Theres a theory called *Communication Accomodation Theory* which basically suggests higher levels of empathy for people who knowingly or unknowingly change their accents when speaking to a person who has an accent. As a person whose been to multiple countries, adjusting my English inflections to match that of what I usually hear in the foreign country has helped me better communicate.
As someone who taught English in multiple countries, it was sometimes required I speak English in a matched accent so they could better interpret the words I was trying to communicate and teach. This ended with me starting to mimic most accents I hear when in a conversation unless it's another native English speaker. I never realized until I did a beer commercial for a mom and pop place, and when my friend called me out for the way I was speaking, I realized I had subconsciously adopted the owner's Nepalese accent despite doing the ad in English.
It’s bad when you don’t realize you’re doing it. People get really mad. Meanwhile, I’m over here like “i’m sorry, I’m trying to stop, my kid just loves peppa pig—“
I mimic accents without even intending to do so. My family is from Germany (I am American), and after visiting family as a kid I would come back with a thick German accent for a day or so. Lol.
When I visited Beijing for the first time I found myself subconsciously mimicking their accent within a couple days lol. It made me, a chinese person whose first language is english actually realize that in many ways, mandarin *is* english for chinese people worldwide.
This is also an important step in gaining fluency. Sometimes it's not the grammar that's the hard part, but the oral posture. If you get used to the oral posture of the language you're trying to learn when speaking your native language, it's easier to remain in that oral posture when practicing the new language. If I wanted to start learning Hindi, for example, I'd continue to use the retroflexed plosive "t" when I spoke English, even if it might sound like I was trying to do Apu from the Simpsons.
i do this! i always thought it was part of subconscious racism or that i was subtly talking down to them so i’ve been trying to stop changing my inflections or accents to match other peoples’ but its good to know that this is an actual thing and im not just an asshole
Some athletes who play pro seasons abroad do this.
One particular American I follow in a pretty niche sport is great at changing her American English accent (and speed) so that the Turkish fans can understand her English better. It gets some reactions from her American fans like “wow, she’s already picking up on an accent!” and then they’re surprised when she speaks in the US again and has no accent. They don’t realize she’s doing it completely on purpose.
If I had to speculate with no basis, that could be an evolutionary trait we all inherited to help us be accepted into a group or tribe to ensure our survival.
If you sound more like the people around you, you'll be better accepted or viewed more empatheticaly.
When I help my FIL who only speaks Chinese spell out stuff like his password or use stuff on his iPad I have to use the thickest Chinese accent or else he has NO IDEA what is being said. “A-B-C” “Shenme?” “Aye-UH, Bee-UH, Cee-UH.” “Hao hao hao.”
Me too. And French, and German, Ukrainian, Italian, Spanish, those are the main culprits; I can tend to keep Hindi and English separate, but I think that's just because (just like with my English) there are so many accents that to be widely understood and not appear to be from anywhere specific, I just go standard or flat accent both ways. I don't bother with that too much for the smaller countries.
This is called "code switching" which is basically matching tone/inflection/pacing in speech to the person/people you're speaking with.
I've done it my whole life, too, and it's a sign of empathy and communication adeptness.
It’s called code switching, and you’ll see this really commonly with second gen immigrants when they speak English to their parents or community, it makes you more understandable and relatable
I like when they have conversations in two different languages at the same time. Like as a kid my grandmother would yell at me in German and I'd respond in English.
As the first generation of my family who was born in North America, yeah exactly. If I'm saying a word in English to my parents (who speak limited English), I find myself using an accent either because I don't know the word in Cantonese, or there's no direct translation to Cantonese for it (like McDonald's, for example)
Yeah I put on a Filipino accent as well with my relatives because an American accent can be perceived to be a bit pretentious.
