to consider taking accent reduction classes?

[Lilylo]

Hi everyone! I would love to hear impartial opinions on this.

I am originally from Italy, hence Italian is my mother tongue. I moved to the UK a couple of years ago and I have been working FT in a high-skilled job ever since. DH and I plan to settle and start a family in the UK (he is British). Prior to moving to the UK I lived abroad for several years in English speaking environments/ workplaces (US, Hong Kong, Beijing, Copenhagen), therefore I am pretty fluent in English.

I am often told by British colleagues and friends that my English is really good, but I still feel very conscious about my accent. I admit it is probably not terribly strong and most native English speakers understand virtually 99.9% of what I say, but you can still tell I am not a native English speaker.

For some reason lately I have been feeling more and more conscious about this "flaw", up to the point that I am thinking about paying £££ for accent reduction classes, in order to get rid of my foreign accent for good and possible sound a bit more native.

AIBU to spend £££ on getting rid of my foreign accent? If you are British, do you mind foreigners who are fluent in English but with an accent? If English was not your mother tongue and you have an accent too, how do you feel about it?

Many thanks for your comments!

Don't do it!!!
I was born in Poland, came to the UK full time when I was 12/13 but we always spoke Polish at home. I don't have a strong accent now, but some words I still can't manage to say without a heavy accent like "helicopter" and "underground" and numerous other bigger words.

When I was working, I found my accent to be a good conversation starter when meeting new people, as they were always interested to know about where I come from - kind of breaks the ice a bit.
I am hugely proud of my Polish heritage (I am also proud of my half-English heritage from my dad), and I love my discreet accent and speaking Polish at any given opportunity

Exacly like a limited vocabulary or a weak grammar, an accent tells people you are not 100% comfortable with a language. Even on a professional level, I think it can sometimes make you come across as less competent than you actually are.

There is PLENTY of limited vocab and grammar from 'natives' - be careful what you aspire to (would of/could of/they're/their/there anyone?)! You come across as very articulate. I suppose the only thing is, due to how you feel your accent is perceived, your CONFIDENCE may suffer in a professional situation thereby making you a little less authoritative/knowledgable-sounding.

I love the Italian accent and really dont assume anything about Italians in the UK - although I do wonder why theyd chose to leave (food, culture, wine, climate, landscape etc etc).

Anyway, stereotypes about acccents are true for every nationality and regionality, so I cant see which one youd chose as preferable and even that would probably be looked down upon by someone somewhere. Non essere una pecora!

I think in the case of an Italian accent, I don't think people perceive it negatively, but they do notice it. It's up to you whether that bothers you.

My husband has been here over a decade and still has an incredibly strong accent, often people can't understand him especially on the phone. He considered trying to change it but didn't in the end.

Some people on this thread are a bit naive though if they think no-one ever thinks anything negative about an accent- I don't live in London, and when my husband was looking for work (visiting people's homes) when our children were little to earn extra money, I used to take the call and make the arrangements, because I knew when he turned up they would like him and he'd do a good job, but when he answered his work phone and arranged it, they often cancelled or didn't book in the first place. They were put off by his accent.

This was not in a cosmopolitan high skilled workplace, but people were quite obviously biased against him, plus we have had people stare at us when they hear his accent. It's a regional narrow-mindedness that can be really tiresome.

The only drawback to having an accent is that it gets a bit boring being asked where you're from, and always being 'other'.

Those can be two massive drawbacks and shouldn't be understated. Try coming from somewhere newsworthy where people like to foist their opinions on you (no matter how ill informed) and see how boring you find that.

OP, my DH has a similar issue to you (though he comes from somewhere considerably less "cool" then Italy and I wonder if you came from DH's country if the reaction on this thread would be different).

Generally, he's happy with his accent, but I'm sure if he could turn off from time to time, he would.

So in response to your OP, you shouldn't have to, but I understand why you might want to.

I have to say that from my perspective I love his accent and didn't want him to change it at all. It can be different though when you are the one with the accent, I think it's difficult to perceive if you don't have an accent, being a permanent 'foreigner' is tiring for some people.

