syllable. Akin to the English of Singapore and Malaysia. (Elsewhere, English speech timing is based predominantly on stress); "sing-song" pitch (somewhat reminiscent of those of Welsh English). retroflexion of "t" and "d" Philippines Philippine English employs a rhotic accent that originated from the time when it was first introduced by the Americans during the colonization period in an attempt to replace Spanish as the dominant political language. As there are no /f/ or /v/ sounds in most native languages in the Philippines, [p] is used as an alternative to /f/ as [b] is to /v/. Thus, the words "fifty" and "five" are often pronounced as and by many Filipinos. Similarly, /θ/ is often changed to [t] and /ð/ to [d]. Hence, "three" becomes /tri/ while "that" becomes /dat/. This feature is consistent with many other Malayo-Polynesian languages. In addition, /z/ is often devoiced to [s], whereas [ʒ] is often devoiced to [ʃ] or affricated to [dʒ], so words like "zoo", "measure", and "beige" may be pronounced [su], [ˈmɛʃoɾ], and [beɪdʒ]. Apart from the frequent inability to pronounce certain fricatives (e.g., [f], [v], [θ], [ð], [z], [ʒ]), in reality, there is no single Philippine English accent. This is because native languages influence spoken English in different ways throughout the archipelago. For instance, those from Visayas usually interchange the sounds /e/ and /i/ as well as /o/ and /u/ because the distinction between those phonemes is not very pronounced in Visayan languages. People from the northern Philippines may pronounce /r/ as a strong trill instead of a tap, which is more commonly used in the rest of the Philippines, as the trill is a feature of the Ilocano language. Ilocano people also generally pronounce the schwa sound /ə/ better than other Filipinos because they use a similar sound in their native language that is missing from many other Philippine languages. Hong Kong The accent of English spoken in Hong Kong follows mainly British, with rather strong influence from Cantonese on the pronunciations of a few consonants and vowels, and sentence grammar and structure. Malaysia Malay is the lingua franca of Malaysia, a federation of former British colonies and similar dependencies. English is a foreign language with no official status, but it is commonly learnt as a second or third language. The Malaysian accent appears to be a melding of British, Chinese, Tamil and Malay influences. Many Malaysians adopt different accents and usages