Periodically, we see stories about how folks in India involved in the global economy are taking accent classes to work on their English accents. Thomas Friedman wrote about the accent training many call-center workers undergo in The World is Flat. And today there was a typically fluffy piece in The Times of India about people who work on “regional” accent-training within India.
But it seems to me there hasn’t been enough coverage of accent problems that go the other way around. Watching Aliens in America the other night, it occurred to me that ABD actors and comedians who play immigrants in comic roles in Hollywood sometimes need their own accent training. You wouldn’t expect it, but most ABDs can’t really do a perfect Indian English accent. It’s either overdone (too musical), or inconsistent (those American ‘D’ and ‘T’ sounds creep in at telltale moments, as do those flat American ‘A’ and ‘E’ sounds) — or both. Adhir Kalyan doesn’t have many obvious flaws, though in my view something isn’t quite right with his accent (check it out at 1:45-2:00 in this clip). Kal Penn’s “Taj Mahal Badalandabad” character in Van Wilder has an accent that I find more convincing (see this clip), and it becomes funny when he says things that are particularly obscene or outrageous (as he does in that somewhat NSFW clip). And Russel Peters is quite good — accents are his particular strength. But there’s a host of lesser-known actors and stand-up comedians in parentally-financed movies like American Desi (and its various clones and imitations), who sound like they learned their Indian accents from Apu on The Simpsons, rather than real Indians.
Somehow Brit-Asian actors don’t seem to have this problem. The accents on Goodness Gracious Me and The Kumars at No. 42 always sound perfect to me. Why is that?
At any rate, I’m hereby calling for an accent-accentuation school for aspiring ABD actors and comedians trying to get a break in Hollywood. The staff, incidentally, will be entirely composed of Indian call center workers fired because their accents were too thick (or indeed, too regional). Classes will be held exclusively via videoconference (the instructors, of course, will all be based in India).
The Perfect Indian English Accent (PIEA) is a myth that exists only in the minds of Americans. People from different regions in India have different English accents. There might be a Gujarati English Accent or a Punjabi English Accent or a Tamil English Accent. ABD’s cannot do PIEA. DBD’s cannot do PIEA. Only Hank Azaria can do PIEA
People from different regions in India have different English accents. There might be a Gujarati English Accent or a Punjabi English Accent or a Tamil English Accent.
nod i remember being shocked when manish pointed out that some commercial had a guy with a bengali accent in english. nevertheless, there does tend to be a general similarity even across languages as distinct as punjabi and tamil that seems surprising. where does that come from? i know there is a good deal of evidence that indo-aryan languages swept over a dravidian substrate in northern india so the accent might be derived from that common source. or is there really a common tendency to the accents? or perhaps the indians who taught english to other indians created it amongst themselves?
I will personally pay for the training of that guy from Heroes…he is like off by a whole continent..
nice.
I second the call for Sendhil Ramamurthy to attend – well, if not him then the producers of Heroes (his accent at the beginning of the show was far more convincing than the Oxfordised version he’s using these days).
It is possible the most disappointing accents come from 3rd-gen (or 4th, etc.) actors, whose own parents speak with American accents. It is also possible that directors ask the actors to “fake up” their accents, even when the actor is capable of performing an authentic accent. I asked the actors on Sita to affect hybrid accents; real Indian accents (and of course there are many kinds) can be difficult for some Americans to understand. (Some directors may have more sinsiter motives, such as thinking fake accents are more humorous.) Anyway, it may not be the actors’ fault. Ideally, your accent school will emphasize both authenticity and clarity!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xq7B9g09i4g&mode=related&search=
i always thought these guys were good!
On a side note ..a lot of my old friends from India developed English Accents..just after a couple of years of stay in …America!
Just a quick clarification:
By “perfect accent,” I meant, perfectly compelling. I know quite well that there’s no one standard Indian English accent…
This is so true. I’m an ABD and I know my Indian English accent isn’t that guh-rate. Also, the Indian English accent I hear most often is Gujurati English, so that prolly affects my idea of an accent. While I was living in India, I subconciously picked up a slight accent. I think it was so people could understand me better.
But the head nod? I have got that down, it’s in the blood yaar!
I find that when my sibs and I ape the accent we actually sound NOTHING like those in our family with accents. Most of them speak that slightly accented nearly-British desi-English whereas we channel Apu.
Oh the head nod! So difficult to get it correct! I am a big fan of the desi hand flick.
“well, if not him then the producers of Heroes (his accent at the beginning of the show was far more convincing than the Oxfordised version he’s using these days).”
i think he said he was told by the producers/directors to do it more British than Indian-British (or what can pass for the “educated” Indian English accent). his accent at the beginning was far more convincing. i found that odd because masai oka, the japanese actor, does an accent that is sometimes harder to understand than the original more Indian-British accent.
