three incorrect ones).
     
    Last edited: Jun 18, 2021
  8. Viswamitra

    Viswamitra IL Hall of Fame

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    I am one of the late migrant to the United States. I was 41 years old when I migrated to the United States in 1995. But I worked for the US software company for 3 years before I migrated to the US and hence it was easy for me to follow their conversations when I migrated in 1995. However, most conversations were related to the business and I realized when I migrated here, the lot of usage of words (in day to day life) are different in the US when compared to India.

    Besides, I voluntarily signed up for an accent reduction course conducted by a local University. I was pleasantly surprised that the way I was spliting the words while speaking is different from the way the Americans do. That created an immediate awareness in my mind resulting in me becoming conscious about how I split the words. It improved my spoken English a lot after that. English is never my major strength anyway as I was not convent educated while I was in India. I did my schooling in Tamil medium and I was taught in English only when I joined college. Even in college, even though I learned all the subjects in English, I didn't speak much of English. When I did my CA, I did speak in English but not much as I was in Chennai. I had to speak in English when I worked in Pune, Mumbai and Bangalore. I worked for a premier R & D organization in Pune and it had young researchers from 25 different states. They all spoke English in much different accent.

    I totally relate with what @nuss mentioned above. Lesser we spoke English before, it is easier for us to adopt to the American accent, if we migrate to the US. It is also easier for the children to adopt quickly because they have not spoken English for a long time. I remember my son's American friend is a fighter jet pilot in the airforce and he is now residing in the UK. His son is doing school in the UK now and speaks a perfect English accent now.
     
  9. nuss

    nuss Platinum IL'ite

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    Thank you @Viswamitra for writing this so well. I have a similar background-Hindi instead of Tamil. My schooling was from Government/Public school system where we start learning English in sixth grade but the medium of instruction is Hindi up to 10th grade. But once one decides to take Science in the 11th grade, all subjects are in English. Just like you, although starting from 11th grade all my subjects were in English, I didn't speak much English outside the classroom. There was no need. All my friends spoke the native language. When I moved to Delhi, we have students from all over the country and all have their own accents. I found it hard to speak English in India because English-speaking students look down on the "village-type" that I totally was. There was a clear divide between the "posh" and "villagers" based on how well you speak English :). It wasn't until I spent a few months in Scotland that I was immersed in English. After moving to the USA, it became much easier to speak because 1) there is no other way, you have to speak the common language, 2) people don't judge for wrong pronunciation like they did back in Delhi, and 3) science is diverse, people speak English at different levels of proficiency but they all are very smart people. My first mentor was an extremely nice woman. I asked her to help me with language and she corrected my grammar and pronunciation when it was off. I owe her a lot for helping me with many things including the language!
     
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  10. Laks09

    Laks09 Moderator Staff Member IL Hall of Fame

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    Now that you mention it, yes. My Dad didn’t speak our mother tongue and used English at home because he grew up speaking Marathi or Hindi.
     
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