Okay, I looked it up, and it seems I was getting confused with the Australian weak vowel merger; the pin/pen merger is actually in some American accents

What? How is that the conclusion you’re drawing here? As a side note, I have learnt and can speak German and have lived and studied in Germany. But more importantly, I feel like we’re having two entirely different conversations. My understanding of your argument is that it is invalid to put down potentially confusing pronunciation differences down to accents. Please correct me if I have misunderstood what you’re saying. My argument is that this is just a natural linguistic process and differing pronunciations even to the point of confusion between dialects is inevitable. If someone’s dialect/accent truly does cause communication problems, then a workaround needs to found, whether that’s rewording things so that confusion caused by pronunciation is averted, or by code-switching to a common dialect in more extreme cases. Neither of these invalidates either dialect or accent. People speak differently, and no matter how strange it might sound, it’s just something you have to get over.

So basically your argument is that an accent or dialect is only valid if it can be understood by people from outside that speech community? German and English both have the same linguistic origins, but they are not mutually intelligible. Does that make either or both invalid ways of speaking? Do you realise that phonological changes are a perfectly natural part of linguistic evolution and, given enough time, speakers of dialect X and dialect Y can stop being able to understand each other? Yes, you can code-switch to make yourself more understandable to speakers of another dialect, but that’s generally what you do when the differences between the two dialects are big enough that you feel the need to change the entire manner in which you speak.

Also accents are not people “choosing” to speak another way. It’s just a result of linguistic change.

I mean, in Australian accents, pen and pin are pronounced the same. That doesn’t make their accent invalid.

People when they find out different accents exist: >:(

Oh, so you mean the whole of the contemporary field of linguistics?

However, real grammar and prescribed textbook grammar are two different things.

Last March (of the Ents)

Waters tastes gross

For the record, I’m a committed hydro-homie and do not endorse this message.

The answer is of course that neither is better really. As a Brit, there are plenty of British and American accents that I find annoying or unpleasant to listen to, but that’s all subjective. Just go with whatever you want, and remember that any native speaker’s accent is valid.

It’s the toast that makes you happy

Tja

…okay, you’re technically correct, but they want to so they’re gonna do that anyways

I was shocked until I read the username

I’m gonna have to go for Linux once my current laptop dies. Now way I’m putting up with Windows 11.

The worst thing about it is it stopping you from sleeping