Where’s the Maturity in this?
I had to find ways to alleviate boredom due to my lack of tasks for the time being. So in doing so, I found a pretty interesting entry from one of my friend’s blog.
So here’s what it’s about, in a nutshell.
While inside a coffee shop, the blogger witnessed a pretty normal guy, probably from India, whose English accent is being laughed at by two girls. The blogger got pretty annoyed since she can’t find anything wrong with this guy and yet the girls didn’t do a good job in restraining their laughter on things (accents) they’re not accustomed to.
Here’s what I think of the issue:
Sure, a lot of us tend to think that to learn English, it is pretty much mandatory that we learn to speak in an American accent, or for better dose of sexiness, in European intonation. I do think the most correct way to learn the language is by learning to pronounce the word the way it’s supposed to. But, Americans don’t necessary follow this rule all the time! In fact, I can pretty much testify that even the people in America have bad grammars and wrong pronunciation of words! Do these "elite Pinoys" even know that their English pronunciation is not exactly perfectly American as well? In what position are we to beg others to speak English the American way when they (and even we) have been accustomed to twisting their tongues in the way their alphabets, and not the American alphabets, require them to? What do you prefer: people who speak in an "eccentric" accent but with right grammar or people with the right accent but the wrong grammar? "I gots me some book in Barnes and Noble and I ain’t got no satisfaction in dissing you! Fo’ shizzle!" :rollseyes:
Sociologically, how does this affect people in the Philippines who, as most usually the case, are dichotomized between people who can’t be bothered to right their English, and people who try so hard to sound American by instilling the faux pas Harvard accent? Discrimination’s the word. The latter group looks down on the former group with a lot of disdain. It’s the elite looking down on the proletariats! This is not to say that the former group was correct in not having enough discipline to speak English rightly. There’s everything wrong when you use the elevator and ask the operator to please press to the "sikandplor!". But the "Harvardian" group have to cut the everyday-not-so-accessible-to-the-Western-people some slack! Meanwhile, those who speak English with a Harvard accent sounds even more annoying by speaking something among the lines of "I’m so full na eh!", unaware that they have twice as many wrong grammars as the everyday Filipinos. Something about the way they plug in some Tagalog words to an otherwise straight English conversation just reeks of elitism. And, boy, you’re asking for trouble if you ever get my Elit-o-tron 3000 Xtreme to start buzzing!
Lastly, remember too, America is NOT the paradise Filipinos are deluded into thinking. Just because you have gone there don’t make you cool! Just because you live in US and speak "Harvardian" doesn’t make you a multi-millionaire! Just because one of your friends is Fil-Am doesn’t make you one as well! Just because a person is an American who speaks English with his country’s accent doesn’t make him exemplary! And just because GMA supports Bush doesn’t mean everything about American government is "Freedom in its utopian state". In fact, there are tons of problems in America that Filipinos are too lazy to start caring about (and giving donations to). How about Hurricane Katrina? How about Bush’s totalitarian regime? How about Dick Cheney? How about the fact that they house tons of nuclear weapons? Or how about racism, conservativism, and capitalism? If you ever think that Hurricane Katrina’s problem has been dealt with, you might want to see my sister and have a friendly chat. She’s just returned from New Orleans.
Besides, how do you account for Americans speaking Tagalog in such a thick accent? Case in point: Steven Seagal’s "I found gold in the Philippines, Tanduay Gold!" (Of course, I’m also puzzled as how one only has to be white to be "hit"!)
I’m not against finding humor in everyday situation. In fact, that’s the philosophy I live by. But sometimes, one has to examine the situation first before taking a chuckle. If you go into fits of laughter in expense of other people, that’s not humor. That’s tactlessness and insensitivity.