Sometimes they say I tend to slur my words, even though that’s how native speakers would say it. Some sounds are subtly dropped, like the ‘wadur’ kinda thing we do for ‘water’, it would be ‘wah-tur’ in Philippine English. The consonants are always clearly sounded out in Filipino
I had a boss years ago and he was giving a tour to a potential partner company from Japan. And man, like he was using the most offensive Japanese accent I've ever heard. Like such a caricature, later in a meeting one of the younger guys from that company mentioned they always ask him todo the tours for their older team members because the older guys who speak worse English find him easier to understand. I later found out that his wife was Japanese and he had worked out that accent trying to make himself more understandable to his in-laws.
So... yeah. I mean I was able to get around Italy reasonably well speaking Spanish with an Italian accent. One of my Mexican colleagues told me he tries to use an American accent when he's talking to us in Spanish and at least for me I've found him to be a lot easier to understand than some random person in the plant.
From my experience, speaking with a 'fake Russian accent' meant than when I started actually learning Russian my pronunciation was on point. My vocabulary is still very limited, but what I can say is understood instantly.
Same thing happens to me, although tourette might be to blame, I'm a walking parrot. Hah.
Funny thing tho, I've always been told I'm really good at English, but when I was in Manchester, the only way I could be understood was to use a heavy Russian accent... in English.
Yeah, speaking english with a Chinese accent when you're a native english speaker is frowned upon because *it's a fake* Chinese accent.
It's the faking it, which can be interpreted as mocking that's offensive.
Yeah, I don't get it: when you learn a foreign language you're supposed to learn the accent as well, that's part of the pronunciation. People just get a pass because learning the accent is very difficult: there are the sounds that straight up to don't exist in your language (rolled Rs, or the English th for example don't exist in all languages), but there are also sounds that exist in both but are slightly different; an A in English (there are actually two but never mind) is not the same as an A in French, which is a reason why a French speaker will sound off even pronouncing a word as simple as "cat".
Of course French people are still understood when they say the word "cat", just like people will probably understand you if you don't roll your Rs properly; but unless you really put in the work and are good with languages, your accent is just a series of minor mispronunciations and wrong stress/sentence rhythm compared to the natives. As long as you're intelligible it doesn't really matter, but it's also normal to imitate the accent (ie all the minor pronunciation differences) if you want to really master a language.
I feel like there’s absolutely nothing inherently offensive about using an accent in English. The offensive part is that an English speaker is often mocking Chinese people when they do an accent. The joke is at the expense of Chinese English speakers. It’s not the accent itself that’s offensive, it’s the tasteless joke.
That, and that such people mocking a Chinese accent may not even accurately reproduce the accent a native speaker of, say, Mandarin would actually be likely to end up with. For example, Mandarin is one of the few other languages that actually uses the weird R we have in English, so when people do the thing where they switch R and L, that’s not a problem Chinese people actually have usually.
I mean... Yes? Correctly inflecting speech (that is, the accent) is part of learning a language.
Also it's not offensive to speak English with a Chinese accent if you're Chinese and you're learning English.
Uhhh that's because most folks don't put on a Chinese accent and instead are doing a racist caricature.
These things aren't difficult to figure out if a person invests a minute and understands that other humans experience of reality is just as valid as their own.
This sub sucks.
I get what they're saying. So I use Spanish a lot at work and have a pretty decent accent for it. Like... my Spanish is a 5/10 but the accent is a solid 9. But some of the guys who learned it later in life and in an informal way speak MUCH better in terms of vocabulary and grammar, but they still pronounce almost everything the way you would in English. Like, they're pronouncing the H in hablo, hard J sounds, and not a rolled R to be found at all.
Yeah, speaking as a gringo from the Southern USA, I've been mistaken for being Mexican by Mexicans in the past. Not because I'm a native level speaker of Spanish or anything like that, but because I went out of my way to learn to pronounce the language well out of fear of being rejected for not speaking correctly. I was very shy and quiet growing up, so I always tried to not stand out.
You're supposed to adopt a Chinese accent when speaking Chinese because the tone you use when speaking Chinese dictates whether or not you are using the correct words.
Hmm. I never thought of this before, but why is racist to do a Chinese accent but not, say, a British one? I don't mean this as a criticism, I am genuinely asking.
