I Never Learned to Sound British

The Accent That Built Me Back

When I moved to London 16 years ago, my English was not great. Actually, it was shit.

I could get my point across, but every sentence was a negotiation. Accent, pause, the right word hunted down mid-thought. At first, I thought fluency would fix everything, that once I spoke like them, I’d become one of them.

In Britain, accent is a form of architecture.

It tells people what school built you, what class furnished you, and whether you own the house or deliver to it. No one says this out loud. It’s in the air, coded into vowels and pauses.

So I started working on my English. But no matter how much I practised, I never managed to sound British.

And then one day, many years ago, it broke…

I was in a meeting, surrounded by a few white senior men in suits, all of them older, all of them watching. They weren’t just questioning my decisions, they were questioning every word, every sound, the way I shaped a sentence. I could feel my throat tightening, my palms sweating under the table. I reached for water just to buy myself three seconds of silence.

Mid-sip, mid-performance, something in me gave up.

I just stopped trying to sound like them. I stopped performing fluency.

I just said what I meant, the way I knew how to say it.

They listened.

I closed the deal - redesigning the experience for one of Britain’s most iconic productions, The Phantom of the Opera.

Without ever sounding British.

The moment I let go, I felt lighter - almost euphoric. I realised I didn’t actually want to belong in that way. I wanted to be heard, not absorbed. I didn’t need to blend, but stand for something.

That shift changed everything. Because I could convince people, sell ideas and lead teams - yet now that quiet voice that once said “You sound different” had turned into something powerful.

Over time, I realised my “accent anxiety” wasn’t linguistic - it was social design. Britain taught me how invisible hierarchies sound.

Every culture has its own typography.

In London, it’s accent.
In the US, it’s confidence.
In Bulgaria, where I’m from, it’s how you look.

Now, when I hear my accent, I don’t hide it - I use it. It’s my watermark - proof that I’ve built a voice rather than inherited one.

The Lesson…

The more you edit yourself to fit someone else’s frequency, the quieter your own signal becomes.

Authenticity is an amazing relief. It’s the moment you stop performing and start transmitting.

So my advise for you is stop sanding down the edges that make you sound like you.

Stop trying to belong to a culture that rewards sameness.

And I’m not talking just about accent any more. It’s about everything.

Belonging isn’t about sounding the same but about making people tune in differently.

I never learned to sound British.

And that’s the best thing I never achieved.

Love,
Stef