MORE AND MORE IN THE WORLD ARE SPEAKING ENGLISH IN THICK AMERICAN ACCENTS, AT A TIME WHEN AMERICANISM IS DYING OR IN MANY COUNTRIES, LONG DEAD

THAT CAN CAUSE THE AMERICANS TO BE SPEECHLESS…AND THE LAW OF UNINTENDED CONSEQUENCES.

By Mansor Puteh

Even many young British men and women including the Australian ones are not speaking English in the same way of accent like their parents still do; they are speaking more in the American accent.

So in time, the English accent as we knew it would be gone and not used even by the BBC newscasters or reporters and program hosts.

All of them would be speaking in English in an American accent.

Even the Australians and New Zealanders are doing that too especially the young, but not necessarily those who are older and living far away from the cities and town centers where they do not meet with people other than those who are like them, speaking much like them too.

Maybe the Australian and New Zealand political leaders have some need still to speak in their local accents, just to show who they are, not British or Americans.

But they are from an earlier generation of Australians and New Zealanders who have to be different as long as they can.

Even in Malaysia more and more young Malaysians are doing that; they had no need to speak in English in a British or Malaysian accent.

American films and television programs have caused this to happen.

But the irony is that, while more and more people are speaking in English in American accents, Americanism as a socio-politico-cultural movement is dying or dead in many countries especially in Iran and the other Arab countries.

The Iranians mostly speak in English in an American accent because they were taught to speak in this language by those who also spoke in such an accent, despite their country’s staunch hatred of America, or the American politics which they thought favored too much on the Zionist interests than their own.

Many students who went to America to study will bring back not only their degrees and experiences living in the country but also the accent when speaking in English although many of them may not necessarily adopt the American way of life which they cannot acquire and use in their own countries especially if they are Arabs and Muslims.

On the contrary some of who had studied and lived in America for a long period of time might even find the American way of life disgusting and are not too fascinated with American culture.

It is those who have not been to the country who are too fascinated with it.

But alas, they did not know how to differentiate between the real American culture and American Pop culture which they find to be too superficial and incongruous to their personal cultural tastes and moral as well as religious values.

American Pop culture which centers on their films and music as well as the popular arts, really thrives because it rejects those values which many outside of the country uphold, which sadly is something that many young people outside of America find a lot of fascination for.   

They obviously do not know how or what to choose from American culture that they can only see on television and in the cinemas and newspapers or magazines, while those who have superior intellect could; so they choose not to be absolved by it taking American Pop culture without question even if the promote values which are totally alien to them and also against their religion.   

But the irony of it all is how despite all that, Americanism as a socio-psycho-political culture is slow dying all over the world.

In fact, in some countries it is said to have died, especially in Iran and the few Arab countries that have been destroyed by American political and military might.

So it won’t be a surprise if in the near future, all that remains of Americanism is the American accent that many outside of America have when they speak in English.

British cultural influences even in the former British colonies had waned and disappeared completely when Americanism started to rear it ugly head after the Second World War.

Slowly but surely, British music, films and even literature were overtaken by American popular culture which was more palatable to most of the people in those colonies because it appealed to their superficial senses and puerile tastes and was very easy to acquire and not to mention the American fast-food which are also easy to swallow.

The British quickly gave way to America and allowed Americanism to dominate the very countries that they had long colonized even to the extent of allowing the younger generation of British to also do the same. 

The people who now speak with a thick and proper British accent are the children of the Pakistani, Bangladeshi and other Arab and Muslims and also African immigrants to Britain whose parents had come to live in the country with their children who were too young that they were able to pick up the English language and the British accents, too, although without a stiff upper lip that even the long-time British had learnt how to loosen.   

And it won’t be long before the colored British as they are called to take over the literary and cultural scene in the country because the white British have lost interest in speaking in English properly whose personal experience is limited to their own small and fractured world that is now dominated by the first generation children of immigrants who would go on to introduce new elements in the social experiences of the country leaving the white British world shrunk and those who are in it feeling lost.

No doubt it won’t be long that America will have a colored majority, too, the more the country bombs the Arab and Muslim countries in the Middle East and Africa that forced many in these countries to flee from them to go to the west especially Europe and also America.

This is but one of the effects of the law of unintended consequences arising from the country’s military campaign in the Arab and Muslim World that their political and military leaders were not aware could happen.