When's this obsession with accent going to stop? People elsewhere are learning 2or 3 languages to advance in this globalized world and we are stuck with critizing other's accent.

Accent matters.

Accent matters.

Right. Except when I was in Delhi, it mattered the other way around (I'm an ABCD), which made me realize how not fun and unfair it is (i'm stupid and need to learn these things from personal experience). And that's why ab's right and we should at least try to stop perpetuating this bs.

... we should at least try to stop perpetuating this bs.

Please. It's a perfectly legitimate description of a voice on the radio, and from the standpoint of media studies it adds significant info. Just as you want to know whether the actors cast on TV shows are asked to speak in a bad Indian accent.

You might as well write a scene without describing the protagonist. Just a vanilla human, because description would be stereotyping.

I wonder why you don't see the same irritating level of description about southern drawls or eastern twangs in description of white americans.
Doing it in every sketch you do makes it really inane and shows the writer is at a loss for words and resorting to padding.
Your doing that only seems to indicate a subconscious agreement with stereotyping people based on country of origin. What if a woman with an accent slapped the guy on "Office? It probably would make the scene less funny in your eyes....

I wonder why you don't see the same irritating level of description about southern drawls or eastern twangs in description of white americans.

Sure you do.

What if a woman with an accent slapped the guy on "Office? It probably would make the scene less funny in your eyes....

You're missing the point, which is that it's a stride forward in Hollywood for an actor to not be asked to don a bad imitation of an Indian accent. As to whether it would be funnier, I'm baffled, it hasn't crossed my mind.

Perhaps you grew up in the subcontinent; if so, you'd be less attuned to how important accent or lack thereof is in acceptance by the mainstream. It's more important in some ways than skin color.

I fall in love with voices before faces, and the accent, timbre, resonance of someone's voice is critical to me.

Whether in theater or the CIA, the ability to don and doff accents at will is a useful ability.

If you're a New Yorker, accent will tell you the borough or country in which someone was raised.

Accent is like the bouquet of a wine. You can dismiss the oenophilic, but to deny the very existence of accent, to deny its effect, reveals that you're tone-deaf and prefer cheap beer.

I agree with Manish.
When I am talking with close friends or family who are white and I refer to a Desi, I have been asked so many times whether he/she has an accent.
Accent does matter and sometimes even more so than skin color.
Accent is usually a sure way of finding out whether a person grew up.

Cont....
in the US or not.

I have to agree with ab I dont feel as to whether she had an accent or not is relevant to the story here. The story is about the PMs daughter working for the ACLU and trying the Abu Gharib torture case. How does her accent play a role in all of this? It seems to be an irrelevant detail and only brought forth because as ab said we (mostly ABCDs) have some unhealthy obsession with Indian accents. Would you have bothered to mention her accent if it was not Indian but rather British or French?

How does her accent play a role in all of this?

Because on the radio, she doesn't sound like an American trying an American legal case. She's the daughter of the head of a different country, one that was opposed to the Iraq invasion, and she sounds like it. So it's quite an unusual story.

Sonia,
A lot of desis get a lot of shit for the desi accent ( even though they dont have it)
The British and the French kids dont have to take shit for the british or french accent.
So the obsession is understandable.

I've heard so many of my desi friends say with disgust "I cant stand that accent". But I cant understand why (by the way I am an ABCD who has gotten shit for being Indian when i was growing up. Who hasnt?). I mean they cringe when at work a desi with an accent speaks when no one else seems to care. Part of me feels that by hating the accent that my friends have bought into the ignorant and vile mentality of their teasers, which is that the accent represents something "uncool" and beneath them. That in a way they too are buying into sterotyping our own. And that kills me. If we dont stop making a big deal of or putting the accent down (and I know thats not what you were doing Manish) of course those ignorant folk out there arent going to stop either.

I've heard so many of my desi friends say with disgust "I cant stand that accent"....Part of me feels that by hating the accent that my friends have bought into the ignorant and vile mentality of their teasers, which is that the accent represents something "uncool" and beneath them.

Exactly, it is self-hatred. Similar to Uncle Ruckus, from the Boondocks. Same thing goes for the degrading use of "FOB" (which, like "nigga," I think can have a positive, reappropriative aspect)

Perhaps you grew up in the subcontinent; if so, you'd be less attuned to how important accent or lack thereof is in acceptance by the mainstream. It's more important in some ways than skin color.

I agree on that, what I don't understand is your agreement with that idiocy and your willingness to accept and disseminate that idea.
I do not have anything against your fascination with accents and the great gains you might get in being able to slip into another accent
effortlessly, but you are kidding your readers and yourself by saying the description of Amrit Singh had anything to do with that fascination. A passing comment of approval about her 'slight accent' is not even close to an informative or informed description a person admiring the nuances of her accent.

I don't prefer cheap beer but do hate drinking with or to a guy who spouts the same one-line, much maligned, generic description of whatever wine he is drinking

... you are kidding your readers and yourself by saying the description of Amrit Singh had anything to do with that fascination.

You're right, sai. You know better than I what I'm thinking when I'm writing.

I think you're reacting from a place of deep hurt at being discriminated against. Let it go. The various desi accents are just fine. Some are quite splendiforous.

same one-line, much maligned, generic description of whatever wine he is drinking

Whoa, any chance of cooler heads prevailing? Compare your description to Manish's characterization of the accent:

Singh was well-spoken with nary a stumble. Her accent was light, although she stressed the first syllable of ‘rapport.’

Manish,

I was responding more to AM's glib comment "Accents matter" than to your description of her accent in the post, but I guess I opened up a Pandora's Box.

It's not that you "described"--it's how you did it. I know you know that there's a difference between appreciating the aesthetics of different ways of speaking and demanding that people conform to "the right way of speaking" (and not thinking about who it is that doesn't speak the right way and why).

I've been subjected to that by Americans and Indians in English and by Bangalis in Bangla and by Hindi speakers about how I pronounce my name wrong--and i've dished the $hit out to other people too, to my discredit. I've heard of worse--like queer working class people IN CALCUTTA feeling forced to learn english in order to get respect in the lgbt movement there.

Whether you meant to or not, when you said "Singh was well-spoken with nary a stumble. Her accent was light" you were using very coded language that supports assimilationism. "well-spoken"? Come on!

very coded language? assimilation? sometimes a compliment is just a compliment. i doubt manish was intentionally doing anything besides writing a post.

i remember the j.c. watts incident, IMO the two are not similar. how should that thought about her communication skills/accent have been written? if he said she was articulate, that would've been similar to the language in the post you linked to, so it seems rather no-win.

... when you said "Singh was well-spoken with nary a stumble. Her accent was light" you were using very coded language that supports assimilationism.

Saurav, this was a radio program. Audio is all you can describe if you're going to set the scene.

It's possible that 'well-spoken' is a back-handed pat on the head for blacks in America, though to grant that would be to impoverish the language of a glowing compliment.

It is nothing of the sort for Yale-educated daughters of heads of state.

By your standard, anyone describing Senator Barack Obama as 'well-spoken' would be guilty of racism. When he's well-spoken even for a senator.

Context matters. But I'm entertained by this 12-word Rorschach.