Prepone That! Your Accent Is Funny! Readers Share Their ESL Stories

Last month, we published a story in collaboration with the NPR podcast Rough Translation about nonnative speakers navigating the world of "good" and "bad" English. Dozens of readers wrote in with their own stories about how challenging — and frustrating and rewarding — it can be to learn and teach English.

We're featuring three responses that we found especially insightful: an English professor from India shares an English word she's used for years — not found anywhere in the dictionary; an author points out the politics behind terms like "native language" and "mother tongue"; and an engineering professor discusses why stereotypes about "accented English" are totally hypocritical.

Brave new word

Aparna Gollapudi is a professor of English at Colorado State University who grew up in New Delhi. She used a word in her classroom one day that made her see her relationship to the English language in a totally new way. Here's her story