Sana Saeed On Why An Awkward LA Restaurant Order Forced Her To Train Her Accent

LOS ANGELES, CA-Actress Sana Saeed has opened up about her struggles with accent and communication while studying in Los Angeles in 2016, saying she worked hard to train her accent because she “wanted to be heard.”

Now based here, she began her acting career as a child artist in ‘Kuch Kuch Hota Hai’. Sana posted a video saying, “When I came to LA for the first time in 2016 to study, I remember going to a restaurant and wanting to have water. But it was water back then. And I remember asking him about five to eight times, I said water, water, water, water, water, can I have some water? And he would say soda.”

“He said, do you want to Coke? And I realized that day that if I ever, ever had to live here, I would have to learn this new language. It would be very important for me to feel heard and communicate it. And be audible, most importantly. So, I just really wonder why do we shame people for changing their accents? It’s, it’s not easy. I, I had to do training, I worked really, really hard to, you know, feel heard.”

She added, “And isn’t that the most important thing as human beings to feel heard? So, yeah. Just wondering if you’ve had a similar experience. I just saw a couple of comments on my last post and so many people questioned the accent without really realizing a lot of work gets put in. It’s hard work. It’s like learning a new language altogether.”

In the caption accompanying the video, Sana wrote that she trained her accent so she could be better understood as an actor, stressing that her original accent was never wrong and that no accent is more valid than another. She added that people should not be shamed for changing the way they speak to communicate more effectively. (IANS)