There's a whole range of people in India who speak with a foreign accent:
At one end of the extreme are people who have lived for several years in some foreign country, and it has just so happened that an accent has rubbed off on them over time without them making any explicit attempt at acquiring one.
This is perhaps the one set of people that can be excused from being called pretentious. Although having lived for eleven years straight in the US of A without picking up one myself, I personally don't understand why one would necessarily pick up accents, except for maybe pronouncing a few words here and there differently.
Then there are people who, you know, maybe go for a few weeks to some other country : and when they come back, well, they have to let everyone know, so ...
Then there are people who go to the international terminal of an airport to receive a guest. And that's it. They quite suddenly "evolve".
This is where I used to stop my list some years ago. I have recently added a new category:
TV Show Accent Educated.
To all of you who are going about throwing the weight of your accented English around:
Please, for your own kind sakes, stop 😂. You are *not* coming along as being more intelligent or educated just because you've picked up a pseudo-accent 😁. Quite on the contrary, you come across as being pretentious and "snooty without due cause". It only diminishes your personality.
I wish your friends would tell this to your face, but they are possibly afraid of offending you and losing your friendship. I carry no such fears 😊.
PS: And all those schools in India who've now made an American accent an understood prerequisite to get a job as an English instructor: You should be ashamed of yourselves! You and I both know that you are putting aside perfectly good applications from well educated and well cultured individuals simply because they speak their English without Americanizing it. Please stop encouraging this lack of self respect in our students and society at large.
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