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I’ve been thinking lately about how I grew up very strictly Anglophone in an Asian society, when my parents barely spoke English (not the same way my brother and I do). Like when we speak, we sound like we are speaking different languages (even in English). Depending on where I am, I can sound like the local native English speaker.
Many of my compatriots do not sound like me. There’s Singlish, which is a type of creole combining English, Hokkien, Mandarin, Malay and some Tamil. But that’s not quite it either: there is a ‘basolectal English’, the one that is grammatically ‘correct’ but unmistakeably places the English speaker in the location they come from (Singaporean, Aussie, Kiwi basolectal are very obvious).
It is usually a function of class and society and privilege that a person in a colonial society speaks English a certain way. In my parents’ time, our English teachers and newscasters spoke with a ‘stiff upper lip’. Maybe that was class, then. When I was a teenager, upper middle class people spoke like the BBC newscasters. But not stiff upper lip. Today, we sound.. American or some form of British.
And I don’t know how I started to speak like that. I went to an elite school, but my family barely spoke English. My language at home was not even Mandarin, the language of the upper class Sinophones, it was Teochew and Hokkien; the language of the pasar (the wet market). In formal situations in Singapore, I can code switch into basolectal English, kind of less American sounding formal English, so more older professional people understand me. In the cab, I can curse in Singlish at taxi drivers who ask me if I’m American.
In this video; I sound ‘generic American’, maybe Californian: https://youtu.be/I6m82wB2qhY
When I speak with people from ‘back home’ I sound completely different.
I think it’s the ‘tism (many autistic people who are multilingual can code switch easily because we are used to imitating people).
My vocabulary in Thai and Indonesian is limited compared to languages I actually speak properly, but for what little I can speak, I can do a perfect mimicry of accent and sounds and tones.
But that still leaves me with the unanswered question: why do I sound so Anglophone? Even when I was there, I sounded like that. I don’t think I watched a lot of American TV.
I was thinking of this when I watched a well known Singaporean professor speak on TV. Somehow I assumed he would sound more like me (it’s not uncommon in that part of society back there). But he sounded very normal. Maybe he was putting on his neutral accent as he was speaking to Chinese speakers in a Chinese context and maybe he’s codeswitching for context like me too.
But I’m bothered by how I’m not certain I know what my default accent is.
@skinnylatte My accent is heavily dependent on who I am surrounded by, and adjusts quite quickly, in just a few hours. A friend once told me there's even a word for that, but I forget what it is.
With limited exposure, I suspect it's probably an extrapolation you do in your head based on what you have heard, especially if you have a decent book vocabulary from reading? 
@sindarina is it linguistic accommodation?
We had a prime minister who was regularly mocked for mimicking the accent of the person he was speaking too but it was something about he was focusing on what they were saying and wanted them to understand him.
@skinnylatte sems like your default accent depends on the context because communication (and people) is important to you. ?
@skinnylatte I was recently informed that the reason that Indonesians have trouble understanding me when I speak Bahasa Indonesia, is that I speak it with a Chinese Singaporean accent. Makes sense, I guess.
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@skinnylatte You do sound American in that video. I would have assumed you grew up in America for most of your life, listening to that.
Accents are a funny thing. When I speak German, German people tell me I sound like a native German. I was born in NYC to a Filipino father and English/German mother, but I did study German with a native German teacher, and my mother's mother and grandparents were born in Germany, and I grew up with them.
I am a musician and actress, so sounds are my thing.
@skinnylatte I wish I had some answers but I know I'm likely not from the right background to know; but I do genuinely appreciate you mentioning that code switching as a part of masking. That one bit is something I've fretted about often actually once I realized I do it, automatically start imitating the tone, speech patterns...I think after a few years consistent exposure I even started imitating facial expression patterns in certain social contexts. Not knowing why I was doing that, or that it was common in autism, had me fret a lot.
I think that might be why things I note people say belong to AAVE feel so.....natural to me with where I grew up. I think when I feel comfortable enough somewhere to demask, and let all my weird little autism mannerisms shine, the proper Cajun south in me comes out, but the AAVE bits I picked up in the system are still there...? Or maybe some of it's just similar.
But that's the best idea I have, maybe take note of how you sound when you feel most relaxed, "in your group"?