keep it. it suits you.

dasakuryo:

I am seriously in love with all the non-native English speaker accents in Rogue One. Donnie Yen’s, Jiang Wen’s and Diego Luna’s accents are a balm to my ears, after years of  witnessing non-native English accent’s being used with ill-intentions by the film industry, this is a groundbreaking and most welcome change. 

I wonder if Gareth Edwards realised that by broadcasting these non-native English accents, and more so these NNE accents being spoken by actors who are part of the main cast, he was symbolically fighting against linguistic imperialism. 

Whether he did it consciously or not, I am glad that he did. And I am also extremely proud of Diego Luna, Donnie Yen and Jiang Wen for using their NNE accents.

This is what I needed as a kid, growing up having to learn English and constantly feeling inadequate when I tried to speak -because I didn’t “sound right”. I wish I had had this kind of positive representation; I wouldn’t have felt the need to mask and hide my accent, because from what I was getting from native speakers media my accent was ugly and a sign of me being uneducated, incapable and inferior to native speakers. I wish it hadn’t taken me years of self-loathing to understand that there wasn’t anything wrong with my accent, that I wasn’t a native speaker and that I didn’t need to sound like them to be treated as an equal and being given respect. 

I sent an email to my English teacher (in case you’re wondering yes, the very same teacher who helped me find my voice), with a link to one of Diego Luna’s interviews on how he wanted to keep his accent, and other links to the trailers. Her response gave me chills. She can’t wait for the Rogue One DVD to be released, she’s totally getting the movie and adding Rogue One to her movie Thursday list. I wish I could be there in May to see the kids reactions when they hear Cassian for the first time, especially those who will be just starting to learn English. Because I know this will happen after undoubtedly having argued with her since March that they just.. don’t want to speak because, you know.

:’)