Englishes: Be Proud of Your Accent!

Englonesia, Batak's accent, Javanese', Balinese', or Papuans', no problem...

Are you familiar with the African's Dr. Tedros Adhanom (WHO Director-General), Portugal's Antonio Guterres (UN Secretary-General), South Korea's Ban-ki Moon (former UN Secretary-General)? Have you ever heard their speech? What do you learn from their English accent? To be sure, I advise you to watch and listen to their talks on YouTube. So, before we go further on our discussion, let me finish my ideas.

Having fluent and native-like accent are the prime dreams of all English learners, no matter whatever their main aims are. It's subtle and understandable. Those English learners will make any effort they think they need to do to gain their goals.

Some of the efforts are listening to English songs, watching English movies, having frequent conversations with native speakers, and imitating some public figures they like.

However, there is one question that comes out of this condition. Which English accent do you want to have? Obama or Tom Cruise's accent (American English), Harry Potter or Queen's accent (British English), or Scott Morrison's accent (Australian English)? It's not easy. You may learn all of the pronunciations, but in the end, you must choose one of them, which you can use it as your identity.

Why we have to select one of the accents? It's because, within each country mentioned above, there are more than one accents exist. For instance, when you land in British soil, you will, at least, encounter seventeen dissimilar accents. Don't you think that's more than enough to make yourself confused?

Englishes

In 2006, Professor David Crystal wrote a book entitled "English Worldwide," saying that there were approximately 400 million native speakers of English. Furthermore, he said that there were 400 million speakers of English as a second language.

Also, there were around 600-700 million English users communicate English as a foreign language. Well, over one billion people use English as a means of communication to some extent. Those figures are fifteen years old, so we are somewhat sure that the numbers of speakers have rapidly grown in the last decade. We can now estimate that there are almost 2 billion speakers of English globally. (http://www.stgeorges.co.uk/blog/learn-english/how-many-people-in-the-world-speak-english)

Now, let's continue our discussion about English varieties. Since the amount of English users around the globe keeps growing, there are no fixed accent models to be followed. This situation creates a tendency that people start using their own English. 

Therefore, it might be the answer to the question of what English should we use? As we know, there are many varieties of English usage around the globe. We see the particularity as Englishes. And for this case, I believe Indonesians need to develop an English range, an Indonesian English, or Englonesia.

But, beforehand, the Indonesian government needs to review its policy toward the English lesson in Indonesia. To have the same, maybe better result than that of Malaysians and Singaporeans mastery of English, the government must set English as the second language, not as a foreign language. English must also be learned based on context, must be authentic, just the way it is. We need to learn English out of the box, and beyond our traditional English learning at school.

Yes, it indeed takes time to alter the current situation where most of the English lessons taught one way, and mostly use a grammar-based approach. As a result, many people still reluctant to speak English because of the fear of making mistakes. 

To learn the "new" English, people should get rid of their fear of making mistakes in grammar, pronunciation, and intonation. It is not an obligation that the English of Indonesians is the same as that of native speakers'. If we still live in Indonesia, I believe it's a kind of mission impossible to reach the standard of native-like accents.

Mohanraj (2013) wrote that it is no longer necessary to look up to the British or the American variety as our models to be followed. We may have our indigenous varieties that suit our purposes. At this point, I agree with his thought of seeing the current trend of Englishes in the world.

Panggabean (2015) stated that Indonesian people would easily acquire Indonesian English when they learn English just the way people in Singapore and Malaysia learn their English. When this process of acquisition occurs outside the classroom, the same applies to classroom teaching and learning process.

Before I finish this article, you need to watch the following videos showing various English accents around the world.

What can we conclude from the discussion here? No worries about your accent. You are free to use your accent to communicate with anybody you meet. Keep remembering that the essence of communication is to understand one another.

So, be yourself, be proud of your Englishes, and once again, don't be bothered with your accents.

More about English here.