Accent as in imitation cheese and real cheese

One fine 2008 Summer morning in when I was reading to my 4 year old niece the story of Bambi, I pronounced the character Faline as Fah-Lyne, trying to put my new found perfumed accent to work.She giggled at me and said, "Mama, its not Fah-Lyne its Fa-Leeen". I was taken aback further when she phonetically explained how she pronounced it. The point is not whether she deserved to be in Gifted and Talented class( which she is in fact enrolled to now). The issue was with accent.

I have had this discussion from time immemorial. Several hundred moons wiser, I finally thought of putting this in words and make sure the progeny knows who exactly coined this phrase as in the heading. When I stepped in the shores of the United States, I could see Indians all putting up an accent totally alien to me and my english. As cliche as it might sound to be, I was dead jingoist in the beginning and promised myself never to follow suit, until it got to a point where I had to explain how I wanted my footlong to be meat free and vegetarian to the guy at Subway and he gave me a "what? come again" expression. I was agitated and so I joined the wolf the pack behind in trying to get an accent. Oh oh?

Things were peaceful until one evening, I go around with a friend who has been around there for a while and was observing him explain his coffee to the waitress at Starbucks ( who by the way makes awesome coffee and had a great smile :) ). I was admiring how he rolled his Rs and used the common gestures and then the girl dropped the same expression to him that i got used to get for my Indian accent and asked him to repeat it again. I was utterly confused. If that wasn't the closest to the American accent I had heard about, I had no clue about it and was utterly flabbergasted (until my 4 year old niece showed it to me hows its done).Here is where I came to metaphorically link American accent like the real American/Swiss cheese in comparison to all false imitations we put up as imitation cheeses. Better to have no cheese at all rather than have imitation cheese :P

We have to admit that as natives of India and having been brought up there for the first 10 years atleast, its hard for us to get that native accent, and we shouldn't be trying to do it. But how do we communicate to the other side if our english is not recognizable? Indians have amazing diction capabilities and I am proud of what we are. There is nothing wrong with our English. After all , American and Australian English is spurn off from the original British English accent. So is ours. But the phonetics dynamics is different for each country and we can appreciate this fact from the dialects we have for any language. All I learnt from that 4 year old kid was to stress on the right syllable. Americans stress on the first syllable a lot and we Indians stress on the second and there lies the majority of the difference. Just add the distinction in saying the Vs and Ws properly , I think 90 percent of the communication would be simpler.

If pronouncing phonetically right words is called accent, then maybe I might have a tinge. But most of the times, I can safely pass for a desi and at the same time communicate comfortably with colleagues who have graciously accepted me in whatever format of English I have experimented with.

I had identified the 3 kinds of people and their tryst with accents as above-

1)The desi ghee ( made in India)

2)American cheese, (made in America )

3)Imitation cheese,( LOL, proudly assembled in america, made by India or China).....

And then there is the fourth kind...

..TO BE CONTINUED...