Why it is all right to speak English with different accents

A few days ago, I saw a video of Austrian-American actor and politician Arnold Schwarzenegger talking about hiring an accent removal coach at the start of his career to eliminate his thick Austrian accent. During The Graham Norton Show, when the host praised Schwarzenegger for his accent, Schwarzenegger quipped, “Yeah, after 5,000 years.” When I shared the video in a WhatsApp group, Dr. K Elango, a retired professor of English and the Secretary of the English Language Teachers’ Association of India, commented that English teachers should reconsider their emphasis on pronunciation and that an excessive focus on it could impede the learning process. Recently, in response to my social media post exploring why the colonial game of “cricket” enjoys significant popularity in India and the entities responsible for its promotion, a friend and academic posed this question: “Who promotes the colonial language?” In reply, I emphasised that English has evolved into a global language and that even countries untouched by British colonisation actively use the language, underscoring the notion that language holds power. The potential pitfall of viewing English through a colonial lens arises when English teachers incorrectly equate Indian English, our own language and linguistic identity, with British English. This, in turn, fosters the misleading belief that native speakers speak ‘perfect English’ and are better suited to teach the language, irrespective of the qualifications, expertise, and experience of non-native English speakers.