In school right now.
I have one hour to my next lesson, so I thought I might as well kill this time off by making a long-winded blogpost and rant on some nonsensical topic of no interest to anybody. I figured that's the only real way of raising viewership - post more nonsense that's much longer than 140 characters x 5, so that you finally have a good reason to blog rather than to twitter, then it'll be syndicated onto Facebook that you have a new post that doesn't make sense, and 300+ readers will read this post (the number of friends I have).
That's in the ideal world of social networking, I'm sure.
Anyway, I thought I should spend some time commenting on the British accent.
There isn't one.
No, really, to those people who were asking me why my accent is not completely Brit yet, there is no such thing as a British accent - the stereotypical aristocratic mode of speech that belongs only in movies set in very 'posh' times, in very 'posh' settings, and with the royals. No. That is not a British accent. That is just a stereotypical parody of the cynical British 'cultures', if I may call it so.
Nowadays, you rarely hear the 'pure' British accent. In the media, on the telly (that's the Brit way of saying the TV), and on the radio - the people you see/hear are quite mixed.
There's the posh accent. (Imagine the Queen delivering a speech right now. Then imagine Stephen Fry talking in his "Hi I went to Cambridge" way.)
Then there's the teen speak, which ranges from the incomprehendable and unclear mumble common amongst those with ASBOs (Anti-Social Behaviour Orders, if I'm not wrong), to the geek who worked at Morgan Stanley at age 15 and thinks he's a know-it-all, and doesn't use Twitter. Shut up.
And then there's the Scottish way. And there's the Welsh, and the Irish, and the Asian (which doesn't mean Chinese, by the way. This refers to the Indians/Pakistani/Sri Lankan), the 'Black' (like Dizzie Rascal, the rapper. Though I could argue that his accent is more of the hometown accent, typical of people on BBC Radio1), and the very rigid Oriental way (this is where the Chinese and Korean sit in. For some reason, I feel that the Oriental English accent is more stiff than the others - you don't feel that the people are speaking in a flow. Rather, they break their sentences syllable by syllable, or maybe it's just me).
Oh, did I mention the American accent? There's a bit of that, too.
I'm being a bit racist here because I just want to point out that there is no such thing as a British accent. Everyone has their own way of speaking, though some sound clearer than others, and most people belonging to a certain race/culture/origin tend to adopt the same way of speaking English.
But the most important thing about communication is clarity. If another person understands what you say, doesn't matter what accent you use, as long as you get each other, then there's communication.
Sure, there might be the odd 'peppering' of euphemisms and slangs that only Brits or Americans or Singaporeans can understand. I still don't understand the true definition of 'lah', and I'm sure most people don't even know it has a meaning, but they use it as a substitute for the full stop, and that seems fine to some lorh (see what I mean?)
Of course, there are times when some accents are unacceptable. You should never expect Cambridge to give an English O Level paper that's covered in 'leh' and 'wa biang' an A1. Nor would you expect people in a Pasar Malam to speak the Texan way, unless they're doing something related to Mid-west America, which is just odd for a Pasar Malam.
Well, That's 'accents' for you! Now, stop asking me where's my Brit accent.
