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).
Commenting on very old article.
It is not physiology that distinguishes one accent from another. It’s not even the phonetic realizations of phonemes, because pronouncing individual phones correctly doesn’t make one sound like AmE accent. It is something more: voice quality (placement of voice, resonance, etc); intonation; stress. Many accent reduction coaches focus on ‘citation’ form speaking, which is useless. If you really wanna cultivate how to mimic others, cultivate an ability to humm how Indians sound or russians sound when they speak–humming is one of many pedagogic devices used to train singing.
Whenever one utters a single phone, it is uttered with a particular pitch; many books on accents focus less on pitch, but more on phonemes. This is the reason majority of discussions focus too much on phonemes ( v/w/labio dental fricative v; fricative th/dental stop th; etc). On this board, people agree that there is more to accents than the business of phonemes. It is the placement of voice: an imaginary point of where to resonate vowels. This requires placing ones vocal instrument in one particular way, call it American way: tongue (which plays a role in the production of vowels); soft palate (this plays role in pharyngeal resonance).
One more quality to Indian accent: the way they stress words. This is has to do with: their syllabifying English words according to their native language, thereby messing up the whole structure.
For instance, one commenter posted an example: “GRA-choo-ity” for “graTUity.
Majority of words that end with ‘y’ usually get ante-penult stress (third to the end): gra-‘tu-i-ty or gra-TU-i-ty (t in the onset position doesn’t get affrication, but it does get affricated in the coda place, for example, in con-,grat-u-‘la-tion.) Second, there is a gemination of /w/, because of /u/. Vowel a becomes schwa, when that syallable doesn’t have a coda consonant; but it becomes a CAT vowel when it it got a coda consonant (for instance observe the first vowel a sound in fan-‘tas-tic, even though it is not stressed).
They are so many heuristics that are internalized among native speakers; these are not taught, nor do they play any rule in Indian English.
For Desi accent “even” and “only” is used alot.
Uncleji, we are going to sabzi mandi.
Beta, even I am going to the sabzi mandi only!
If you can get the evens and onlys down with the regional intonation, even if you don’t speak a word of Hindi in these parts, the people with “get” what you are saying – only.