Viewers were tickled silly by how their favourite local delicacies sounded coming from a “French” man, and they were hooked.
The man in the video was local content creator Arieff Yong, 28, and he has become quite a sensation on social media.
Besides the French accent, Yong also does a convincing British accent besides the obvious Malay, Chinese and Indian accents that his viewers love just as much.
“I implemented the British accent after I was retrenched during Covid, which was the first accent that got me to where I am now, basically,” Yong told FMT Lifestyle regarding the first batch of videos he posted on social media.
He said that speaking with a British accent was something he mastered while still in school, a skill he openly attributes to binge-watching Harry Potter movies.
Even back then, Yong was always fascinated with acting and making videos, and would post them on YouTube just for fun.
“It was mostly parodies or vlogs. But I used to have much more confidence back then. I could just go to the public with a camera and ask, ‘What’s up guys?’, which I can’t really do now,” he said, laughing sheepishly.
The second of six siblings, the comedian was formerly a flight attendant who was retrenched during the pandemic. With ample time on his hands, he began thinking up more quirky ideas for his videos.
So well received was he on social media that a number of brands approached him to be the face of their product advertising campaigns.
“It was then that I realised I could make a living doing this,” Yong said, adding that he relocated to Kuala Lumpur to make this possible.
While making videos on the side, he got a job handling the social media campaigns for a restaurant. When his videos took off in a big way, he left his full-time job.
Yong said he learnt a lot about the F&B industry through his former job and he may consider opening a place of his own someday.
Now as a full-time content creator though, he said he is learning about how algorithms work and how to attract new followers besides crafting more attention-getting video thumbnails and captions.
As his name suggests, Yong is half-Chinese. “I grew up in a mixed culture and celebrate both Hari Raya and Chinese New Year.”
When asked what he liked most about Chinese New Year celebrations, he said, “The angpows! Because I always got more compared to Raya.”
He also has a weakness for peanuts and Mandarin oranges, thanks to his grandfather. “I’m still addicted to it, until now!”
He credits his spot-on Chinese accents to his father’s family members, many of whom he grew up with.
When asked about the creative process behind his online videos, he openly admitted that he had none. He said random ideas come to him from out of the blue, sometimes while showering or when doing other mundane daily tasks.
But how does he transform a simple idea into a funny video?
“It all depends on how you construct it. There was a lot of trial and error for me in that regard.”
Once he mastered the British accent, he tried his hand at mimicking other accents – French, Russian and Indian to name a few.
“An accent is just a form of imitation. It’s just how you hear things and how your brain translates it in your mouth.
“If you ask me, I think everyone can do accents. It’s just that you need to have good hearing and good tongue placement, in a way,” he said.
He also admitted that he tends to speak with a particular accent subconsciously, depending on who he is talking to.
“When I talk to my colleague Mark, I’ll have a British accent. When I talk to a Chinese auntie, I’ll go ‘Auntie, can la!’. I adapt to the situation,” he said, laughing.