Accents ultimately don't mean a lot

One day when I went for my usual grocery shopping, I stumbled upon a child behind me when I was queuing up at a payment counter.

The little kid, who looked to be of Chinese ethnicity and about two to three years old, was riding a fairly small-size bicycle which was obtained from the supermarket and wasn’t yet paid for. And then for some reason, he repeatedly attempted to ride over me while (lightly) hitting one of my calves.

Slightly startled and annoyed by this laughable behaviour, I turned my head back and looked towards the child, who was still riding on the bicycle. To my surprise, he seemed to be even more annoyed than I was, and started to complain to his mother using words that vaguely sounded like English, while staring back at me.

To his mother’s credit, she did try to stop him and verbally reprimanded him using Mandarin. However, he didn’t show a sign of conceding and kept saying something like a complaint and looking at me angrily, while I continued to stare at him with a poker face.

Fortunately this didn’t last long. It was my turn to pay shortly after that, so I shifted my attention to making the payment, while the kid was stopped by his mother.

Well, this whole incident didn’t really bother me a lot, but what intrigued me the most was the child’s manner of speech when he was complaining. I could clearly register that his talking resembled English with a very noticeable American accent, yet other than the easily recognisable ‘mommy, mommy’, whatever else he said was essentially plain old gibberish.

I know I shouldn’t be too hard on a toddler, but this encounter reminds me of certain Malaysian parents who deliberately teach their children only English, even though it isn’t necessarily their mother tongue, and it has to be in American or British accent for some reason (mostly American though).

Granted, there is nothing wrong with the act of teaching a language or an accent itself; what rubs me the wrong way is their motivation behind this kind of parenting decision: they perceive this to be the ‘higher-class’ way of educating their children, for the sole reason of them… speaking English in a Caucasian-sounding accent.

Anyways, I digress. What did I learn from this incident then? Well, it’s that accents ultimately don’t mean a lot¹, especially when it comes to one’s attitude and upbringing.