Dialect, Accent and Imitation: Semi-Native Perspectives

                I admit, I’m one of “those people” who pronounce quinoa as [kwi'noʊə] and not ['kinwa]. Why? Because, like anyone else, I learned to pronounce words from the people around me, who, in my context, tended to be speakers of Filipino English and not SAE.

                Viewing the ['kwinoʊ] commercial in class led me to wonder, “What makes the pronunciation of a word socially acceptable?” Most of us would giggle at ['kwinoʊ], but [kwi'noʊə] remains as valid a pronunciation to me as ['kinwa] is to most people. At the same time, people don’t think twice when they hear [ˈɡæɹɑːʒ] instead of [ɡəˈɹɑːdʒ]. Why is there this distinction?

                In learning English as a child, I think I’ve experienced a phenomenon that’s very distinct from the way people usually think about phonological rules in one language affecting another. Normally, people observe alternative pronunciations in people who are not native speakers of English. However, despite being a native speaker, I have non-SAE pronunciations of many words, learned from parents who speak Filipino English, i.e., the English spoken in the Philippines. When I was younger, my parents applied Tagalog phonological rules when speaking to me, and I like any child imitated them dutifully.

It’s almost as if I’ve learned a novel mode of pronunciation, Filipino-American English. I certainly haven’t learned Filipino-English, as I am not a native Tagalog speaker and do not apply its phonological properties, such as non-aspirated vowels and [ɾ]/[t] substitution, when learning new words. At the same time, my native pronunciations of many words, like [kwi'noʊə] and [salmən], are definitely not characteristic of SAE.

This phenomenon is not limited to just me and/ or certain parts of the Filipino American community. I’ve observed similar patterns amongst Korean and Chinese American friends who grew up in comparable dialectal circumstances.

Given that many Asian Americans are learning these alternate pronunciations natively, can Filipino-American English, Korean-American English and other emergent forms of pronunciation be considered their own dialects? If not, what requirements must any system of pronunciation pass to be considered a dialect? Are dialects in themselves arbitrary boundaries in what should be better described as a full spectrum of pronunciation systems?

Related to this, how do our views of “foreign” accents as valid dialects affect our perceptions of accent imitation? It’s very much socially acceptable to imitate a “British” accent, even in the face of native speakers of Received Pronunciation. I hear this happen every day, much to the dismay of the international students on my floor of Faisan. Why, then, is there a social stigma about imitating speakers of African American Vernacular English (AAVE), Indian English and other dialects that are foreign to most SAE speakers?

I would argue that, because people often view AAVE, Indian English and many other dialects as substandard or improper, people see imitation of these accents as mockery rather than cultural appreciation or appropriation. On the other hand, because people view Received Pronunciation as an “official” dialect of English, they see imitation as appreciative flattery. This would explain why non-African Americans cannot acceptably pronounce /asked/ as [aksd], because doing so would be perceived as mockery of African American culture. At the same time, most SAE speakers can acceptably say [ˈɡæɹɑːʒ] because it would be perceived as appreciation for British culture.

If imitation, at its best, is a form of flattery, viewing a wider variety of dialects as standard would lead to a broad destigmatization of accent imitation. In the case of the Filipino-American [kwi'noʊə], I duly hope that imitation will make it as popular as the grain it refers to.