Yabu
People who hear you speak probably think; "What a nice accent, I wish my voice was more exotic".

Ha! You wouldn't be the first non-native English speaker I've known who has a better command of English than us natives.

I would like be to have a tangy Italian accent. It would sound amazing I am fluent in two other languages and my accent is decent in both but I will never lose that 'foreign' hint. It's part of me

I think the reason why I feel so strongly about this is that I fear speaking with a foreign accent makes people perceive me as less "capable" than them.

Quite the opposite for me: if you can speak fluently in two languages, that's at least twice as many as most English people.

I genuinely feel that most Brits would be far quicker to judge you for a low-status British accent than a foreign accent

Frankie Dettori has been here ages and I always assumed he had probably lost his accent a bit but allowed it to revert back on telly as everyone loves it. But if an Italian accent is hard to lose this is probably still his "real voice". Doesn't detract at all from his opinion as an expert pundit on the racing though. I wonder if the cook/waitress comments were more due to sexism. Mind you if they were that thick it's probably a mix of racism and sexism.

Also some (British) people could not believe I was Italian because I was fluent in English and "Italians are well known to speak broken English"

It would be more appropriate for these people to have their assholishness reduced than for you to work at eliminating your accent!

It sounds like you want to do it more to avoid comments from short sighted strangers than anything else. I love an Italian accent!!
As an aside, a foreign colleague who speaks English fluently as a second accent has started trying to affect an English accent in the past few months and it sounds really weird because it's very English and just doesn't sound like her any more. Of course I would never say anything but it's quite distracting when we speak. So
I would also consider how people who already know you would react to a rapidly changing accent? I speak two other languages besides English and I think I'd feel more uncomfortable if people could tell I was putting on a native accent than heard I just had a bit of a foreign twang IYSWIM!

It's funny because my OH has the opposite problem. English is his second language but he speaks with a British regional accent. He's 99% fluent but occasionally trips up, especially in writing and it makes people assume he's a poorly educated British person rather than someone speaking English as a second language.

Selfishly I wish he had a foreign accent, nothing more attractive in my mind than a foreign accent

Jan Molby, a Danish footballer, came to England to play for Liverpool in the 1980s. After a few years, he had developed an excellent scouse accent. By the time he left the club, he sounded like John Bishop.

You could always try that approach!

"As an aside, a foreign colleague who speaks English fluently as a second accent has started trying to affect an English accent in the past few months and it sounds really weird because it's very English and just doesn't sound like her any more."

I see what you mean and I thought about this implication.

I guess ideally I could try to achieve a "neutral" accent that would not imitate any specific regional accent but at the same time would not give me away as a foreigner immediately?

"because I knew when he turned up they would like him and he'd do a good job, but when he answered his work phone and arranged it, they often cancelled or didn't book in the first place. They were put off by his accent."

This is exactly the reason why having a foreign accent makes me feel self-conscious.

"I don't know why you would want to sound like someone else - are you ashamed of being Italian?"

Absolutely not, I just don't want that to be the very first thing people see in me. I worked so hard to reach this level of fluency in English and it is frustrating that I can't seem to be able to overcome this last hurdle and achieve "perfect and thorough fluency".

MIL has a friend from Malta with the most horrifically affected English accent possible. Tbh, everyone laughs behind her back as it's just so ridiculous, she's Maltese yet sounds like the Queen. What is the point? People just assume she's incredibably pretentious, I'd rather have an accent than that.

Also, when will it be enough for you? Will you deed poll your name to Emma Smith? I mean, what's the point of having the 'perfect' accent if people can see you have an Italian name?

It is not the same having an accent of an area of England as having a foreign accent. If you work with highly educated people or those who have travelled around, or live your life in a multicultural area,chaving an accent is not a problem.

The problem is when you work with people that cannot imagine there's a world out there were people are receiving perfectly good education and living fantastic lives.

Ie. I do project work for a firm that has a very varied multicultural staff, our clients come from all over the world. There my accent has no bearing on how my work is perceived, I am treated as an equal and my accent is not only accepted but sometimes celebrated, they are able to note I speak other languages besides English and respect me for that.

