Be Proud of Your Accent

Everybody has an accent. That’s true! Every single person has one. They can be indicators of where someone’s from, like how someone from Illinois tends to sound different than someone from Alabama. Also, they can show what other languages you speak. It’s extremely, extremely rare for someone to have no accent when they’re multilingual. Be proud of your accent, because it’s part of who you are.

Accents show your history

Can you think about a word that you say often or differently because of you who you surround yourself with? There’s definitely at least one or two. That’s because our language is constantly changing and evolving, and accents change too. The way you speak is a combination of all of the places you’ve been and people you’ve met. This is true in your first language, so it’s true in your second, third, fourth, etc.

Be proud of being bilingual

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Having an accent is just a mark that you’re bilingual. It shows that your brain can process the world in more than one language. You’re able to think more abstractly, and that’s something you should be proud of. Just because you sound like a native speaker of English doesn’t mean that you can’t get your point across! It’s not true that only children can learn a language because they develop more of an accent. Adult language learners can learn and express themselves in another language, even if they don’t have the same accent as a child.

Languages are like muscles- the more you work on them, the stronger they are. The more you practice Spanish, the more likely you are to develop better pronunciation. Although you may never completely sound like a native speaker, that doesn’t matter. Be proud of your accent, because it shows that you value learning a new language.