That's not so uncommon in Singapore (even today that there is definitely less jungle than what I wish there was). Everybody speaks English, but they all carry o

That's not so uncommon in Singapore (even today that there is definitely less jungle than what I wish there was). Everybody speaks English, but they all carry over their native language phonetics, which is wonderful, especially for the older chinese. Chinese dialects are tonal, and they somehow manage to carry over the tonality when speaking English, so I had to learn how to pronounce my address in the specific way that taxi driver uncles could understand. As for me (I'm a Greek), I have found that the most comprehensible English are spoken by Malays and Indonesians, just because their native phonetics somehow happen to match mine. I especially love the way Indonesians pronounce 'r' - it's a REAL 'r', and it's always a rolling triplet, sounding like "rrr", instead of that thing between "w" and nothingness that English has managed to mutilate a perfectly nice consonant into :D