“On a side note ..a lot of my old friends from India developed English Accents..just after a couple of years of stay in …America!”
i’ll have to say that one of the strangest accents is that weird mix of indian english and american accents that’s not quite one or the other. it sounds jarring. for some reason the indian english, even not so refined indian english, and british english (what’s considered more neutral or bbc english, not the regional ones or the slang ones) sounds better when mixed.
Once in a high school musical, they needed me to do an indian accent. i was completely incapable of doing it. italian, check. german, check. japaneese, check. chineese and desi, no.
It is possible the most disappointing accents come from 3rd-gen (or 4th, etc.) actors, whose own parents speak with American accents.
then this should be a bigger problem with the british: they have a MUCH HIGHER proportion of 3rd and 4th gen people (we barely have any 4th gen in the USA aside from the california punjabi-mexican american descendants).
Just the topic I was looking for. Can someone here educate me? I need to find the difference between the “W” sound and the “V” sound. I am a DBD. I can’t tell the Wine from Vine, Vinny from Winney, Vase, Water, What, Why, Winston, Vinegar…….the list goes on.
thanks
Cliff
V sound = bottom lip curled up against top teeth. force air through
W sound = hold lips in round position (like an exegerated kiss). keep touong slightly back. push air through.
i hope your not kidding and im not making an ass of myself.
http://www.cwtv.com/shows/aliens-in-america/cast/adhir-kalyan Wonder if Indians in South Africa speak with a British accent.
GG,
The ones I have spoken to have a mixture of British and native accents, I am not sure if someone else here has any other way of describing it.
@16: Puli,
thanks for that…no, I am totally serious. My first grader and kindergartner often correct me when I mix up my v and w’s. It is funny and we laugh our asses off 🙂
Very true. I was always struck by how many different British accents Sanjeev et al would employ, especially non-Indian ones. And not all were caricatures (like the hip-hop kids or the Kapoors/Coopers on GGM). Sanjeev would do some of those skits in London or Midlands accents, just for kicks. A very talented guy.
the same conversation i used to have with my mom in the first grade.
imho desi accents done by most American actors including Kal Penn sound lazy and bordering on the Apu accent. I have lived majority of my life in India and I go back every year and I have yet to come across anyone that sounds like Penn in Van Wilder or Sendhil in Heroes.
Please don’t. I love it when the two get interchanged. Most people know what you’re saying, so no worries Cliff. And is “Cliff” a common DBD name?
I am not sure if Cliff is an internet pseudonym but the name is common amongst Indian Christians.
its like talking to “james” in the gurgao call center to pay your credit card bill.
Cho chweet! I said stuve instead of stove until my sophomore year in college when my roomate called me out on it! That was a direct result of hearing my mom say it wrong all those years.
Does anyone here have parents that say freezdge instead of fridge or freezer? My mom says it all the time and I always have to clarify with her which one she means. Of course one time I didn’t clarify with her and put a whole chicken in the freezer. Needless to say, my sister who was cooking, was pissed because I ruined dinner for everyone on Christmas day.
Gandhi was on last night (perhaps on AMC or Bravo) and Ben Kingsley’s accent was very nicely done.
Cliff: When Indians mean to say “vest” they say “west” and vice versa. So, when you’re going to utter the cardinal direction “west” just think of the sleeveless over-garment that is a “vest” and say that instead!
Also, V as in “vadai” (Tamil) or “veer” (Hindi) and W as in “wodhai” (Tamil) or “wo ladka” (Hindi).
italian, check. german, check. japaneese, check. chineese and desi, no.
Can you do a Czech accent??
Not really an American born desi, but Ben Kingsley did a good job in Gandhi.
I should have a clue about this. My niece has a school friend whose parents are from Kerala. He has the most common Scandinavian name of “Johanssen”.
i used to say veggee-tables untill the third grade (per my mom) untill my third grade teacher made fun of me in front of the whole class till i cried….
i think it would be the same as my cosmonaut impression. Czech, check. (i know you just wanted me to say that)
“Czech, check. (i know you just wanted me to say that)”
yep. 🙂
I was greatly made fun of in school for call daddy, “deddyâ€.
I found that if you use words like YAAAAR or ARRRRRAAY, WHAT THE HELL it becomes easier to imitate the accent.
Or start off sentences with BASICALLY. The guy on Heroes seems to mix in a middle eastern twinge to his accent. That’s what Ajay Naidu did in Office Space though I think they obscured that character’s origin intentionally with a nonsensical name and a hodge podge accent.
I got made fun of calling my mom “mummy”.
i called my grandmother “pati”, which to most other kids sounds like “toilet”. didnt go well for me.
nevertheless, there does tend to be a general similarity even across languages as distinct as punjabi and tamil that seems surprising
I agree, and my contention is that you have to be trained to hit the accent that includes the similarities between all the Indian accents. This holds true for Americans, DBDs and ABDs. I’m a DBD, and I can’t do Apu’s voice, because I don’t have a typical Indian accent (none of us do). Hank Azaria can do Apu much better than I can because he has trained himself.
