Oct. 22, 2009

A few weeks ago, I came across an article titled “Don’t Look For Native Speakers” in a magazine. It chiefly got the idea across that we sometimes did not need to look for native speakers to practice our oral English, as even native speakers couldn't understand each other either, owing to their different accents. And nowadays, 90 percent of the English speakers are non-native. English is no longer just the language of the Great Britain.

Then it so happened that I bumped into two Englishmen in the Gulou English corner on the night of Oct.10th, 2009. It was actually the first time for me to join it (Haha, I finally knew where the exact place was). There was a time when I, with my roommate Lily, stood beside them, and we were all ears. In fact, these two English gentlemen never met each other before. And they just started to have an idle talk. It was quite interesting. One guy looked a bit like Forest Gum (So sorry that I forgot his name, well, just take F for short, ok?) and came from a town located in the north of England. The other (Er, name him A, ok?) was from somewhere near the city of London. So, their accents were different. And A asked F to guess where he was from according to his accent. Afterwards, they began to talk about English accents in different parts of England. They were good at imitating, especially F. Haha, hearing the strange accents they imitated from some parts in Britain, I could not follow a single word at all. And A said to his new friend F, “Our country is just a strange country. We have so many different accents but we can mostly understand each other, and usually we can guess which part they are from judging by the accent.” For example, the people in London don’t pronounce the letter “t”. They don’t say “water”, but something like “wa er”. And only after a period of talking did they say “Hello, my name is … ” and to shake hands. I’d never heard two native speakers talking live in my life, thus I really enjoyed listening to them until A had to leave.

Several days later, I met a teacher from a clinic (an English training center) who spoke American English. She said, “I can sense that 20 percent of your accent is American English.” That’s to say, 80 percent of my accent is still Fujian English~ - -! Though native speakers also have various accents, yet it’s of importance to speak a foreign language clearly, and it sounds so nice to speak in a seemingly native English accent. Moreover, I should choose one accent at the very beginning and try to imitate. Meanwhile, I should get used to different accents.

And when I talked to Junjun via qq last month, a net-pal for two years who spoke British English quite well, he commented, "Two years ago, when you called me in that summer vacation, you seemed to speak in American accent, yet now, I can tell that you are an English major." Gosh! I didn't feel happy, honestly. Because I remembered that I wanted to speak good American English, yet now it turned out that definitely I had been affected by some listening material, which changed my accent to a bit of British...  ... - - !

Anyway, I have to say, it’s really a bit late, but it’s never too late to take action and double the efforts.