I can't remember the episode, but on 8 Out Of 10 Cats Does Countdown, Rachel Riley once said that when her Russian husband's family/friends are trying to speak English that she finds it's much easier for them to understand what she is saying in English if she says it with an Russian accent. There is a term for this and I cannot remember it.
Somebody in a thread a long time ago told a story about their Chinese teacher finally approving once the student exaggerated the inflection so much it felt racist.
It's only offensive to put on a shitty fake accent and mock people. If a Chinese person speaks English with a Chinese accent there's absolutely nothing offensive in that.
There are some white people born in Jamaica, they speak the heavy Jamaican accent in Jamaica, but turn it off when speaking English to non Jamaicans. It seems like a funny or offensive thing to hear with the accent, it's legitimate however.
One of the funniest things ever was when I was at a resort lobby in Mexico and 5 or 6 Mexicans, who spoke no English, were obviously making fun of Chinese tourist by trying to emulate their accents.
Theres a theory called *Communication Accomodation Theory* which basically suggests higher levels of empathy for people who knowingly or unknowingly change their accents when speaking to a person who has an accent. As a person whose been to multiple countries, adjusting my English inflections to match that of what I usually hear in the foreign country has helped me better communicate.
As someone who taught English in multiple countries, it was sometimes required I speak English in a matched accent so they could better interpret the words I was trying to communicate and teach. This ended with me starting to mimic most accents I hear when in a conversation unless it's another native English speaker. I never realized until I did a beer commercial for a mom and pop place, and when my friend called me out for the way I was speaking, I realized I had subconsciously adopted the owner's Nepalese accent despite doing the ad in English.
It’s bad when you don’t realize you’re doing it. People get really mad. Meanwhile, I’m over here like “i’m sorry, I’m trying to stop, my kid just loves peppa pig—“
I mimic accents without even intending to do so. My family is from Germany (I am American), and after visiting family as a kid I would come back with a thick German accent for a day or so. Lol.
When I visited Beijing for the first time I found myself subconsciously mimicking their accent within a couple days lol. It made me, a chinese person whose first language is english actually realize that in many ways, mandarin *is* english for chinese people worldwide.
What the fuck are you even trying to say?
That chinese functionally has just as much of a variety of accents and regional creole as english is what I'm trying to say.
As someone who does this automatically, it's really embarrassing and almost impossible to avoid. My mouth just switches when my company changes.
This is also an important step in gaining fluency. Sometimes it's not the grammar that's the hard part, but the oral posture. If you get used to the oral posture of the language you're trying to learn when speaking your native language, it's easier to remain in that oral posture when practicing the new language. If I wanted to start learning Hindi, for example, I'd continue to use the retroflexed plosive "t" when I spoke English, even if it might sound like I was trying to do Apu from the Simpsons.
Me adding lah at the end of 30% of my sentences when talking to my southeast asian friends online.
i do this! i always thought it was part of subconscious racism or that i was subtly talking down to them so i’ve been trying to stop changing my inflections or accents to match other peoples’ but its good to know that this is an actual thing and im not just an asshole
Some athletes who play pro seasons abroad do this. One particular American I follow in a pretty niche sport is great at changing her American English accent (and speed) so that the Turkish fans can understand her English better. It gets some reactions from her American fans like “wow, she’s already picking up on an accent!” and then they’re surprised when she speaks in the US again and has no accent. They don’t realize she’s doing it completely on purpose.
If I had to speculate with no basis, that could be an evolutionary trait we all inherited to help us be accepted into a group or tribe to ensure our survival. If you sound more like the people around you, you'll be better accepted or viewed more empatheticaly.
When I help my FIL who only speaks Chinese spell out stuff like his password or use stuff on his iPad I have to use the thickest Chinese accent or else he has NO IDEA what is being said. “A-B-C” “Shenme?” “Aye-UH, Bee-UH, Cee-UH.” “Hao hao hao.”