But just before Christmas I had plenty of free time and to be honest, I am not cut to stay at home, so I decided that in the meantime before my hours went up again, to get a job in retail to occupy the days when I was not working... Good grief... The assumptions people make! during the breaks, staff always started talking about those foreigners who are coming to take their jobs, there were people shouting at me and doubting I had done my work properly even when I was working harder than them (and they had no right to monitor my work as they were at the same level as me), there was even one who started checking I was not stealing stuff from the shop. They were making jokes about my accent even when my use of English grammar was better than theirs.

I found the experience very interesting.

Having, not chaving.

Having worked in many international environments and at a high professional level, you must have come across numerous others in the same situation as you. Certainly when I, like you, worked in Hong Kong there were French, Germans, Scandinavians, Italians, Indonesians, Indians, Japanese etc etc all working together in English on a daily basis in banks, law firms etc etc. Not to mention all the Mainland and HK Chinese who spoke English on a daily basis at work. It would actually have been abnormal professionally to have been in a single- nationality professional environment and nobody ever thought these people were less competent because they were not native speakers of the language they were working in. Indeed, as a pp said, people who work to a high level in a second language are generally thought to be MORE intelligent for doing so. I now work back in London and, although there are obviously more "natives" in the workplace it is now hugely international in the corporate world.

So it seems to me that your concern is more rooted in what people you encounter day to day in the street and on the phone think of you. From what you say, it seems you have met some right fuckwits. I'd say just ignore them, but easier said than done I suppose.

Personally I think that the whole "Papa Dolmio" effect is only partly accent and mostly the broken grammar and exaggerated adding of "a" on to the end of words, which presumably you don't do. I have a VERY capable Italian colleague- she has a strong accent but not a cartoon one and her grammar is flawless. I can't imagine she is ever looked down upon. Ditto my Spanish colleague. What about Miriam Gonzalez Durantez (Mrs Nick Clegg?). She is phenomenally successful.

Again, I am sorry that my country people seem to count some rude idiots amongst their number. I personally do not know anyone who would make such a comment or who would even think such a thing as "all Italians are waitresses". My FIL is Norwegian and speaks perfect English but with an unmistakably Scandi accent. He doesn't ever get any rude comments though as I guess that people don't have preconceptions of Scandinavians being unskilled workers.

Why not try a few classes to see how it feels to change your accent? It might be fun, like Dominic West leaning American for The Wire, or Gwyneth Paltrow learning RP English for Emma.

Lilylo I am not talking about living in a more cosmopolitan place, city or in a high-flying career, though- in my work at a university, there are heaps of people with foreign accents, probably half of the lecturers have accents in my department (including American). None of them have changed for lecturing.

I was talking about a quite narrow-minded and probably quite frankly racist set of people who just didn't encounter foreigners that often, plus my husband has a different accent which might, if you were narrow-minded and racist, trigger their sense of 'otherness'.

I have lots of friends with accents and they all do very well.

Interesting slight cross post there MeMySonand I. I despair of my compatriots.

My Mother is also a foreigner (from a very small European country). She's lived in England for nearly 40 years, her English is excellent (although she still occasionally struggles with expressions). She still has an accent. She gets a bit frustrated when people assume she's German, Dutch or other random nationalities but otherwise embraces being foreign (to the point that she refuses to take a British passport even though it would make her life a lot easier).
Her accent has never held her back and it's part of what makes her, her. I think it's generally a positive thing, but she used to be quite self conscious about it.

I do get where you're coming from though, we moved to a different part of the county when I was a child and I was so self conscious of my regional accent that I consciously changed it to fit in. I really regret that now though. Be proud of who you are!

Yabu. I'm sure your accent sounds charming, as do all "native" accents. If you want to hear a caricature of an Italian accent, go to Fletton in Peterborough where the descendants of the original immigrant brickworkers speak a horrible combination of Napolitano and Fenny. Corby Scots is pretty ghastly as well.