My Australian accent has caused more than one American to say “I love your accent” or “Sorry what??” (usually re: “water”, “car” or, most recently, “tacos”) and, most bafflingly, “Does this mean that to you, I have an accent?!”
Everyone Has an Accent
– Roberto Rey Agudo, for The New York Times
…when we fetishize certain accents and disdain others, it can lead to real discrimination in job interviews, performance evaluations and access to housing, to name just a few of the areas where having or not having a certain accent has profound consequences. Too often, at the hospital or the bank, in the office or at a restaurant — even in the classroom — we embrace the idea that there is a right way for our words to sound and that the perfect accent is one that is not just inaudible, but also invisible. If you look at the question from a sociolinguistic point of view, having no accent is plainly impossible. An accent is simply a way of speaking shaped by a combination of geography, social class, education, ethnicity and first language. I have one; you have one; everybody has one. There is no such thing as perfect, neutral or unaccented English — or Spanish, for that matter, or any other language. To say that someone does not have an accent is as believable as saying that someone does not have any facial features.
Proof. (It’s a verb.) 