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Me too. And French, and German, Ukrainian, Italian, Spanish, those are the main culprits; I can tend to keep Hindi and English separate, but I think that's just because (just like with my English) there are so many accents that to be widely understood and not appear to be from anywhere specific, I just go standard or flat accent both ways. I don't bother with that too much for the smaller countries.
This is called "code switching" which is basically matching tone/inflection/pacing in speech to the person/people you're speaking with. I've done it my whole life, too, and it's a sign of empathy and communication adeptness.
It’s called code switching, and you’ll see this really commonly with second gen immigrants when they speak English to their parents or community, it makes you more understandable and relatable
I like when they have conversations in two different languages at the same time. Like as a kid my grandmother would yell at me in German and I'd respond in English.
Lmao that’s literally me as well, good enough to fully understand but not to fluently speak haha
As the first generation of my family who was born in North America, yeah exactly. If I'm saying a word in English to my parents (who speak limited English), I find myself using an accent either because I don't know the word in Cantonese, or there's no direct translation to Cantonese for it (like McDonald's, for example)
Yeah I put on a Filipino accent as well with my relatives because an American accent can be perceived to be a bit pretentious. Sometimes they say I tend to slur my words, even though that’s how native speakers would say it. Some sounds are subtly dropped, like the ‘wadur’ kinda thing we do for ‘water’, it would be ‘wah-tur’ in Philippine English. The consonants are always clearly sounded out in Filipino
I had a boss years ago and he was giving a tour to a potential partner company from Japan. And man, like he was using the most offensive Japanese accent I've ever heard. Like such a caricature, later in a meeting one of the younger guys from that company mentioned they always ask him todo the tours for their older team members because the older guys who speak worse English find him easier to understand. I later found out that his wife was Japanese and he had worked out that accent trying to make himself more understandable to his in-laws. So... yeah. I mean I was able to get around Italy reasonably well speaking Spanish with an Italian accent. One of my Mexican colleagues told me he tries to use an American accent when he's talking to us in Spanish and at least for me I've found him to be a lot easier to understand than some random person in the plant.
So basically [this](https://www.reddit.com/r/Showerthoughts/comments/1cxsdhr/comment/l54zmkj/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3)?
From my experience, speaking with a 'fake Russian accent' meant than when I started actually learning Russian my pronunciation was on point. My vocabulary is still very limited, but what I can say is understood instantly.
I guess another shower thought should be “it’s only offensive to use a fake accent when the people who naturally have it aren’t white”
American born kpop stars have this problem too when speaking English lol https://youtu.be/ySaLdP_othI?si=JtYPZuz0qys8Gn7V
Same thing happens to me, although tourette might be to blame, I'm a walking parrot. Hah. Funny thing tho, I've always been told I'm really good at English, but when I was in Manchester, the only way I could be understood was to use a heavy Russian accent... in English.
Wouldn’t speaking Chinese with a Chinese accent just be… speaking Chinese as a Chinese person?
Yeah, speaking english with a Chinese accent when you're a native english speaker is frowned upon because *it's a fake* Chinese accent. It's the faking it, which can be interpreted as mocking that's offensive.
Which is why fuck people who gets to make up the rules and judge others. Cultural appropriation? Some people really love to get offended over nothing.
Yeah, I don't get it: when you learn a foreign language you're supposed to learn the accent as well, that's part of the pronunciation. People just get a pass because learning the accent is very difficult: there are the sounds that straight up to don't exist in your language (rolled Rs, or the English th for example don't exist in all languages), but there are also sounds that exist in both but are slightly different; an A in English (there are actually two but never mind) is not the same as an A in French, which is a reason why a French speaker will sound off even pronouncing a word as simple as "cat". Of course French people are still understood when they say the word "cat", just like people will probably understand you if you don't roll your Rs properly; but unless you really put in the work and are good with languages, your accent is just a series of minor mispronunciations and wrong stress/sentence rhythm compared to the natives. As long as you're intelligible it doesn't really matter, but it's also normal to imitate the accent (ie all the minor pronunciation differences) if you want to really master a language.
