闲人

For the somewhat many years I have been in Australia I have resisted the urge to learn their accent as it seems to me somewhat pretentious, I mean not the accent itself but for a foreigner to abandon his own way of speaking in favor of someone else's. I still think that way, however the accent ("G'die mite") has to be differentiated from the necessary emphasis that needs to be placed on certain syllables in a word, or certain words in a sentence. These emphases give feeling and a richer meaning to a statement. Malaysians and Singaporeans tend to have a comparatively flatter tone of speaking english, however by virtue of the various decorations we add to the end of our sentences (I'm sure most of us can detect the subtle differences in meaning conveyed by come lah, come leh and come lor) we still have a sufficient amount of information conveyed in our speech. These gems of meaning lose their function outside of the country however, and what remains is probably insufficient for good communication. 好像没有阴阳上去的华语一样吧。

The same goes with internet communication. Even the best of writers have their italics, their capitals, their bold letters, their she screamed he exclaimed it mumbled, and yet most of the time we just have our generic emoticons.