Ben Crystal

“you can live somewhere for years, and your neighbours will only ever hear you as a newcomer, but go home and your friends say, Oh you’ ve got such an accent . . . But”
― Ben Crystal, You Say Potato: The Story of English Accents

“Some English learners worry about this. ‘I’d love to lose my foreign accent and sound just like a native speaker,’ they say. To which I answer, ‘Why? Why do you want to lose your identity?’ And I advise them to be proud of their accent, in just the same way as I would tell people in Britain’s regions to be proud of the way they speak, and not feel so insecure that they look for alternatives. As long as learners can communicate clearly and effectively, native speakers need ask for no more.”
― Ben Crystal, You Say Potato: The Story of English Accents