Accent is an advantage
No human being alive is free of an accent, so treating it as a defect costs the professionals who carry it and the companies that could grow through them.
Foreigners do not care about your accent. Brazilians love to.
I come from a family that moved 17 times in 24 years, all across Brazil. I do not need to tell you how many accents I have picked up and dropped along the way. That is what gave me an unusual flexibility with communication. Today I am fluent in more than one language and I use that to my advantage at work. But the point here is bigger than fluency.
The “fluent English” trap
I watch Brazilians who are just starting a new language get torn apart by other Brazilians. Then they speak to an actual foreigner and hear a warm “wow, you speak so well.”
Something similar happens with job posts that ask for fluent English. It usually comes down to one of two things. Either there is almost no one to speak English with and the language barely shows up in the day to day, or there is a kind of virtuosity worthy of my worst schoolteacher: the one who adored the verb “to be” but could not hold a conversation.
No one escapes an accent
Here is what actually happens: no human being who has ever walked this earth is free of an accent. None. You will never escape it. And that is wonderful.
New York English is not Long Island English, and those two sit right next to each other. One friend of mine is Zambian, speaks 11 languages, and lives in Ireland. Another is Ukrainian, learned English, and used it to move to Colombia. Both live well and work with plenty of people, accent layers and all.
An accent carries expressions and new ways of seeing the world. It is an enormous competitive advantage. There are different ways of having one, sure, but nothing a quick “could you repeat that?” does not solve. Less than a tenth of a second and you are back on track.
The real cost
What often gets demanded in Brazil is an ego contest dressed up as linguistic proficiency, and the worst part is that there is frequently no proficient person in the room. Why do this to your own professionals, when they are the ones who can help expand the business? Why consciously choose to ignore what could help companies grow, and strip away the confidence a market needs?
We are one of the few monolingual nations in the world, and this kind of criticism does nothing to change that. It only keeps us from developing and growing. Worth rethinking.