My mom went to Yonsei University, one of the most elite colleges in South Korea, and has a PhD in Musical Arts. She’s one of the smartest people I’ve ever met.

And yet, she still asks me to make her reservations, doctor’s appointments, and even write out texts for her. She’s afraid people might not understand her accented English. In those moments, I am often taken back to Sofia Vergara’s quote in Modern Family.

“Do you know how frustrating it is to have to translate everything in my head before I say it?” Vergara’s character, Gloria, said.
“Do you even know how smart I am in Spanish?”

My mom’s reservations and Gloria’s frustrations perhaps aren’t just personal emotions, though. Customers tend to rate people who work in sales lower when they speak with an accent compared to those who don’t, according to research from John Tsalikis, Oscar W. DeShields Jr., Michael S. LaTour published in the “Journal of Personal Selling and Sales Management”. Bosses may even be less inclined to nominate their workers for a promotion if they have a foreign accent, according to a study from The American Psychological Institution.

Accents shouldn’t be an impediment to people’s lives. They exist to be admired as a beautiful reminder of culture, of individuality, and of how all of us are uniquely special.

However, I’ve had friends complain to me about how their teacher speaks with an accent, saying, “it makes learning too hard”. Additionally, a study by Nicholas Subtirelu, a linguistics graduate student at Georgia State University, showed that teachers with common Korean or Chinese names got low scores for “clarity” and “helpfulness” compared with teachers with common U.S. last names.

What I ask is, is the teacher the problem or is the class you are taking just difficult? These teachers were all hired for a reason; they were vetted and interviewed before getting their job. They are probably the best person to teach you that subject.

More so, I would consider school subjects to be another language inside a language. For example, math is a type of different language. You don’t normally ask someone what the limit of their lunch is or to find the derivative of their shoes.

English is the same. Nobody asks you to find the rhetorical devices used in your hangouts or to do a literary analysis of your family dinner. You put in time to understand the new languages of school subjects. Why not do the same for real people? You can always ask for one-on-one help or for a teacher to repeat something they said.

I’ve even seen the same kind of prejudice in TikTok trends. Recently, while scrolling through my For You Page, I’ve seen videos of people having their parents read certain words in their accented English. The kids laugh so hard, doubling over. Others do the trend with water in their mouths and laugh so hard they spit it out.

Plain and simple, it’s rude to have someone laugh in your face for an accent you can’t control. It’s even more disrespectful when it’s your kid that’s doing the laughing. I know the trend is supposed to be lighthearted, but I am unable to see what is so funny.

I won’t lie; I’ve had my own share of fun laughing at how my dad can’t pronounce the “r” in “ruler”. However, it gets less funny as I grow older; I see myself having to translate my thoughts from a stream of English consciousness to actual words I speak aloud in Korean. Sometimes I am at a loss for words, knowing what I want to say but not knowing the vocabulary to express myself.

Other times I trip over simple pronunciations. I can hear the English accent in my Korean, making me feel like there’s nothing I want to do but stop speaking altogether.

I know I am only feeling a fraction of what my parents’ feel, but I am beginning to understand.

Instead of laughing or getting frustrated, recognize that not everyone is the same as you. Understand that in another country, you may be the one being made fun of.

There’s more than one language in the world, and there’s different ways to pronounce the same things. Embrace and revel in the beauty of other languages and the accents that come out of them.