Photo by Juan Rumimpunu on Unsplash
By Federica Lupis, https://www.federicalupis.com/
Author of "Fluent On The First Try" and "Why You're Not Fluent and How To Fix It"
Language trainer, interpreter and translator.
Last week, while I was at work, I got a call from someone who wanted to speak to my boss.
‘X is not available at the moment. How can I help?’ I said.
‘I didn’t understand a word of what you said’, was the reply.
‘I must have spoken too fast’, I thought to myself, so I repeated what I had just said more slowly.
‘I’m sorry, I just can’t understand you’, the guy insisted.
‘Can you please call us back in half an hour? My colleague will be back, and she will be able to assist you.’
‘Sure, thank you for your help. Goodbye’.
After hanging up, I stood there for five minutes, thinking about what had just happened. People usually understand me well. I know I have an accent, but I don’t think it’s so strong that people can’t understand what I say.
Fast forward a week, Ash comes back from work to find me repeating English words in front of a BBC YouTube video.
‘What are you doing?’ he asked, tilting his head.
‘I’m trying to improve my pronunciation. I’m not very good with the Schwa sound.’
‘The ‘sha’ what?’
‘The Schwa sound’. You know, like ‘a cup of tea’. That’s where ‘a cuppa’ comes from’.’
‘Are you feeling okay? We’re in Australia, mate! Why would you want to sound like the Queen?’
‘Then what do I do? People can’t understand me when I speak English’.
‘Since when? People can understand you very well. Did something happen?’ he asked with his usual wisdom.
As I told my story, Ash stood there with the biggest smile on his face.
‘That guy was just a ****’ (you can do an extra Wordle today), he laughed. ‘How could he not understand that your boss wasn’t there and then immediately get the message that he could give you a call back to talk to someone else?’
‘I didn’t think about that’, I said with a sullen expression. ‘But why?’
‘People have all sorts of reasons. You should never let them affect you. There’s no right English accent anyway. Australian, American, British, Canadian… and who knows how many other varieties… are you telling me that only one of them is correct? And do you personally believe that people should get rid of their accents?’
Ash was right. There’s absolutely nothing wrong with having an accent. In this article, we’ll see why!
Old habits are hard to break.
When we learn how to speak as babies, we learn how to move our mouths to reproduce specific sounds. You may not have noticed this, but things like the position of the lips and tongue and the vibration of the vocal cords affect sounds.
When we learn a foreign language, we have to learn a new way of reproducing some sounds. To give you an example, the Italian rolled ‘r’, the nightmare of so many learners, is pronounced by placing the tongue in the same position as the English letter ‘l’.
Do you realise how crazy this is?
Of course, it’s hard to learn the pronunciation of a foreign language! We can’t just snap our fingers and tell our brain, ‘By the way, the letter ‘r’ is no longer coming from the back of my throat. Now, move my tongue to the front of the palate, just like for the letter ‘l’’.
You can imagine that you will encounter strong resistance, and your brain will push you towards what you’re used to doing.
The best way to retrain your brain would be to sign up for an accent reduction course, but even then, you can’t be sure you’ll get rid of your accent. Plus, would you rather spend time using the language and learning more exciting things or invest time and money trying to sound like a native speaker with no guarantee of success? It seems like a pretty easy choice to me…
Different doesn’t mean wrong.
On my first visit to London, my friend and I met a group of soccer fans in a pub. Their energy was contagious, and talking to them was a lot of fun. I must admit I didn’t fully understand what they were saying, but it didn’t matter. All I cared about was that they were a happy bunch.
At some point, one of them asked where we came from. We talked a little about Italy, and then I asked the same question in turn.
‘Isn’t it obvious?’ one of the guys asked, raising his beer.
‘I don’t know… Lebanon?’ I said, thinking I couldn’t be too far.
It must have been the biggest laugh I’ve ever heard…
‘We’re Scottish!’ the guy said with a big smile.
I was astonished. Their accent was so different from what I was used to that I thought they came from the other side of the world. Instead, they were UK’s neighbours.
That was the first time I realised that even speakers of the same language have an accent, and it doesn’t just happen with English; it happens with all languages. For example, I can easily spot if an Italian native speaker comes from the north, the centre, or the south of Italy. In most cases, I can even tell the region…
Think about your country. Is the language the same all over it, or does the accent change depending on the area where it’s spoken?
I’m sure it’s different. So why should learners of a foreign language try to learn the ‘perfect’ accent when it doesn’t exist?
As long as people understand what you’re saying, there’s nothing wrong with having an accent! Which brings me to my final point…
Unique is more exciting than ‘normal’.
Writing about accents made me think of a conversation I had with a customer while working as a waitress here in Australia.
‘Your English is very good’, he said.
‘Thanks, but I still have a long way to go before I can get rid of my accent’, I replied.
‘What? Get rid of your accent? And why would you do that?’ the customer asked, surprised.
‘I want to sound like an English native speaker’, I said as if it was obvious.
‘Please, promise me you’ll never do that. Your accent makes you unique. It’s part of who you are’, the customer continued with a serious face.
‘Okay…’ I muttered while I imagined myself speaking with impeccable pronunciation.
Almost ten years have passed since that conversation, and only now do I understand what that customer meant.
Your accent makes you unique not only because no one else will ever have the same accent as you but also because it tells a story that will help you connect with other people.
‘Where are you from? How is your country? Why are you here?’ were often the beginning of a beautiful story for me.
Where will your accent take you?
~ ~ ~
To sum up:
It is better to spend time using a foreign language and learning exciting things than investing time and money in trying to sound like a native speaker with no guarantee of success.
There is nothing wrong with having an accent. Speakers of the same language have different accents.
Your accent is part of who you are. Own it!
Thanks for reading!
I’ll catch you all next month.
If you enjoyed my article, you can discover my tried and tested language learning strategies in my books:
and here are this month's book offers:
· Kyara e l’anello degli antenati by Saveria Parisi, Italian book.
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