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I lived in England for five years when I was young. In England of course, a
British accent is normal. It is the American accent which is considered weird.
So, when was it that I became overly conscious of my British accent? Was it
when I first came to a Korean elementary school and found out that the English
classes were a piece of cake? No¡¦ It wasn¡¯t then. Was it when I attended an
English private class and the teacher told me that I was pronouncing ¡®either¡¯
and ¡®neither¡¯ in an abnormal way? Well, that incident contributed a lot I
suppose. I was in something like 6th grade, and I decided to drop my accent
completely then. It was hard to stop something that had become part of life
during my five years of stay in England. From then and all through middle
school I kept my phony American accent, the one that I had fabricated.
It was when I came to KMLA that I learnt that British accents could be cool.
In the preliminary period, we all heard Mr.Ganse¡¯s special lecture about the
history classes at KMLA. It wasn¡¯t the contents of the lecture which interested
me, but his accent. His accent wasn¡¯t entirely British, but boy it sounded
sophisticated. So I tried to take up my British accent again. After a few
years of speaking in a wholly American accent, it was hard to bring it back.
Whenever I wasn¡¯t sure about the pronunciation of a word, I would try to
imagine the way my friend Helena would have said a word or a phrase. Then
came another disaster. In an English class, I said the word ¡®bath¡¯ and my
friends did not understand what I had said. Now that was a bit of a shock.
From that moment on, I decided to stick with the American accent. But now
suddenly I want the British accent back again. Frailty, thy name is woman!
I am now on the way to becoming a British accented person again, and
therefore resulting in a very ambiguous state of half British and half
American accent. This is why Woo-chan calls my accent ¡®pseudo-British¡¯.
I am pronouncing the ¡®t¡¯s and on my way to elongating the ¡®a¡¯s. But,
it is very awkward. In my recent economics presentation I tried to pronounce
¡®chance¡¯ as I used to, but found it a little too British accenty for
my current state. Alas, I regret it now. That presentation could have been
my British accent¡¯s debut stage. Well, hooray for my British accent!
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