nick’s (n)-line life

… and now, for the first entry in my “Rants” category! :)

Blogging is a great media… almost complete freedom to say what you think… unfortunately what some people think, or at least profess to think, is a cartload of bull excrement.

I cite the following as an example:

“Because the Asian glottis is differently shaped than the [SIC] average (say) Caucasian glottis, Asians will (almost) never be able to pronounce certain syllables, letters and even words with the same finesse as we Caucasians can do (for our Latin-based or Germanic languages).”

[ read in full ]

I’ll start by quoting one of the comments:

Respectfully, what utter rubbish. I am Asian and I assure you that my English pronunciation and fluency is better than many Caucasians (or do I fall into the minority category of Asians? I think not). I suggest it’s more a matter of practice and familiarity. Hence if a Caucasian had been kidnapped from the home as a child and raised in, say, Korea, I assure you they would speak Korean as fluently as a native.

Right, Mister Guy of Sweet Cucumber, without any respect whatsoever, you are an idiot. This statement has all the hallmarks of bias and bigotry. It reminds me of comments by the American army in Vietnam, reluctant to hand over military responsibilities to the South Vietnamese Army, “The Vietnamese are weak and inept fighters”, um, hello, who was kicking your ass at the same time you’re saying this?

So, I need to ask: where the hell did you get these ideas from? Do you have any proof whatsoever? I bet you can’t produce a single authority for this statement, and certainly not a respectable one. Try the BNP website, that might help you out.

Look, I know I’m being harsh, but you can’t just go around saying things like this without checking your facts! You’ll upset a lot of people. What you are saying can actually be interpreted as being quite offensive, and obviously it has no grounding in fact whatsoever.

I’ll now illustrate my argument with examples (if you had tried to do this you would have realised that you couldn’t do it, and hopefully realised that this might mean it wasn’t true)

Starting with the anecdotal evidence:

• I do know a few westerners who are fluent in Mandarin and in fact (I’m told) have perfect pronunciation. A BBC friend of mine once confessed that she was ashamed that she had met a foreigner in London who spoke Chinese with a perfect Beijing accent (and hers was very mamahouhou)
• I’m a student at Cambridge University and I can point at a good hundred or so Asian people from everywhere from Beijing to Bangkok who speak English without a trace of an accent (well, actually the Hong Kongers tend to have rather strong US accents, the fashion I’m told :p ) In fact I’m off to have lunch with a Chinese friend in an hour or so, if you heard her on the phone you would have no idea whatsoever that she was Chinese.
• I used to know an ethnic Thai girl who was adopted by Irish parents. She had no hint of a Thai accent and spoke English with a strong Irish accent.
• A friend of mine is in the (very unusual) situation of being white and adopted by Chinese parents. She speaks mandarin as her first language and fluent English.

Just to destroy your argument a little further, let’s use some celebrity examples. How about, Lucy Liu, Vanessa Mae, and Alicia Keys… why don’t you go and tell these girls that “they will never be able to pronounce English properly”.

The real reason for accents is widely thought to be the Critical Period Hypothesis. This Hypothesis basically states that there is a period between 6 months and 4 years old when children are ultra-receptive to learning. During this period we acquire our first language skills. This then affects the way our brains work for the rest of our lives. It can be thought of as a kind of specialisation. i.e. the transmission of neural impulses of our brains is radically altered depending on the language we learn. You can read about this here, here, and here [take note sweet Cucumber, this is called citing authority]

Please stop writing articles like this, it pisses people off!

To read other opinions on this topic see thewanker.com
or read the comments of the Sweet Cucumber Blog