I speak Mandarin, Cantonese, English, and a little bit of French. I think I speak all the languages with some accents. For example, my Mandarin has some southern Chinese accent, my Cantonese has some Mandarin accent, my English has some Chinese accent, and my French has some Chinese plus English accent.
I remember I had a discussion about the accent with one of my French classmates, and we were talking about the accent we have when speaking French. At that time, I was pretty uncomfortable with my accent because I wanted to try my best to speak the “authentic” French. But my friend reminded me that we should appreciate our accent because it tells an important part of ourselves. More than that, what is a standard language? Who gets to decide what the standard is? Those are some questions to think about.
Later, even my French friend said that people in France think she speaks French with an accent. We have accents because we all speak more than one language, and that should be something to be proud of. I had a friend who spoke 6 languages and had a strong Greek accent when speaking any language she knew. Once we were discussing accents, she mentioned that she is proud of her accents, and she thinks her accents are “sexy”. I really like her attitude, and we should all be proud of our accent.
I think for language learning, the courage to speak is the first step toward fluency. A lot of the time, we are scared that we made mistakes, people might not understand, or our accent is too strong. But language is invented to communicate, not to decide who’s wrong and who’s right. That is something that I always tell myself and my students in Cantonese Class about, that you are already making progress when you start speaking. Accents are amazing, and we should all appreciate our accents.
