neutralize my accent

i would like to improve my accent and neutrilize my pronounsation.

Never mind on this goal. I like my accent. It´s different from everyone else´s… that´s not a bad thing.

...is a difficult time for anyone. When I was in 7th grade, my family and I moved to Arizona from the bayous of Louisiana. I mean to say, to get to where we lived you went to the middle of nowhere, turned left, and kept going for about seven miles.

Needless to say, my accent was atrocious. I have listened to recordings of me from that time and can barely understand the words. Really.

Arizona is a pretty “accent neutral” place.

Children are cruel.

The breaking point for me was when I was in “Social Studies” class and it was my turn to read aloud. The text was on George Washington and the “idea of democracy”.

Except, I pronounced it “ideer”.

Obviously, in that I remember the details so vividly, it was pretty traumatic.

I stopped reading. I stopped talking.

For weeks I refused to speak outside of my home. I holed up in my bedroom and read the dictionary for the sake of the pronunciation keys. I watched the national news and imitated the way the broadcasters spoke. I tried the old trick of speaking with marbles in my mouth (probably lucky I didn’t choke and die).

To this day, I have no accent. None. Zip. Zero. Zilch.

And I don’t regret it.