Why Do We Have an Accent When We Speak a Foreign Language?

Last October, during a press conference, President Donald Trump notably dismissed a French journalist’s question, arguing that her accent wasn’t clear enough for him to understand her (the link is below in case you missed it). 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=01pTk8UO07E

This revived a debate, in France, about accent discrimination: should one be disregarded because of the way they speak a language? As a very centralized country, France has a strong tendency to language uniformization, but, on the other hand, has long developed a complex about his own, while speaking English.

As a French person, and as a language teacher on top of that, I’d like to offer you my humble opinion about this matter. And because I can’t help but divide my reasoning the way French high school taught me freedom (irony), I’ll do it over three parts: what is an accent, what are reasons why you may want to improve yours as an expat, and to what extent should you preserve it.

But first, what is an accent?

A lot of teachers will tell you that they distinguish between having an accent and having an incorrect pronunciation of the language. Yet, they are partly complacent.

A group of people who share the same language necessarily have standards that commend how to speak it. And as we tend to strongly imitate others to show our ingroup belonging, in other words, that we are a member of the tribe, those standards are usually very stiff: “this is not how you say it”. As children, we quickly take up on those norms, as we like to mimic everything our elders do.

Yet, as the “group” grows in number of members, another thing happens: the need for differentiation, for standing out, for the inner circle. And that’s when we start to observe inflexions in the language: pronunciation twists, slang words, typical idioms, especially in young people. That’s where you can say the accent begins to exist. It’s a compromise between the need of a common set of words, grammar rules and pronunciation standards to understand each other, , on one hand, and on the other, of particularities to fulfill our need for an identity.

Another reason for accents is bilingualism. In many countries, languages overlap, one being the mother tongue, which will sometimes strongly affect the way you speak other languages you’ll learn later, for education, for work, for some countries’ national unity… This is probably the main reasons why the English you will hear in India or in Africa, it may be hard for you to understand your own language…

But back to the subject, accents are pronunciation errors, or differences. They are, according to a specific group’s tacitly agreed set of norms. British people pronounce the word law [lɔ:] while American people tend to say [la]. To one’s standard, the other is a pronunciation error.

And yet, British people and American people manage to understand each other despite these variations.

The problem occurs when you drift too far away from the said norm: for example, if, out of three sounds that make a word, 2 of them are pronounced in a way that is different from that language’s standards, you are likely to not be understood. So flɔ: instead of fla is tolerable, but thla or fwa wouldn’t probably be.

And why so? It’s simply because as speakers and listeners of our language, we have expectations. If somebody comes all the way to your door and knocks, waits until you open, greets you and turns away, you’ll probably think they are crazy: because you do not expect such a social behavior. The same goes for the language: you do expect yesterday, not yéstoeudé as the French journalist said. Partly because the speaker drifted to far away from the norm, and partly because the listener is not used to hear his language spoken this way, to the point he can’t figure what’s even being said to them.

On both ends, the same problem arises: we don’t like efforts.