I have been surprised lately to hear so many people insisting they do not have an accent. This couldn’t be further from the truth. Everyone has an accent!
An accent (or dialect, as the case may be) is simply a particular way of speaking. Every speaker in the world has one.
I was once chatting with someone at a bar in Glasgow, Scotland. His Glaswegian dialect was so heavy I was having a hard time understanding him, but was doing my best. At one point he started laughing and said he was having a hard time understanding me because my accent was so heavy!
Perspective is everything!
In the US, I am generally considered to be a clear speaker. My dialect is close to one often referred to as Neutral American (this is a dialect that makes it unclear what geographic region a person is from, sometimes referred to as non-regional). But to this Scot, my heavy accent made it impossible to understand me.
For someone to insist that they (and by extension the people who sound like them) “don’t have an accent” is to assert that the way they speak is the gold standard, neutral, idealized way of speaking for the world, and anything that differs from their personal way of speaking is an accent. While it’s true that each of us is the center of our own universe, this takes it a bit far.
In fact, because every speaker has a dialect, there is even a term for an individual’s own way of speaking: idiolect. The prefix idio- refers to the self (think idiosyncratic).
So go forth, knowing you have an accent and rejoicing in your idiolect!
If you’d like to learn ore about your own dialect or any others, schedule a session here!
