No One Cares About Your Accent, Except You

Native English speakers don’t care about accents because individual sounds aren’t important in English. If English is not your first language this is tricky to understand because each and every sound is critically important in your first language. Not so in English! People can actually say the wrong things in English and no one cares because no meaning is lost.

If someone at work said, “Zer is a meeting on Vensday”  - everyone shows up the day after Tuesday.

Or asked, “Ven is your birseday?” – without hesitation, we just tell them the day we were born.

Native English speakers actually hear those things correctly because the meaning in English is not in the exact pronunciation of individual sounds, it’s somewhere else.

The meaning in English is in pronouncing some syllables louder, longer and higher than the rest of the word. These qualities are known as stress. Not stress like I have too much homework, the baby is crying or the house is a mess and my in-laws are at the front door - a different meaning of stress.

My favorite example is banana. There are three syllables in the word ba na na but they are not all equally important. The first na is louder, longer and higher than the second na. So the word sounds more like    ba NA na   That’s the stress I am talking about and if it is missing – native English speakers don’t know what you are saying. BA na na doesn’t mean anything, ba na NA doesn’t mean anything, neither does BA NA NA. 
You can pronounce individual sounds wrong all day long and native speakers don’t mind a bit. They think your accent is charming. But if the word stress isn’t there, native English speakers don’t know what you are saying and they can’t guess.

Stop worrying about your accent - no one cares about that - start worrying about word stress because if it isn't there you sound like a sewing machine to English speakers and they can't

understand what you are saying.