I keep forgetting I'm speaking in an American accent sometimes. The dangerous thing is that you end up forgetting what your real accent is after a while! It's really strange; I've never done a job in an American accent before.
I felt so out of place at the Miss India pageant. I had just come back from America, and I was told I needed to lose my American accent and learn the Queen's English, so I had to enunciate my vowels and speak well and eloquently. Giving up a New York accent is pretty hard.
I knew the profanity used up and down my street would not go over the air... So I trained myself to say 'Holy Cow' instead.
We were doing the same thing. We will never have "a" Chicano English or Spanish because of regional differences. But I think that because of our bilingual history, we'll always be speaking a special kind of English and Spanish. What we do have to do is fight for the right to use those two languages in the way that it serves us. Nuevo-mexicanos have done it very well for hundreds of years, inventing words where they don't have them. I think the future of our language is where we claim our bilingualism for its utility.
When I'm in the U.K. I find myself using a lot of Britishisms.
People communicate in Twittering ways. I've learned how to do that.
Time changes all things; there is no reason why language should escape this universal law
A language does not become fixed. The human intellect is always on the march, or, if you prefer, in movement, and languages with it.
If I'm performing in the United States, I'm able to speak Spanglish, and the crowd comprehends. If I'm in the Dominican Republic or Puerto Rico, then I'm completely Spanish. I feel like a New Yorker that represents all Latinos.
My accent does slip. When I arrived in England in 1978 at 18, I was shocked to find myself 'the American' at RADA. The English and the Americans have an intense relationship. They helped us out in the Second World War.
Language evolves and moves on. It is an organic thing. It is not stuck in an ivory tower, hung with expensive works of art.
I subconsciously mimic whomever I'm talking to, so I've been mistaken for a Canadian, a South American, and somebody from the West Country.
Dominant and emerging forms of interpersonal communication have to find their way into literary language somehow - think of the epistolary novels of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.
The one thing - apart from assumptions about German - that I have to challenge frequently is people assuming that lexicographers are fierce protectors of the language when in fact our job is not to put a lid on it.
A new language requires a new technique. If what you're saying doesn't require a new language, then what you're saying probably isn't new.
I speak English my way, but people understand it. You can understand everything I say, and that's the most important thing.
When a player joins Real Madrid's first team, they're often under pressure to be an instant success. By joining Castilla, I had the chance to understand the club and get to know the players, the culture, the country and the language.
I use Mandarin, Korean and English on a daily basis and usually only use Cantonese when I'm speaking with my relatives. I don't think it's very difficult for me to switch between each language because I've been doing it for so long.
The accent got lost somewhere along the way. I'm a little embarrassed about it. When I arrived in LA I assumed I'd be able to put on the American accent. It proved difficult so I had six months working with a dialect coach and it's become a habit.
My accent depends on whom I'm around.
I started out in New York, and New York has a way of countering a Southern accent, naturally; when I moved to Los Angeles for a job, and I just stayed, the dialect out here doesn't really counter, and my Southern started coming back.
I went to a basic school, which had children from all corners of the world, and met my best friend and had to learn Greek because she didn't speak English.
For 'Dum Maro Dum,' I had a diction tutor, as I had to get rid of my Hyderabadi Hindi and learn Goan Hindi. It wasn't easy, because these two kinds of Hindi were mutually incompatible. I had to unlearn one kind of Hindi and then learn a new kind.
When you work in a different language you are not so attached to the words.
When I arrived in L.A., I assumed I'd be able to put on the American accent. It proved difficult, so I had six months working with a dialect coach, and it's become a habit.