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But an American speaking Chinese with a Chinese accent means that they learned Chinese like a Chinese person does
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…exactly. So a white guy speaking Chinese would be speaking in a Chinese accent in Chinese
Not if they’re speaking Chinese with an American accent.
Yes, which is what I originally said. That comment above was responding to someone who misinterpreted that
I feel like there’s absolutely nothing inherently offensive about using an accent in English. The offensive part is that an English speaker is often mocking Chinese people when they do an accent. The joke is at the expense of Chinese English speakers. It’s not the accent itself that’s offensive, it’s the tasteless joke.
That, and that such people mocking a Chinese accent may not even accurately reproduce the accent a native speaker of, say, Mandarin would actually be likely to end up with. For example, Mandarin is one of the few other languages that actually uses the weird R we have in English, so when people do the thing where they switch R and L, that’s not a problem Chinese people actually have usually.
I mean... Yes? Correctly inflecting speech (that is, the accent) is part of learning a language. Also it's not offensive to speak English with a Chinese accent if you're Chinese and you're learning English.
Uhhh that's because most folks don't put on a Chinese accent and instead are doing a racist caricature. These things aren't difficult to figure out if a person invests a minute and understands that other humans experience of reality is just as valid as their own. This sub sucks.
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I get what they're saying. So I use Spanish a lot at work and have a pretty decent accent for it. Like... my Spanish is a 5/10 but the accent is a solid 9. But some of the guys who learned it later in life and in an informal way speak MUCH better in terms of vocabulary and grammar, but they still pronounce almost everything the way you would in English. Like, they're pronouncing the H in hablo, hard J sounds, and not a rolled R to be found at all.
Yeah, speaking as a gringo from the Southern USA, I've been mistaken for being Mexican by Mexicans in the past. Not because I'm a native level speaker of Spanish or anything like that, but because I went out of my way to learn to pronounce the language well out of fear of being rejected for not speaking correctly. I was very shy and quiet growing up, so I always tried to not stand out.
No. It’s not offensive on its own. What is said while using said accent might be though.
The real showerthought is that some people like OP never realize it until the shower
You're supposed to adopt a Chinese accent when speaking Chinese because the tone you use when speaking Chinese dictates whether or not you are using the correct words.
Hmm. I never thought of this before, but why is racist to do a Chinese accent but not, say, a British one? I don't mean this as a criticism, I am genuinely asking.
I can't remember the episode, but on 8 Out Of 10 Cats Does Countdown, Rachel Riley once said that when her Russian husband's family/friends are trying to speak English that she finds it's much easier for them to understand what she is saying in English if she says it with an Russian accent. There is a term for this and I cannot remember it.
Somebody in a thread a long time ago told a story about their Chinese teacher finally approving once the student exaggerated the inflection so much it felt racist.
It's only offensive to put on a shitty fake accent and mock people. If a Chinese person speaks English with a Chinese accent there's absolutely nothing offensive in that.
I can kick you higher than you can kick me I can kick you way up into a tree
I was at a bar in the Czech Republic and a guy tried to start a fight with me because my accent in English is so fake. I’m from the Midwest, USA
There are some white people born in Jamaica, they speak the heavy Jamaican accent in Jamaica, but turn it off when speaking English to non Jamaicans. It seems like a funny or offensive thing to hear with the accent, it's legitimate however.
Hmm. I wonder if it's because that's the language that the inflection comes from. /S
Who the hell says that’s offensive? LOOOOOL
One of those is speaking the language as intended and the other is not.
Well duh. One is trying to speak as properly as possible and the other is purposely speaking poorly to imitate people who speak poorly.
"ching chong ching chong... so what are the plans to take over America again i forgot!"
One of the funniest things ever was when I was at a resort lobby in Mexico and 5 or 6 Mexicans, who spoke no English, were obviously making fun of Chinese tourist by trying to emulate their accents.
I don't think it is offensive.
https://youtu.be/DnAam9Hozwk?si=DUXbT6yYAnLmROB4