The Unexpected Beauty of the Indian Accent
I was chilling in a park a few days ago when I overheard an Indian family having a conversation, in English. They were talking about their travel plans, but it wasn’t the conversation’s topic that interested me. Rather, it was the accent with which they had this conversation. Every word was so thickly slathered with an Indian accent that I almost felt like I could heard Gandhi in the syllables. It was fascinating.
To my ear, there is something undescribably satisfying about a thick Indian accent. It feels like it scratches some itch deep in my brain. It’s like I’m finally hearing English the way it’s meant to be spoken. I’m not sure exactly why, but the way that Indian people tend to stress certain syllables really brings out the beauty in common English phrases.
For example, read the following phrase out loud:
How are you doing, my son?
Now read the same phrase out loud, but this time with an Indian accent. Come on, don’t be shy. No one’s listening. Give it a shot:
How are you doing, my son?
The Indian one is just so much more satisfying, right? I mean, come on. I can’t be alone in this, right?
I’ve lived most of my life in the US, where pretty much everyone speaks English, with an American accent. So for me, the American accent is like a song that I’ve heard far too many times. Maybe it was ok at first, but after years of being pummeled by it every single day, my eardrums have started to get sick of it. It‘s’ too bland, too predictable. I crave something a bit spicier, something with a bit more zest. And my craving for zest is satisfied when I hear English being spoken in a thick Indian accent, to the point where I almost want someone to call me up and ask me for my credit card information, just so I can hear the sweet music of the Indian accent once more.
The annoying thing, though, is that some Indian people speak English just like a native. The Indian accent that they should have is missing. Often, they’ve put in great efforts to remove their accent, and that sucks. In my book, they’ve put in tons of hard effort just to sound worse. It’s a tragedy, really. I sometimes wish that the red dot on their heads was an on/off switch for their Indian accents, so that I could just press it on whenever I wanted.
It’s weird how someone with an Indian accent can say the exact same words as someone without an Indian accent, but sound so much more satisfying. It goes to show that language is more than just words. It’s also tone, rhyme, pitch, timbre, and more. Language has not just a semantic element, but also a musical element, and we call that musical element an accent (excluding certain languages like Chinese where the musical elements and the semantic elements are fused). And while the American accent is little more than boring elevator music, the Indian accent is vivid, electrifying jazz, being played before a spastic and eccentric dance floor.
Other accents are cool too, of course. But the Indian accent will always have a special place in my heart. There’s just something about it, something that I can’t describe.