Tuesday, February 14, 2006
00:50 by FoxTwo
Now, some of you might not know, but I play a lot of online games - be it Battlefield 2, Neverwinter Nights or even full blown MMORPGs like City Of Heroes or Everquest 2. As such, I interact with the Ang Mo's alot. Hell my ex-company (yeah I'm "in-between jobs" right now) was an American one, and we had conference calls at all odd hours with the Americans all the time.
Anyway, back to the topic.
Have you ever noticed that when Singaporeans speak to Ang Mo's, they suddenly try to emulate the accent of the Ang Mo's? Many times, they fail miserably. I even caught myself on a few ocassions doing the same too, and when I do, I make a concious effort to stop doing it.
I remember this one time, I was on Teamspeak 1 with them on a raid in Everquest 2. As you can imagine it was around 10am or so Singapore time, because the raid was scheduled for 8pm CST. Anyway, point is, we were all talking fine, calling out tactics and how to attack and all that.
Then, my mom, who happened to be visiting me, asked me something, so I replied. I totally forgot I still have the microphone turned on, so whatever I said to my mom was broadcasted over Teamspeak to the Ang Mo's in the USA.
Everyone on Teamspeak went silent.
Then one of them said "You actually sound like that normally?". So I went "huh? what do you mean?"
They said, that for a brief moment, they heard me speaking with a Singlish accent. It was still English, they understood me fine, but the entire accent changed. They weren't used to hearing me speak like that (to my mom). Then they kept asking me to "do it again! do it again! That sounded cool!"
Then I realised I had been unconciously been guilty of the same thing as the topic of my blog - I had unconciously tried to emulate their accent. The only saving grace was that I didn't fail quite that miserably :)
It was then, that I realised they find our Singlish accent "charming", and that they are envious of the way we can switch between English and Chinese and a whole host of other dialects mid-way through our sentences. All through the rest of the raid, whenever we weren't getting pwned by the mobs, they'd be talking about various accents of the countries they have visited.
They did say that some of them actually hate it when the locals of the countries they went to tried to talk to them in an emulated American accent. As they said over Teamspeak "If I wanted to hear an American accent I'd have stayed home". It's worse when the locals fail to emulate the accent correctly and they cringe at every sentence the local was trying to speak in an "American accent".
So anyway, after that incident, whenever I get onto Teamspeak again, they'd keep reminding me to speak in my "charming accent" (polite way of telling me off I guess heheheh!) because honestly, some people, even Americans, can't get used to the idea that there are people OUTSIDE of America playing MMORPGs like Everquest 2.
Of course my reply was "I don't have an accent. You guys do!"
Footnotes
1 - Teamspeak is a voice-over-IP software which allows you to talk with your voice to people over the Internet. It's been around since like forever, way before all these new fangled Skype or other "Internet Telephone" software were invented. Yes, it costs nothing to talk to them, cos we are not using the telephone. For all you non-gamers, it's better for you to get something like Skype than Teamspeak cos Teamspeak is really geared towards gaming and requires someone to set up a server for you to log in to talk.
00:50 by FoxTwo
Quirky Singaporeans - Watch The Ang Mo's Cringe!
Now, some of you might not know, but I play a lot of online games - be it Battlefield 2, Neverwinter Nights or even full blown MMORPGs like City Of Heroes or Everquest 2. As such, I interact with the Ang Mo's alot. Hell my ex-company (yeah I'm "in-between jobs" right now) was an American one, and we had conference calls at all odd hours with the Americans all the time.
Anyway, back to the topic.
Have you ever noticed that when Singaporeans speak to Ang Mo's, they suddenly try to emulate the accent of the Ang Mo's? Many times, they fail miserably. I even caught myself on a few ocassions doing the same too, and when I do, I make a concious effort to stop doing it.
I remember this one time, I was on Teamspeak 1 with them on a raid in Everquest 2. As you can imagine it was around 10am or so Singapore time, because the raid was scheduled for 8pm CST. Anyway, point is, we were all talking fine, calling out tactics and how to attack and all that.
Then, my mom, who happened to be visiting me, asked me something, so I replied. I totally forgot I still have the microphone turned on, so whatever I said to my mom was broadcasted over Teamspeak to the Ang Mo's in the USA.
Everyone on Teamspeak went silent.
Then one of them said "You actually sound like that normally?". So I went "huh? what do you mean?"
They said, that for a brief moment, they heard me speaking with a Singlish accent. It was still English, they understood me fine, but the entire accent changed. They weren't used to hearing me speak like that (to my mom). Then they kept asking me to "do it again! do it again! That sounded cool!"
Then I realised I had been unconciously been guilty of the same thing as the topic of my blog - I had unconciously tried to emulate their accent. The only saving grace was that I didn't fail quite that miserably :)
It was then, that I realised they find our Singlish accent "charming", and that they are envious of the way we can switch between English and Chinese and a whole host of other dialects mid-way through our sentences. All through the rest of the raid, whenever we weren't getting pwned by the mobs, they'd be talking about various accents of the countries they have visited.
They did say that some of them actually hate it when the locals of the countries they went to tried to talk to them in an emulated American accent. As they said over Teamspeak "If I wanted to hear an American accent I'd have stayed home". It's worse when the locals fail to emulate the accent correctly and they cringe at every sentence the local was trying to speak in an "American accent".
So anyway, after that incident, whenever I get onto Teamspeak again, they'd keep reminding me to speak in my "charming accent" (polite way of telling me off I guess heheheh!) because honestly, some people, even Americans, can't get used to the idea that there are people OUTSIDE of America playing MMORPGs like Everquest 2.
Of course my reply was "I don't have an accent. You guys do!"
Footnotes
1 - Teamspeak is a voice-over-IP software which allows you to talk with your voice to people over the Internet. It's been around since like forever, way before all these new fangled Skype or other "Internet Telephone" software were invented. Yes, it costs nothing to talk to them, cos we are not using the telephone. For all you non-gamers, it's better for you to get something like Skype than Teamspeak cos Teamspeak is really geared towards gaming and requires someone to set up a server for you to log in to talk.
