No. This is wrong. I get so frustrated when native speakers say that. It's well-intentioned but it's wrong.
Would you tell me to embrace being a shitty entrepreneur? Because this is what it comes down to.
A non-native accent is wrong. If you're embracing your non-native accent, you're embracing your mistakes.
This isn't Andy saying certain words consistently differently compared to Americans. It's a person making random mistakes (for example, using sounds from their language that don't exist in any dialect of English) that make them hard to understand.
Native speakers speak a recognized and consistent accent. Non-native speakers are inconsistent with their accent (for example, the same vowel will sound different depending on the word while it should always sound the same).
What trips me up is the stress on words, intonation and rhythm (my first language is french). One example I like to use: give me his email address so I can address X with him. Use the wrong stress and the words means something completely different.
I agree that the "embrace your accent" is coming from a good place but is wrong. Whenever I go on a call, I speak slower, which someone makes my pronunciation and intonation close to the traditional Canadian accent. When I do embrace my accent, people will occasionally ask me to repeat myself or repeat a word because they didn't understand how I said it.
And it is not fun when you want to persuade someone or sell an idea. I can tell you that.
Makes me think of this:
I stopped practicing out of sheer frustration. I am curious to know what a session looks like with your coach?
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