Not to defend internment on the mainland, but Hawaii is currently about 16% Japanese ancestry, and I doubt it was much different back then. Wikipedia actually says “over 35%” during WWII. It would have been prohibitively expensive to institute internment, to say nothing of the damage it would cause by removing that many people from society and house them somewhere.
‘Asian’ is the ‘politically correct’ (well, definately not bad) way of talking about people from Japan, China, Vietnam, etc. Ie, not kazakhs, russians, everyone east of the ural mountains, and sure as hell not indians (you people have your own damn subcontinent!).
Sorry if people aren’t familiar with that usage, but you sure as hell ain’t gonna be the reason we switch to something like “East-Asian-people-Barring-Those-Living-In-Arctic-Russia”!
Asian is a great word, especially versus the insisitence by some to say when refering to all squinty-eyed people something truly inappropriate, like the word “Japanese”
Anyway, about how asian-americans talk. To be honest, I’ve never noticed it. At least not as a pattern. But when I traveled in china heard all sorts of strange accents. One flight attendant sounded like an electronic dictionary. It was hillarious, but that’s what she used to learn.
Most asians I know have a pretty american accent, but they mostly learned english naturally (even as immigrants). I guess if you try to learn artificially, and don’t do it right, you may end up sounding weird and over-precise. Or if you think about it too much. But also, in some asian languages you have to be very precise about certain things (in particular, pitch and changes in pitch) that you don’t in english.
Yes, but were those people from China, Vietnam, etc placed in internment camps during World War II?
Sure, but people in France, Poland, Belgium, Russia and the Netherlands don’t seem to have any qualms about being lumped together with Germans as “European”.
I’ve yet to hear anyone actually from any of the countries concerned object to the word ‘Asian’. Even if I did, I’d probably still keep using it. Asian is probably the most neutral, least inaccurate word there is to describe a group of people, that anyone claiming offense by it has to making an effort to get offended.
oops, nvm…
The type of people who are going to give trouble to someone on the street because of anger and predjudice, arn’t really the type of people who are going to differentiate between actual Asian point of origin. So any Asian living in America might have tried to emphasize their Americaness just in case.
I guess I should have said ‘and that it had come **about as a response to fear of the ** WWII containment camps’
I’m Korean, and I refer to myself more often as Asian than I do as Korean.
I don’t have much of an accent, I think. Some people have assumed I’m from California, but I think that’s more because a lot of people assume all Asian Americans are from California. 
For the most part I don’t sound like I’m from anywhere in particular. I have noticed that some Korean Americans have an accent that has nothing to do with region and is not overtly Korean, either. When I lived in Korea I was sometimes accused of sounding more “white” than other Korean Americans (when I spoke English). It might have more to do with speech patterns than with accents per se. But I am not a linguist, so I can’t even begin to guess at what might cause these differences.
I’m going to re-emphasize that stewardess who sounded like an electronic dictionary. What do other people use? Tapes where people talk precisely and rather unnaturally.
It’s definatley the tapes. If those asians practiced their english by watching tv, they wouldn’t sound unnatural.
The point isn’t that Asian people object to being called “Asian” (they don’t) nor that it is inaccurate to call a Japanese person “Asian” (it isn’t). The point is that the OP specifically hypothesized that his observed “Asian-American speech” came from the WWII internment camps. Said camps specifically interned only Japanese-Americans not all Asian-Americans. Lumping the, e.g., Chinese-Americans, who were never in the camps, with the Japanese-Americans is therefore incorrect.
In any event the OP has come back with a clarification.
Whoa. Please tell me this is a whoosh.
What’s a whoosh?
OK this is getting out of hand.
Regarding Japanese American English:
The first wave of immigration came over at the time of the Mejii restoration (1890-1920).
Around 1920 immigration from Japan ( and Asia in general) was restricted. Thus, a first generation cohort of Japanese immigrants exists.
Their children grew up speaking English in school but knowing at least a smattering of Japanese. I think a linguist would point out how the two languages influenced certain vowel sounds and pronunciations. (broader A’s and clipped endings not slurred). This created a second generation cohort with a particular ‘sound’.
To add to the mix, there was a definite Hawaiian accent heavily influenced by the local pidgin English of the other nationalities in Hawaii. There was also a Southern California toned down version, and an even more toned down Pacific NorthWest sound.
One picks up language from the community in which you are raised. I was not raised in the Japanese American community, so I could detect a slight difference in pronunciation among my peers who came from the ‘hood’. I could also detect the California and Hawaiian differences from the speech of relatives and their friends.
:eek: :eek:
There is no way three years or less of internment had any influence on the language. If anything, the segregation would only re-inforce the community ‘dialect’. The only discernable influence I can see is a distinct rejection of Spam (as opposed to the Hawaiians who love the stuff).
When someone is making a joke and the other person doesn’t get it.
I was referring to your generalization that Asian Americans learned English through tapes.