Accent crisis or identity crisis?

When I was in Germany, there was something I observed very strongly there. It amazed me how, many people tried so hard to be someone they were not! Many students and professionals going there or to the USA or for that matter, to any country abroad, from India, have sometimes this absolutely annoying tendency of trying to imitate the accent while speaking!

Yes, I am aware of the other side i.e the work commitments or business requirements that force many of us to do so! Nevertheless, has anyone seen or heard people from other nationalities do the same thing? They stick to their accents whereas we somehow feel ashamed of our own! Why should we try to imitate the so called all cool slang? Though we have studied in English medium schools and know very well that there is no correct pronunciation, why do we feel ashamed of a touch of either Tamil or Hindi or Kannada or Telugu accent to our English? I do remember that I had written about "The way of the Mallu" in one of my earlier posts. However, if I had even a  touch of Malayalam in my accent, I would only be proud of it :-)

I always feel that it is absolutely okay to be different and be respected for that difference. If we are confident and proud of it, people will automatically respect us and try to understand us. We don't necessarily have to say "caayn't" for can't or "laderrrr" for later, do we? Sometimes I genuinely feel that by trying to copy their exclamations and jargons, we just end up looking nothing but stupid!

I feel that this is no different than going through an identity crisis more than the language or the accent. The only difference being that we never realize we are fighting with ourselves here! We never speak with the same accent when we are with our own folks back home, then why do it when we are elsewhere? Yes, we might be mocked at for being ourselves. But, trust me, we are better off being mocked at by people we don't know than by people we do know...