I learnt in a linguistic course that how accents differ is
because of the way they pronounce each syllable rather than trying
to pronounce the entire sentence with an accent.
Singapore english (not Singlish) has its own accents because it
tends not to emphasise each letter fully. For example, the word
"accent". Most people pronouce it "ACK-Sen".. without the "t"
lightly pronounced.
Also, alot of words have its emphasis placed differently (I say
differently, not wrongly).
the word "Computer". Alot tend to say, "KOM pute er", while
other accents tend to be "kom PUTE er"
other common points are words that contain "a", "i", "u".
e.g. "Ikea", North Americans say it, "eye KEE uh",
Europeans/Singapore tends to say it "E kee ah"
Iraq/Iran, Southern US accents mostly say it, "EYE rak, EYE
ran", Singapore says it "E-rak", "E-ran"
Bugis, American/English will either say it, "BUCK-eas" or
"Byoo-JIS". Singapore will say it "BOOK eas"
In conclusion, i would say to adopt another country's accent, we
would need to actualy break down each word and see how they
pronounce it.
Either way, language is dynamic and ever-changing due to local
conditions (New Zealand and Aussie have distinct accents), I don't
think there is such a thing called "wrong" or "right" accent just
that social perception makes it think one accent "more correct"
then the other.
