I didn’t realize I had an accent until I moved from my adored home, Mexico City, to Houston. I had to switch from speaking Spanish full time to try to learn English. Talking first with a few of my classmates, they would quickly comment on my accent. I wondered what an accent was. I thought to myself, “Do I sound different than they do?” and certainly I did. I had, well still have, a thick Hispanic accent. In my own ears, I sounded perfectly “normal” since I had always practice my English around other English language learners who also had accents. I was now surrounded by classmates who most of them had English as a primary language, which made it intimidating.
It wasn’t long before a few kids in my class made fun of my accent. As silly as it sounds, it affected my self-esteem, I felt like an alien. Never had someone made fun of the way I spoke; I was struggling with the new language and could barely formulate a few phrases or carry a conversation. Someone making fun of me discouraged me to keep speaking, making English harder to learn.
When it was time to give an oral presentation, I was terrified, I knew that I could not enunciate all words correctly, and the panic of the teacher not understanding what I was trying to say settled in. I would speak slower to make sure I was hitting all the right enunciations and always had a translator on hand in case I forgot how to say a word.
I sometimes felt like having an accent made me sound dumb. I understood most people had a more elaborate vocabulary than I had. I was constantly being corrected on the pronunciation on words, got confused looks when I was talking or even had my friends, who already got used to my accent, tell the person what I was trying to say.
With time and support from friends, I gained confidence in my accent, continuing to speak without being scared to made fun of. I learned that having an accent was not all bad, it came with a few advantages. My accent was an automatic conversation starter; people would hear it and automatically knew I was foreign. Their eyes would fill with curiosity as they asked me where I was from and what I was doing in the USA. I would also use it to my advantage to get out of awkward situation by simply saying “no English” which felt like such a relief.
My accent also made me divergent from everyone else, and honestly who doesn’t love being unique. I would get comments saying that I was “exotic” or “sexy” because of my accent. Although I would feel flattered, having an accent is not a big deal, people just say that because it sounds different from them, therefore it is exciting.
Having an accent is now part of my life, I fell in love with it and other people did too. After years of living in the states, I am grateful for my accent with the good and the bad that it comes with. It reminds me of my home country, it reminds me of my culture and it reminds me of who I am.
