Saturday, November 30, 2013

Kids of the new world

One gets to hear a wide range of accents in Singapore. Unlike in the US for example, where everyone gets one homogenous accent after a while (immigrants eventually acquire the Yankee accent), in Singapore immigrants rarely ever acquire the Chinese accent. Being such a multi-cultural, cosmopolitan  country now, it's awesome that the various accents - the Aussie twang, the Tagalog English, the Indian, Malay, Korean, Jap - all get to be breathe freely in this city, without making anyone feel uncomfortable or alienated because of their foreign accent. Kids of course never have a problem with  accents. K switches comfortably between accents within seconds (he speaks with an Indian accent around Indians; with a Singaporean accent - and grammar- around Singaporeans; and with a Filipino accent around his nanny). He can make himself understood & has enough EQ to judge which accent to use when. It's incredible :)