About speaking a foreign language.

About speaking a foreign language. There is an anecdote about why one should cherish their own style of dialect when speaking a foreign language. I have a fellow Finnish friend who went on touring as a musician in an all American band around the world. My friend hadn't been that awake during the English classes at school, so his vocabulary wasn't really that great, but the accent of his bandmates caught on. At the end of a lengthy tour there was an evening in San Francisco when my friend was killing time at the bar playing pool with the locals before the gig. After playing the game for some time it came up that he wasn't an American and didn't speak English as a native. The locals laughed out loud and said to him - We thought you were retarded! Don't pretend being a native speaker if you're not. Cherish your accent.