Hong Kong is the High Tech Village where everybody is eager for learning and learning more. Every villager virtually has $10,000 worth of government subsidised fund to spend on continuing education, and you can easily blow it all on certain daft drama-makes-leaders course like this and transform yourself into a leader in no time.Bet readers of the Pub are mostly rebels like us and hate the idea of playing choo choo in suit with other MNE executives. That's why I'm here today to recommend another valuable training opportunity in town: Speak English like a Native.
Mr Siu Hoi-Yat, the trainer of the programme, is one of the star bloggers in the Village. He's famous for putting up a bunch of educational YouTube videos on his blog, teaching us how to speak perfect English like a native. He has produced more than 100 videos viewed by thousands of fans in HK.
For HK$3,360, you get 20 hours of intensive and proven effective training and practice with the English speaking guru. Why would you want to speak English like a native when you're apparently not? Because:
- People will think you studied overseas for years!
- You are passionate about English, like Master Siu, therefore you would want to speak it exactly as its native speakers do.
- You want to work out in an ORAL gym with "business professionals in their 20s and 30s and university students".
- You want to attend a class where you will have lots of chances to "open your month".
- You want your "attention to be drawn to any marked differences between Standard British English and General American speech".
- You're worried about accent snobbery in Hong Kong, as most of the Villagers know a great deal about English accents like Ruby does.
- Your eyebrows raised when someone says "mirror" instead of "looking-glass" and "teacher" instead of "master/mistress".
- You have an Ultimate Chinese Accent.
- You want to score four American chicks at once.
Or you can join this losers' group instead.
It depends on what he means by speaking like a native. If he's talking about the way we speak it, like how we should use different vocabularies and stuff like that, then I think that's ok. But if he is talking about imitating their accents, then I don't think that's necessary.
ReplyDeleteI am sure most Americans don't mind people from non-English speaking countries speaking like them. As for the English, I am not very optimistic about it. They tend to look down on people who speak like them actually.
It's kind of weird that Hong Kong people wanna speak like natives all the time while most Europeans don't care about that at all. It doesn't matter if we speak with a different accent. Only pronunciations matter.
W
As an American, the only reliable way I have to identify other Americans is their accent. Ethnicity doesn't work. What does an American look like? I have no idea. Clothing sorta works, but there are way too many non-Americans who perfectly mimic the way Americans dress (thanks to all the American TV). In most of my travels, the only 100% reliable way to identify my countrymen has been from their accent.
ReplyDeleteIn HK, even that doesn't always work. I've met a few Hongkie Indians and Chinese who speak with perfect non-regional US accents. And though many of them have lived in the US for a time, they are not Americans.
Now I don't think there's anything wrong with that. And I don't think Americans have any problem with people sounding like them (or not sounding like them--in a nation of immigrants, we're very used to people speaking English with all sorts of accents). But people who aren't from the US sounding like they are from the US can be a little confusing, that's all. Makes me look stupid when I ask "so where in the US are you from?" and they say, "actually I'm from here."
Be careful there. Some Canadians don't take kindly to being mistaken for an American!
ReplyDeleteYes, that's why we all needa enroll in Siu Sir's accent reduction programme!
ReplyDeleteAccent is really important to be minimized but not forced. speaking english like a native may be easy for some but impossible for some. I learned from http://preply.com/en/skype/english-native-speakers and was lucky to sound like a native after all is done but my teacher said some nationalities are getting harder time to lose their accent.
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