Why must accent?

Thought this was quite an interesting post by this guy called ian. See his post here.

I don’t get it. I really don’t.

You live in Singapore for 18 years of your life, you go overseas for 4 years and after that, all the good work is gone. You come back and start speaking with a foreign accent. I understand that you have been living in a foreign country for the last 4 years surrounded by people who speak like that so maybe it is normal for you to be slightly affected. But if the environment plays such a part, then why, tell me why after returning to Singapore and spending the next six years of your life, you don’t lose the foreign accent and gain back the Singaporean one. How come those ang mohs or foreign talents from whatever other country doesn’t gain a Singaporean accent after living here for a long time. Sure, they pick up a bit of Singlish and our slangs but do they lose their accent from home. I haven’t met one yet. In fact, they need to make an effort to talk like us. It isn’t natural.

I’m not against speaking good proper English. But you can do that without an accent.

Hard

“It’s hard to severe ties with Singapore,” said Amy (Above right), at her first meeting with R.O.S.S., which stands for Returned Overseas Singaporeans. It’s her third time trying to resettle back in Singapore, after being away for more than 10 years in Australia and the U.S.. She said she failed the first two times because there were too many little things that she just “couldn’t stand it”. She didn’t want to give us further details. This time has been her longest back home, some two years have passed and she says she’s slowly getting adjusted back home.

After a long wait, we finally get to meet the people from R.O.S.S.. It’s an informal group set up by San Choo and Don. They hope this will be a platform to gather Singaporeans who have away for a while to share their experiences and to also help each other with issues settling back in Singapore.It was rather overwhelming trying to interview the various people, each with their very interesting and unique stories, while also being conscious that we were not hijacking their social time with the group. Some of them have such complex personalities and stories that it was truly difficult to even try and grasps their thoughts and ideas. Michael was one of them. More on him later.

There was a common observation we made though: the majority reason these people came back seemed to be because of family. Either to fulfill family obligations, or to be just closer to mum and dad. “Don’t want to live to regret” not being with them as you see them age, Amy said. Michael too, came back to be with his father in his twilight years. Bernadette, who has just started work at CGH and is among the 39 doctors who returned to Singapore, too said she returned largely because of her parents.

As I left the place, I thought to myself: So what’s making these people stay then and how then are they adjusting back to life here?