I also took a lot of $hit for calling my parents “amma” and “appa”. didnt phase me though. i never outgrew that.
For all of you who are curious 😉
“Cliff” is a pseudonym I use for blogging purposes only. Why Cliff…? you may ask…..I am a big fan of Cliff Clavin
I don’t think there is interchange of v and w with foreign desis. For example, people with indian accent say ‘vest’ and ‘west’ the same way. in fact, w is redundant.
Cliff Claven! I knew it! I was trying to reconcile your DBD with an image of a middle-aged, thin-haired white guy in gray shorts with black knee socks, who can’t shut up about innane factoids.
Even odder: There are certain moments in American Desi where it seemed as if people who spoke English with a “perfect Indian accent” were speaking Hindi as if they were reading literally from a poorly romanized script. It was so weird.
Down the line If I have a kid who will try to teach me the difference between W and V..then “somebody is gonna get a hurt real baad” 🙂
Why does Kashmir become Kashmere in Amreekanese? Likewise Samir becomes Samere.
you know youll think your kid is just being “sooo cute. sooo sveeet”.
Aw dude, I remember crying to my primary (elementary) school teacher and telling her I wanted to see my Bapuji. With my little six year old squeak combined with a New Zealand accent, she thought I was crying about my budgie. I couldn’t figure out for the life of me why she kept insisting on telling me about a budgie when I had bigger problems!
We’ve got the same problem with actors doing broad Indian accents downunder. Some can, some really can’t.
So basically ABD’s can’t do the Indian English accent well and when we speak in the mother tongue we have an American accent, only thing we’re good for is American English dude!
It really annoys me when my little cousins make fun of me when I’m trying to speak Gujurati. I already know it’s not good but when they start giggling I want to slap them upside the head. The sad thing is that I can’t make fun of their English because they all go to English medium schools and their English is great. Oh the indignity of it all!
Cliff…meant to add “but I couldn’t reconcile the two”. Glad to know you’re not into vanity nom de plumes.
As for the accent business in Hollywood, it has yet to put authentic southern accents on film and let’s not even get into all the bad Spanish accents in American film. There is only now an effort being made to make a Cuban character not sound like a Mexican character and vice versa.
Amardeep, nobody seems to have picked up on the fact that your post is classed under ‘Humor’ and is heavily dripping with irony 🙂
Folks – there is not only no single ‘Indian accent’, there is also no single ‘American’ or even ‘British’ or Canadian accent. Accent is at least as much about listening as about speaking, and being primed to listen to particular markers of difference in patterns of speech, and about cognitive processing shortcuts – as it is about anything real.
And it is rather more about prejudice than about genuine articulatory difficulty. Let us recognize that as we laugh our asses off at silliness like here.
I had absolutely no ‘accent’ before The Simpsons took off as a show. People told me this, and it was true, and I accepted it, and that was no big deal. Not something to be particularly ‘proud’ about, then or now, given the specifics of my background.
But, now that the show has been running as long as it has, suddenly people ‘notice’ the accent, often only after they see me in person. I shrug it off, but I recognize the prejudicial subtext. Even South Asian kids born here, (to say nothing of adults born and brought up here) are being teased with the Apu faux-accent – so I can’t feel too bad.
So laugh a little, or a lot, but about the whole thing, not at someone. Don’t ridicule or judge others solely for their supposed ‘accent’, especially across immigrant generations – ABD vs DBD. Remember, it could happen to you too, whether you’re ABD or DBD, from either group, as well as from other groups. So don’t buy into this whole otherization program.
Aren’t there words in several Indian languages that distinguish between V and W?
When I first went to India as a kid, I was confused what “Jed” meant until someone explained to me it was Z.
Speaking of accents, the funniest were when indian immigrants would return to India and then try to talk to their Indian relatives in a more exagerrated “american” accent which sounded kind of stretched out enunciations with a whiny tone.
White friends in college and work settings speak to me normally. But I noticed at Indian gatherings, some of the white people begin to sound like stock white characters out of a Wayans movie with exagerrated WASPY accents. An overly polite dorky tone.
I notice my Indian cousins use profanity like shit as common usage in family gatherings. Some even use fuck a lot. I had to explain to them that words that were better restricted to school settings away from their parents and uncles and aunts.
Indira Varma. I had no idea she was only half Indian who grew up in England. I thought she got the body language and facial expressions spot on in that silly movie Kama Sutra. She could have been a native for all I knew. I forget how accurate her accent was though it is immaterial since people did not speak English back then, anyway.
Fisher Stevens is seen as a major caricature in Short Circuit. But I didnt think he was that far off from a guy I knew in college. He was at that time termed as an FOB, known here as ABDs. It was easy to snicker at him because he was obnoxious and dorky at the same time. So you didn’t feel sorry for him.
happened to me tonnes in jr high/high school. i didnt really understand. I asked in my american accent “do i really sound like that to you?”, the answer was to repeate what i just said in an Apu accent.