Asian American accent?

Do you think there's such a thing as an Asian American accent? Like...for people who were born and raised in the US, and speak English fluently. A lot of people would say they have no accent, but I think I can usually tell when someone is Asian, even if they don't have an obvious foreign accent...but I have a hard time phonetically describing what I'm hearing impressionistically. Just wondering if anyone knows what I mean; I've searched around and found very little on this matter.

It's weird, because I hear it in Asian Americans who grew up in all-white communities...could it be from having immigrant parents and learning Chinese/Vietnamese/other heritage languages as a child, then learning English in school?

I can usually tell when someone is Asian. But some of the Asian news presenters in my city sound totally like white Americans.

Yeah. I've noticed that some Asian Americans do speak slighty different. It's something about the T's & S's.

Maybe it's intonation.

and their voice, I believe.

t's and s's. Yeah, I have thought about them being more dentalized? Or maybe a slightly different release on the t...

Intonation is the first thing that I hear a lot, but I'm haven't been able to pin down what intonational patterns make someone sound Asian...

It depends on where they were born and/or grew up. If they were born and grew up in the US then they sound like any other American. If they were born in Asia and didn't grow up with English as their first language then they might have some kind of foreign (in this case Asian) accent.

KT, I think what theDeltaStar meant was the accent of Asian Americans - the argument is that many who were born and raised in the US still don't "sound like any other American", for some reason or other.

I think it's intonation too. Maybe something having to do with the fact that a lot of Asian languages are tonal?

Asian-Americans sound almost like any other American, but their speech is a little dryer and crisper than that of a white American. It's an extremely subtle difference. I often hear a "wet" (slightly slurred) quality to the speech of white people, whereas Asians sound very crisp.

This is mostly in men. With regard to women, there's no audible difference at all, but Asian-American women use language as a whole differently than white American women. They're more verbal, intelligent, and sarcastic than women of other races, and have an extremely sophisticated vocabulary.