I Wasn't Born In East L.A.

Feb 01, 2012 21:54

I wasn't even born in a town at the far eastern end of Los Angeles County. Neither was Tiffany Hwang (born in S.F.), but that's where she grew up, in Diamond Bar, California ( Read more... )

dept of misapprehension, sunny, snsd, language studies

Leave a comment

Comments 6

arbitrary_greay February 2 2012, 16:37:49 UTC
Also, she still been living in Korea since 2004, and having received flak about her American accent there, so she's probably worked hard to take on proper Korean affectations in her speech, which has bled over into her English.

Tiffany's vastly more comfortable talking to the camera than Jessica is.

Hah, Jessica's just lazy. It's not that she's uncomfortable with the camera, but that she just doesn't want to speak to it any more than she has to. This kind of applies to all of her idolling in general. The girl is basically a cat.

Reply


petronia February 3 2012, 00:36:34 UTC
How would you rate the accent of the rapper dude from Far East Movement? XD

Most Asian-Americans born and raised in North America have a bit of Asian in their English, as far as I'm concerned. But it's not as perceptible to people outside one's culture (I have a Russian friend whose English sounds flawlessly NYC to me, but he thinks he has a clearly perceptible accent).

Reply

koganbot February 3 2012, 03:31:47 UTC
He/they are rapping in an accent I call "club." OK, I'm making that up. But vocalizing in song is different from speaking, and people rather easily take on singing or rapping accents that aren't how they talk. The two tracks I've played to death by Far East Movement are "Go Ape" ft. Lil Jon & Colette and "Like A G6" ft. Dev & the Cataracs, and they each have a smorgasbord of voices, Jon dominating "Ape" and Dev "G6." But on both of those the Far East Movement guys sound surprisingly East Coast to me, though they're all L.A. as far as I know. In "Go Ape" there's "Buy me a drinnnk," the extended "n" sounding very New Yawk. And "I didn't come to tawk." And "This is what we loik," that last sounding almost Cockney. In "Like A G6," though, "Gimme that crystal stoil" [for "style"]. "They be ackin' [acting] like they drunk," no "oi" in the "like" in that statement.

Here in an interview, the guy on the far right sounds basic black urban, though a mild version of it (and of course there's more than one "black urban" accent in the country), ( ... )

Reply

koganbot February 3 2012, 19:31:16 UTC
Interesting that as I watched the clip for the first time my original binary was "Asian" versus "American." But once I'd worked out that I was incorrect in identifying Tiffany as "raised in Asia," I then went to, "OK, what sort of American is she," homing in on Diamond Bar's Asian and Hispanic population. So my binary became "multiculti quasi-urban American" (Tiffany) versus "mainstream American" (Jessica), despite assuming that Jessica grew up in a city and knowing that of the two Jessica's actually been in Korea longer. And really, someone with Jessica's accent (American Standard, I'd say) could be a news reader or do "average American teen and young woman" voiceovers.

But note that (1) I was still thinking primarily of ethnic accents (recognizing that Tiffany might have picked up pronunciations from Hispanics as well as Asians); (2) the next binary I imported into the discussion was Urban versus Suburban Standard, despite my urban representative (Tiffany) being from the 'burbs and my suburban representative (Jessica) from the city ( ... )

Reply

askbask February 7 2012, 20:39:48 UTC
Sunny making moves towards the goalposts you've set (context: pretend court where a real quarrel between two slightly troublesome boys has its seriousness taken out of it):

http://youtu.be/OBnQ8Kt6OoI?t=1m27s

Reply


Leave a comment

Up