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Can you, as a Singaporean, recognise a Singaporean accent when you hear one?

For the multitudes in Singapore, that is as easy as ABC and 123.

Which was why when we heard the chief executive officer of TikTok Chew Shou Zi give his testimony to the U.S. Congress on Mar. 23 in a five-hour session, we nodded our heads in agreement and appreciation that this fellow is one of us.

@mothershipsg 2LT Chew Shou Zi 🫡 #sgnews #tiktoksg ♬ Spirits - The Strumbellas

This was after Chew held his own on the world stage, in a session where U.S. lawmakers deemed the video-sharing platform owned by China’s Bytedance a threat to America's national security and are considering banning the app in the country.

But you know what?

Not everyone agrees.

Some believe Chew is non-Singaporean

A small segment on Twitter has openly questioned if the 40-year-old is really a Singaporean because he apparently does not sound like one.

Instead, Chew is said to be from mainland China and even though he is masking his real accent, vestiges of it can still be picked up.

How is that even possible, was posited in a far-fetched assertion by user @003carrierfan, who wrote:

TikTok CEO Zhou Shouzi is a mainland Chinese, despite having a Singaporean passport. He speaks a sort of American English with a Mandarin accent. A sign of growing up in mainland China and receiving college education in America. Singaporeans don’t speak this type of English.

TikTok CEO Zhou Shouzi is a mainland Chinese, despite having a Singaporean passport. He speaks a sort of American English with a Mandarin accent. A sign of growing up in mainland China and receiving college education in America. Singaporeans don’t speak this type of English. pic.twitter.com/nqU4LnXETe

— Manchu (@003carrierfan) March 26, 2023

To make his case that Chew cannot be Singaporean, the Twitter user even uploaded a video of a real regular man he believes is speaking more like a Singaporean.

This is what Singaporean English or Singlish sounds like. pic.twitter.com/RqSZhNYFfv

— Manchu (@003carrierfan) March 26, 2023

Chew's credentials

For the record, Chew is a Hwa Chong alumnus who served national service as an officer.

He then went to Harvard Business School and got his MBA.

His stints in the biggest companies in the world include interning at Facebook, working as an investment banker at Goldman Sachs, and a becoming CFO at Xiaomi.

He was appointed the CEO of TikTok in 2021.

Twitter user's assertion questioned

The responses to the Twitter user said it all though, as many came to the defence of Chew and his Singaporean credentials.

Despite one Twitter user concurring with @003carrierfan and deciding for himself that Chew was covering up his Chinese accent, the rest of the Twitter was incredulous -- just like how people were incredulous to hear a person asking how TikTok connects to your home wifi.

Responses by Singaporeans

The responses in defence of Chew's bona fide Singaporean cred can be boiled down to several points.

The fact that he had served his national service as an officer was a clear marker that he more than fulfilled his obligation as a Singaporean.

His work track record in global entities was also lauded as a sign he need not be boxed in to embody some quintessential Singaporean trait, such as the way he sounds.

And the very fact that fellow Singaporeans can recognise the Singaporean English inflections as clear as day throughout his testimony, is good enough for many of us.

Mostly, the incredulity expressed stemmed from how it could even be possible that Singaporeans are deemed to have a definitive accent, when most of the time we struggle to explain it for ourselves.

There also appears to be a complete disregard for the fact that people can code switch -- sometimes effortlessly.

In other words, Singaporeans are capable of speaking differently to different audiences in different settings because this is apparently one of our special powers.

Anyway, we understand can already.

Who are these other people who disagree? Who ask them one?

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