Is there the sort of factor as an Asian American accessory? Nobody can reasonably nail it down — or agree whether or not it exists — however it appears you recognize it while you hear it.
The life of an Asian American accessory has been debated on social media, sparking conversations on TikTok and lots of a Reddit thread, together with one dedicated to celebrities who purportedly have it — Ali Wong, Randall Park and Lucy Liu.
Adam Aleksic, 23, a Serbian American linguistics content material writer who’s founded in Barcelona, Spain, created the TikTok video that many customers are riffing from to provide examples of the accessory. Aleksic cites research that counsel Asian Americans discuss with a better pitch, or breathier articulation, however raises questions on which of the various Asian identities this accessory may just duvet.
Everyone turns out to agree that, if it exists, the Asian American accessory is tricky to outline. It’s now not that of first-generation immigrants; somewhat, it’s one thing within the speech of those that discuss highest English, however with a taste that allows you to know the speaker is of Asian descent.
“I super hear it! I have it myself despite having grown up in California since I was 2,” Howard Wang, a Los Angeles-based political scientist who emigrated from Taiwan as an toddler and grew up in a Taiwanese American enclave in Northern California, wrote in an immediate message on X. He speaks with a standard American accent. Now in his early 30s, he described it as “subtle, like a midwestern accent.”
“People with the accent tend to be a little more nasal and to have shorter, more direct tones when speaking English as opposed to people without the accent, who seem to lilt in tone more,” Wang added, regarding the YouTuber Future Canoe as an excessive instance.
Historian Carlos Yu described it in an immediate message on X as “a shared timbre and manner of enunciation among many — but not all — Asian Americans that reminds me a little of the overprecise way old-time sci-fi fans used to speak, e.g., the Comic Book Guy on ‘The Simpsons.’”
Yu, 54 — who’s Filipino American, grew up in northern Wisconsin and now lives in Brooklyn, New York — says he doesn’t have it. Instead, he stated he sounds “like James Earl Jones doing an impression of William H. Macy in ‘Fargo.’”
For those that hear it, it’s unique sufficient to hear it in non-Asians, like YouTube persona TextuallyCC. Others liken it to Canadian or northern or southern Californian speech.
Despite those testimonials, linguists aren’t satisfied an Asian American accessory exists.
“It’s a very complex question. I do think that it’s definitely true that some people speak English in a way where it’s possible to identify them as being some kind of Asian American. Whether we can call that an accent or not is a different question,” Andrew Cheng, an assistant professor of linguistics on the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa, informed NBC News. “Everyone has an accent because everyone speaks in some way that identifies them as being from some place.”
But while you’re speaking about Asian Americans, that’s a vast swath of geography, ethnicities and languages.
“People have not been able to really define the boundaries of what this is,” stated Cheng, whose analysis makes a speciality of Korean Americans. “There’s questions of whether it is stronger in some regions of the country, such as California, where there’s a high Asian American population, or if it’s specific ethnicities — there’s East Asians and South Asians and Southeast Asians. Is it specifically the Koreans and Chinese, for example, but not the Hmong Americans or Japanese Americans?”
One phonetic difference, specifically with Korean Americans, is the pronunciation of “O” — one syllable as opposed to a drawn-out “Ohh,” Cheng stated. But it’s now not a strict definition.
“I study the phenomenon behind the sounds that people hear to identify as Asian American or what sociological and sociolinguistic inner workings affect people’s perceptions,” Cheng added, but if guessing if audio system are Asian American, “I don’t have the most accurate track record myself.”
Speech isn’t only decided by means of folks’s oldsters or households, mavens say. As children get started day care or college, friends have extra of an affect. People additionally find out about different languages or shuttle or are living in several states or nations, influencing how they communicate.
“That’s why even though my parents speak with a strong Taiwanese or Mandarin accent in their English, I don’t sound like my parents. When I speak English, I sound like the people that I grew up with. It just so happens that the people I grew up with in the Bay Area were largely Asian American,” Cheng stated. “Kids who grew up in [Los Angeles’] Koreatown grew up with other Korean Americans. So the way that they speak is obviously influenced by Korean but not specifically the Korean of their parents, but the Korean American English that their peers were speaking. So there’s a slight nuance where they’re sounding like each other.”
Shekinah Deocares, who’s Filipina and “a little Chinese” and grew up in Los Angeles, consents.
“There are 100 Asian American accents. I have a very strong [San Fernando] Valley and American accent, so when I speak to people in my Filipino community, a lot of times they don’t think I’m Filipino,” Deocares stated. “My voice doesn’t sound Filipino. The Asian American accent doesn’t even necessarily sound like your motherland Asian tongue at all. It’s a specific type of way that we talk.”
The 27-year-old group organizer stated she welcomes this dialog.
“Being able to label that there is this accent, there is a power to it. Part of the power is that more people would be able to dissect it and study it and acknowledge it,” Deocares stated. “I wouldn’t be offended if someone was like, ‘Oh, I could tell you’re Asian from talking to you,’ but also I’m extremely proud that I’m Asian. Not to say that no one would be offended. I’m sure there are people that would be and that’s a deeper conversation.”
Asela Kemper, 30, a creator in Ashland, Oregon, is one in every of them.
“It does not exist and is another way to downplay Asian Americans like me for being Americans. I’m half Korean and half Chinese,” she stated in an immediate message on X.
Jerry Won Lee, the director of the International Center for Writing and Translation and director of the Program in Global Languages and Communication on the University of California, Irvine, contends that accents are extra perceived than they are actual.
Lee cited a landmark 1992 sociolinguistics study through which undergraduate scholars listened to a recorded lecture with a photograph of a white lady or Chinese American lady projected on a display. Students reported difficulties working out the lecture when they assumed the professor was once Asian American, although the speaker was once in fact the similar particular person.
“That proved empirically the possibility of accents being imagined, in the mind of the listener,” Lee stated.
However, the mainstreaming of Asian and American tradition within the States during the last decade has created much less of a stigma about Asian speech patterns, Lee stated.
“On a positive note, if there is such a thing as an Asian American accent, I don’t think it’s going [to be] as pathologized as it would have been when I was coming up, because of things like K-pop. If there is an Asian American accent, it’s not a bad thing. It’s just a thing.”
