By Dr Lim Chin Lam

Considering the British colonial history in Malaya (later Malaysia), the Malaysian speech no doubt is a cocktail of the Received Standard brought in by the English colonials from southern England plus all other styles of pronunciation that came with the colonials from other parts of the British Isles - the mix being then "shaken and stirred" to the sounds of the languages of the land.

The result, the Malaysian accent (or brogue if you like), is something to be proud of.

We Malaysians tend to pronounce words distinctly and the words come out intelligible to fellow Malaysians and to native English speakers at large.

In other words, Malaysians do eat grapes but they do not swallow their consonants in Grape Britain. I do not agree with Luke Teoh that we must be the speaking clones of the Britons of southern England.

Rather, I agree with Vance Carson (July 2) that people should "speak in the accent of their home region ..., rather than trying to mimic the accent of rich middle-class people who live in London, Bucks, Surrey, Cambridgeshire, Berkshire, Hampshire, Sussex, Kent, etc".

There is no need for us to change our distinctly Malaysian accent "tudei" or "tumawro" or any other day. Pronouncing the words as "t'dei" or "t'mawro" as in the Received Standard does not improve our English any more than an Australian's switch from "tu-dye" to "t-dei" improve his Strine.

The crux in the matter of pronunciation is recognition, that the hearer should be able to recognise the words spoken, whether spoken in the Received Standard or in the accent or brogue of the place.

On this point, I should like to stress, as many teachers have probably stressed before, that English spellings are notoriously irregular, or rather, that pronunciation is quirky and words are not always pronounced the way they are spelt. For illustration, here are a few examples.

English spelling is so quirky that George Bernard Shaw rationalised that ghoti, a word that he made up, can be pronounced as "fish". Go figure!

What does the above rigmarole boil down to?

We do not need to be as meticulous as the French. To quote Prof Higgins (in the musical My Fair Lady), "the French never care what they do, actually, as long as they pronounce it properly." On the other hand, we do not want to be like the schoolboy reading out a passage for his Oral English examination and pronouncing the word cake as "chah-kei" (no doubt a result of mother tongue interference).

Guessing at English pronunciation will not do. The dictionary is the answer. To my fellow learners, be positive. The dictionary can be a source of joy!