Someone had an interesting observation recently. He thought that Indians have a bigger accent problem than Chinese because we are too proud about our ability to speak English....proud to the extent that we really don't like to work on the accent that we have. English in Indian accent has become an object of regular humor in media around the world since call centers started opening up in India. Purely from the perspective of call center industry, accent continues to remain an irritant in an otherwise runaway success story. As an Indian, I am proud of the fact that I have been speaking English for close to 15 years. I don't make grammatical mistakes and when someone observes that I speak good English, I am quick to point out that English is kind of native language to me. Some kind of an ego play is at work when I tell people about my English speaking capability.
Chinese, on the other hand, are starting from a clean slate. And they do not have the ego which us Indians have about our English speaking capabilities. So when you talk to Chinese the grammar might be missing, the vocabulary might not be rich but the accent is definitely not there. And we all know that Chinese government is pushing English in a big way in China at the primary school level. Talk to people on the streets of Shanghai and you would know that something is happening. Purely from the perspective of the call center industry, the next generation of Chinese will surely pose a big challenge to the existing Indian forte.
2 comments:
Another point in the discussion and this comes froma proff at Ross - "Why do Asians even think about their accent as problem, it is a problem with the Western world and they should start training themselves to hear us" -
Accent to me is a way to establish the economic divide - Once Americans were speaking roughly for their British heritage now British have strange accent... Aussies ... German... Spanish... Economies develop and everyone adjust... Staying in Texas, I am dealing with Southern accent now ... does anyone care - Well not untill they have Oil...
I think an Accent Neutralization Training program for navite listener is not far fecthed :)
Any thoughts?
Kapil and I talked about this (at least I think I'm the source)...at issue is that Indians have their own dialect of English...their own way of speaking English that is familiar amongst themselves. I agree that people who start from scratch (French, Spanish) may actually be easier to understand because they know they need to pronounce clearly. Need to be careful in my comments, however, as I'm a native English speaker from the States...:-)
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