Blog 11: Accents

The chapter two of Lippie-Green’s book is about accents in standard and non-standard English. I was fascinating to find out that even American people have accent.  Also, there are different types of accents depend on the country. Filipinos, Chinese, Korean, and Japanese and many people from different country have their own accents when they come to United States. I do have accents; however, my accents are not as thick as other people that English is their second language. I have accents when I pronounce some words or get nervous. Last summer, I was hanging out with my Korean friend for two months. Then, I realized that my accent got thicker than it was before. Then, I stopped talking Korean, and started talking in English often, and then my accent wasn’t thick anymore. Many of my friends that I knew since I came to United States have accents. My Korean friends think that my English accent is weird, however, to Native Speakers, I don’t have accents.  My Korean friends and I came to United States at the same age, and we lived her for about ten years. But how come, I don’t have as thick accent as theirs? I realized that my Korean friends hung out with many other Koreans and didn’t speak much of English except school. However, when I become sophomore in high school, I met many of friends that English is their native language. After sophomore in high school, I hung out with Native speakers than Koreans. The chapter talked about a case when the bilingual teacher had accents. When I was in sixth grade, this bilingual teacher taught my friends and I. The bilingual teacher had very thick accent, and so did we. However, my brother had a bilingual teacher who didn’t have a thick accent. She talked in Standard English. My brother and his friends learned by this teacher without accent. My brother and his friends do not have accents when they speak English. Therefore, is it important for people to not have accents? I think, accents don’t matter unless the grammar of the English is perfect. When my friends make fun of me when I have an accent, I always say that it doesn’t matter if I have accent or not, as long as they understand what I am trying to say.  

            In chapter five of the book from McKay and Bookhorst-Heng, it talked about the features of variation and standard ideology. For many Asian students, it is hard to differentiate between R and L or v and b. When there are more than two Rs or Ls, it is hard for to pronounce. In Korean language, there are no different pronunciations of B or V. Therefore, many students are confused with B and V. I hated the fact that I couldn’t pronounce many words. So, I asked my Native speaker friends to pronounce the words until I could pronounce it. I still cannot say celebrity. I am still working on pronounce the word. After reading these readings, it made me realize that is it important for the students to not have accent? Is it really matter if the teacher has accents? It having accents will affect students?