That's the first time anyone's told me to talk 'like an Asian', and even if it's coming from an anonymous coward, it's still something that intrigues me. Sure, I get a lot of questions like "Why do you talk like that?" or "How come you have an accent?", but no one's actually ever turned around and told me to stop talking the way I do.
Does sounding un-Asian make me any less of one? Maybe people are bothered because it seems like I'm such a wannabe, changing my accent to be more 'Westernised', maybe they feel I'm betraying my roots.
Do they want to hear the lilting traces of Mandarin or Malay in the way I speak English, despite the fact that I cannot claim to speak either language with any sort of competence? Besides, they don't really go. The stresses on the different syllables are all wrong and misplaced. Haven't you heard that? Oriental languages are so musical and dance ever so exotically upon your ear drum. English, as spoken by the British, is a near monotone, while Americanised English's distinct nasal twang is one you either love or loathe.
Besides, is there even such a thing as sounding Asian? The Japanese and Koreans sound completely different to one another, as do the Indonesians from the Malaysians or Mongolians. Asia's such a diverse continent of cultures that you can't sound truly Asian until you've absorbed a little of every dialect and let it seep into the way you speak English. Sounds like a right headache, if you ask me, I have enough trouble putting coherent sentences together to worry about what I sound like. English is such a complicated language, why make it worse?
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