Should an ESL English learner worry about American or British accent? Like, which one to follow? I had that discussion with my classmates yesterday and I heard "The important is: If you have the wish to follow either or another, go ahead. But it is not worth worry too much about "what English you're learning". As far as I'm concerned, English is just one. Learning how to speak clearly, so that people understand you, is the most important thing. But, when people don't understand some words I say, I get worried about it. The question is: Do people know how well do you speak English by how clear you speak it?
Diego, there are many more accents than just American or British. There are Irish, Jamaican, Australian etc. etc. and even within American and British there are a great many very different accents. A really strong Texas accent might not be understood by a New Yorker and vice versa.
The trick is to avoid people and courses with a very strong REGIONAL accent. There is what will be considered a NEUTRAL accent from each country and that is what you want to find because basically every English speaker from anywhere will be able to understand a neutral and clear accent from any other country.
When you speak you are going to have a Brazilian accent until maybe you get to a really advanced level anyway. The trick is to make sure that your pronunciation is clear and understandable and you aren't learning a strong regional way of speaking. That actually is important right from the beginning. Find someone who's voice you like, that speaks with a nice neutral accent and then it won't really matter which country's accent it is until you get to an advanced level.
That's my advice to you. I hope it helps.
Dorothy, if someone said 'to get to my apartment use the lift' in the UK I'm pretty confident that no one would bat an eyelid. Because we use the word 'apartment' in the UK sometimes :)
An apartment is a flat, but it has the connotation of being a bit more up-market.
Anyway, completely irrelevant to the matter at hand but I thought I'd point it out.
Well, Dorothy pretty much said it all. I'd just add that a good rule of thumb is to focus on communication, not perfection. This is valid for learners at all levels and for other aspects of a language, not just accent. You will probably develop an accent of your own, at some point or another. In my case, my Spanish accent is a mix between Argentinian, Mexican and Ecuadorian; my English is a mix between American, Canadian and British. This is due to the people I've lived with and worked with. Now that I'm learning Portuguese, my Spanish accent has changed quite dramatically—but people still understand me. It's a bit unpredictable how things are going to turn out, just focus on communication.
Advanced students in my opinion should choose one until they feel so solid in it that even when they talk to English speakers from other places they use the accent that they "grew up with" just like I do. When I speak to a person from England I don't suddenly start speaking with a British accent! Once you have grown up fully in your English you will do the same with whatever country's accent you choose. I'm trying to accomplish that with my Spanish and I can tell you that it really is not easy.
Portuguese is even harder because some of the changes from place to place even in Brazil are pretty big. I just decided right from the beginning to start with Sao Paolo and stick with it. :) I wish I had made a better choice at the beginning when learning Spanish! I had no idea that I needed to think about regional accents. Now I know better starting other languages. I just hope I'm making the right choices! Before you actually know a language it's pretty hard to choose.
I'm so glad that was useful to you Diego. If you ever need help figuring out if an English accent is neutral please feel free to message me.
I see now that you have yourself as being quite advanced in English on your profile which you didn't before. If you are at a C2 level (at the mastery level of English) then you might want to pick one particular country for awhile until you have a stable accent (still with a neutral accent of course) because the idioms and expressions and word usage are all going to be different from country to country and mixing those from different countries and different accents for different words in the same sentence can not only be too much to learn but can sound odd.
Example:
To get to my apartment use the lift.
Terrible. An aparment in British English is a flat and lift in American English an elevator so mixing these words together sounds confusing and bizarre. Then if you say one with a British accent and one with an American because you learned them from two different people from far flung places it would make it even weirder.
to be continued....
