Malaysians Love To Emulate Foreign Accents But Outsiders Think Our Accent Is Sexayyy
According to readers of Enjoy Travel, Malaysia made it to the top 50 sexiest accents in the world.
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Some Malaysians are fascinated with other people’s accents, especially accents from the “Western world.” It’s a harmless fascination but it has led to some people disliking their Malaysian accent or wishing they had a different accent altogether.
It’s worse when others believe the Western accent is the “proper” accent.
Most of us have witnessed this since our schooling days when we were learning different languages, especially English, and it carries on into adulthood.
We would have heard peers trying their best to adopt a wholly new accent or miraculously speaking in a non-identifiable accent when they returned from their holiday abroad. This is not to drag code-switching, which is fine to fit in better with the locals abroad when we socialise.
There have also been articles or posts by Malaysians wondering if they should change their accents because they felt shy after they were made fun of for their “style” of English by foreigners abroad.
Others believe changing their accents may improve their future career prospects.
Be proud of the Malaysian accent
Little did these people know, many others find our unique Malaysian accent sexy.
If you still feel bad about your Malaysian accent, perhaps the results from two surveys can lighten your mood or elicit a chuckle from you at least.
In 2019, a UK-based travel deal aggregator, Enjoy Travel, ranked the Malaysian accent as the 6th sexiest in Asia and 39th sexiest in the world. Not bad what.
However, Enjoy Travel also noted that the Malaysian accents are becoming “increasingly Americanised.”
Meanwhile, in 2020, the language learning platform Babbel ranked the Malaysian accent the 23rd sexiest in the world.
We should be proud of our Malaysian accent because it’s part of who we are and part of our Malaysian identity. Not many people can emulate it well, especially with our Manglish and local slang.
However, there’s also a time and place for everything. While our Malaysian English may not be suitable for certain professional settings, we can adjust how we speak accordingly without feeling embarrassed of our original accent.
After all, no two Malaysians speak with the same accent due to our multilingual abilities and different upbringings.
This is also not to say all Malaysians dislike our accents. A survey by In Real Life among its readers showed that the Malaysian majority do like our accents, thank you very much!
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