I’ve always made fun of people who affect accents, or speak in a way that I know is contrived, and I hate on those people who claim they “pick up accents” or for some reason start talking like the people they are surrounded by, when it is not their indigenous manner of speech.
Well, I have to confess...I don’t know why, but when I’m around fobs I start to talk like one.
*Fob = “fresh off the boat,” aka a person who has the speech and mannerisms of someone who is indigenous to China or whatever country or culture you’re talking about. Adjectival form = "fobby"
The more time I spend here, the worse my English gets.
I mentioned this to one of my colleagues, and she agreed, that the more time we spent talking to non-native English speakers, the worse our English got.
Why, you might ask. Well, I feel like I do it because a) I subconsciously want to match the comfort level of the person I’m talking to, and b) I don’t want to act like I’m “better” or “above” the other person because my English is superior, and c) for some inexplicable psychological reason, it just happens!
I can’t explain it, but I have significantly changed my diction, inflections, and speed of speaking since I’ve arrived. (Don’t worry, I won't blog like a fob. Try saying that quickly five times.)
A sampling of things I've said here, verbatim:
You want get lunch soon?
Is ok, I take bus
How about email me file, then I make better
We go get tea there, is nice
All the apartment here, so expensive!
Basically it consists of dropping articles and disregarding proper verb conjugation for sequence of tense or plurality.
JP and LG would have a field day correcting everybody’s grammar here…and laugh upon hearing the way I am speaking now, compared to the grammar Nazi I used to be!
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