Flash Nonfiction

A Brief Chronology of My English Accent

by Tim Tim Cheng

1993 — Wailing inside the NICU was my first language.

1996 — The first word came during kindergarten, a cloudburst of Cantonese breaking the hidden Hokkien bank.

1997 — Migration lends me names: Tin Tin in Hokkien, Tian Tian in Mandarin, and Tim Tim in British Hong Kong. The character for my name, 恬, equates ‘being quiet' to 'sweetness', carrying my mother’s humble blessing.

2005-2008 — A history teacher we loved read Croatia as Co-tee-ah. Some teachers used more English words when they were angry. Every syllable punched, heavy as a single Chinese character. I do this too to make myself clear.

2009 — A sky full of songs blanketed me. I took South London from Florence + the Machine on YouTube and The Horrors in NME.

2013 — University poetry courses taught us to dissect our name’s radicals. I found a heart next to a tongue, a tongue made of a thousand mouths. My name is the sound of licking the sky shamelessly.

2014 — My name is Tim Tam in Australia, Dim Dim outside an Estonian bar, Chin Chin for drunk French exchange students.

2015 — My accent is a passport full of travel stamps. My accent is the peeling bark of a tree I hugged in Brisbane. My accent snowed Estonian ice crystals in the ears of an American in Vietnam.

2016 — A British teacher I worked with remarked that my accent was beautiful. I didn’t know compliments could hurt.

2017 — My accent is also the way Phoebe sings Smelly Cat.

2019 — My accent almost gave me a pay raise. My boss thought I was “almost native”.

2021 — I am longing for a new country to grow on my tongue. The way ‘aspire’ and ‘aspirate’ share the same noun.

Appeared in Issue Fall '21