The Pronunciation Police

I heard an English man tell his Japanese wife,
“Don’t speak English to our son. The pronunciation is wrong and I don’t want him growing up with strange pronunciation.”

What a complete Nazi!

What gives him the right to say what is right when his own English is merely a single dialect of the many English dialects that exist in the world.

People who say these things are the source of what is wrong with English Education in Japan. Millions of kids grow up under the misapprehension that they are no good because they can’t speak like a native.

And who is perpetrating this myth of Perfect Pronunciation?

It is a native speaker of English, who thinks he has the right to dictate how a word ought to be pronounced. Oh! You don’t pronounce that right, Kazuki! R not L, Kumi chan.

I guess it’s the result of the English Conversation Industry that boomed in the eighties and nineties (and now seems to be coming to an end), whereby native speakers were revered not for their teaching expertise, but for their ability to be, er, native in the English Language.

But really, who can blame them? For were they not protecting their very right to be in the country?

However, it was an imperial attitude, that was doomed from the start. English is not a country to be ruled but a world language that native speakers no longer have the right to own. Therefore native speakers, me included I remind myself every day, no longer have the right to dictate how it is spoken.

Pronunciation dictators, like nazi dictators, are not fun. They instill fear in the learner. How can a learner thrive in an environment of fear?
Where is the fun in fear?

That is why I am FOR teachers of English who are not native speakers. Because first and foremost they are teachers. They rely on their skill—not their nativeness.

Let’s enjoy English without being on the lookout for mistakes.