Week 14

I found it interesting to learn about accents because we solely touched on them in one of my bilingual classes. I find accents interesting and I at times wish I had a unique accent. As far as I know, I don’t have an accent even though I have a different L1. I believe that I don’t have an accent because I began learning English in school when I was six years old. I believe that L1 accents are very different than the American regional ways of phonetically speaking.

For example, L2 accents are accents that are produced due to the person’s way of having learned their L1. I always thought that it was so interesting that if a child starts speaking an L2 before the age of 12, there is a lower opportunity for the child to develop an L2 accent because they are better able to retain the information and pronounce the words because their pallets have not yet finished forming.

The author states, “…dialect is perhaps nothing more than a language that gets no respect” (43). I would have to agree with what the author states about how dialects usually don’t get much respect because they differ from the language. There are different varieties or “dialects” of the same language based on regions people live in or depending on how their parents were raised and what languages they are exposed to. In my future classroom I would like to discuss the different dialects so that students are not made fun of because of their dialect or accent. I believe that having a different dialect or accent makes the person who they are and they should not be embarrassed for sounding different.