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What's the worst-sounding foreign accent in English? Right now I think it's Mandarin, but I am open to suggestions.
Singapore is grating especially because, if you watch old clips, the Chinese elite spoke with a much more English inflection / style until about 40 years ago; Singlish is a relatively recent invention.
I dislike the “international school” accent that wealthy Europeans have speaking English. They think it makes them far superior to their poorer countrymen who speak with more identifiable accents but I disagree - it melds aspects of standard American with a kind of almost Dutch twang. Give me a Tcherman any day. It’s an uncanny valley American. There are a few who cross it and are completely stealth Europeans who sound fully American, but far fewer pass than think they do.
There is a certain charm to Indians when they use bizarre words or antiquated expressions. As far as native accents go, Australians have an annoying attitude tied to their strenuously feigned nonchalance but the accent can be entertaining. The New Zealand accent has a nice melancholy to it. I dislike the Upper Midwest accent for reasons I struggle to describe, but it just has a kind of Winnie the Pooh fakeness to it. I love all the accents of the British Isles (although some, like Birmingham/Midlands, make me laugh because it seems almost comically depressed, a kind of eeyore accent if we’re continuing that analogy). The deep Toronto / Tronno accent is annoying.
PMC Singaporeans can code-switch between Standard Singapore English (which is British English with a few Malay loanwords, and worryingly many uncles) and Singlish, and speak SSE with a broadly similar accent to other people whose first language is Mandarin. (The same is true of PMC Brits whose native tongue is one of the barely-comprehensible regional dialects like Geordie or Scouse).
My understanding is that Singlish is what happens if you take 90-105 IQ Hokkien-speakers and educate them bilingually in English and Mandarin, neither of which their parents speak.
Sure, and I mean there are degrees of Singlish. By Singlish accent I mean more “fluent English” (as in your former example), with few loanwords, but a very pronounced accent. It’s not about grammar. You have as I was saying above that type of very well educated upper middle (or indeed upper) class English person who speaks fluent French with the most hideous pronunciation because they simply don’t care to put on a French accent when speaking French.
PMC Brits whose native tongue is a strong regional working class dialect (is there another kind? I guess the posh Edinburgh accent still sounds a little Scottish) probably used to hide it, although less often now (they don’t in government or media, I suspect some still do in finance and corporate law). Still I respect them for having accomplished something far more impressive than being just another upper middle class striver.
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