Does my son speak American English ?

Salam Hangat,

One day about 2 years ago, when I was filling the check in form at a motel in Bondi, Sydney Australia, all of a sudden the old gentleman at the reception desk spoke to me in his "Aussie English" : "Sounds like that your son here has just arrived from California mate !" I was startled and looked into his eyes, making sure that the old man was talking to me. Then I looked down to my 9 year-old- son who was reading and playing with several tourist brochures stacked on a rack nearby - he was talking to himself reading the brochures, and once in a while talked to me without moving his eyes away from the colourful brochures - not needing my answers for sure. Then I looked back to the old receptionist who was smiling at me, and he said : " Yup matey, he sounds very American !" Oh my God ... apparently this old man was listening to my son's chittering in his "American English". I laughed and replied back : "No sir, we've just arrived from Jakarta, Indonesia, and he has never been in the States before". He stared at me with his - 'I don't believe you - mode' look, and smiled : "Then how come that his English is so American.. ?"

When I got back to our room, I shared this "incident" to my wife Mita, and we laughed - no one has ever commented Raihan's ( my son's name ) English accent before, even though we knew all along that his English has an American accent. Well, nothing wrong with that, but it was just the first time that an English native speaker told us about that.

So we rewinded our memories back to the year 2004 when Raihan was only 1 year old.  He loved watching Baby Eisntein videos that we bought for him. They were about basic things in life such as names of colours, shapes, animals, including colourful alphabets. When he was a bit older we started to introduce him to Barney series ( with no Indonesian dubbing nor subtitles - as he couldn't read anyway ! ); and Little Einstein - a higher level of Baby Einstein Video series which already had short stories in it.

In his first few years, all he did was just sit still and locked his eyes on the tv screen, with no comments ( of course ! As he wasn't able to talk back then )- paying full attention to the whole videos. After a while, he started to imitate the sounds from the videos, from the various sounds of music instruments until the roar of a lion !
After a few years, one day he came up to us and "Bang !" from out of nowhere, he just shot out many English words forming sentences which later we found out that they were exactly the same as what he had heard in the videos ! Infact he just imitated and memorized all of the lines in the videos and repeated them to us ! And his pronunciation sounded very American !

Time went by and Raihan is 11 years old now, and one of his favorite activities is watching TV, movies and videos - in English ( besides playing Lego Hero Factories, Ipad, Tennis and Violin ). And unfortunately ( or can I say fortunately ? ) the English were American English ! So we can't help it if his English is with an American Accent now - influenced by his "TEACHERS" - the videos !:-(

Of course I didn't explain that to the old man in Bondi two years ago . But at least we know a way ( because there must be many other ways ), how to make someone using a spesific accent in speaking a language .... not limited to English for sure, even in speaking Bahasa Indonesia - give it a try : if you have a young toddler who is learning to speak bahasa Indonesia, why don't you go and live in Surabaya - East Java, and employ a native East Java nanny to assist you daily to take care of your child when you are away to work everyday - Guaranteed, that your child will be speaking Bahasa Indonesia with a perfect  Surabayan Accent ! As Surabaya or East Java Accent is known as one of the strongest accents in Indonesia that can influence heavily your pronunciation !  Believe me ! You spoke what you listened

Well, so much for accent discussion for now which involves 2 skills : listening ( plus memorizing ) and speaking . Hope to see you again in my next posting ! Feel free to comment or give me feedback ... :-)

Salam Hangat .....

Rilwan hamzah - 22 June 2014
( Happy Anniversary dear Jakarta ! )