But if you live and work among people who speak the new language well, you should work at improving your accent. Unfortunately, some people make judgments about your worth and your intelligence according to how well you speak their language. Read what the Chinese American writer Amy Tan says about her own feelings about her mother’s accent:
Lately, I’ve been giving more thought to the kind of English my mother speaks. Like others, I have described it to people as “broken” or “fractured” English. But I wince when I say that. It has always bothered me that I can think of no way to describe it other than “broken,” as if it were damaged and needed to be fixed, as if it lacked a certain wholeness and soundness. I’ve heard other terms used, “limited English,” for example. But they seem just as bad, as if everything is limited, including people’s perceptions of the limited English speaker.