I appreciate your point but is there one single "correct" pronunciation of English?

You might say American or British English but each of those have multiple regional accents. They certainly do not pronounce all words the same.

When I, an American, visited Scotland, there were people I could not understand, even though they considered themselves to be speaking English, as I was.

Michael W. Marek I appreciate your kindness. And you are correct that no, there is no single pronunciation in any language. However, for some common words, there is only one proper way to pronounce them in English. For example, in the USA, the UK, Australia, Canada, and other English-speaking countries, the word "education" is pronounced the same way, with the "tion" at the end pronounced "shn." In Africa, however, "tion" is often pronounced as "shorn." My point is that English words are not pronounced as they are spelled, but teaching someone to pronounce them as written is a shortcut. What you are implying is that English has no rules, yet those rules conveniently appear when it comes to exams or interviews for international roles. And yes, there is only one way to pronounce the IPA (International Phonetic Alphabet), which is included before the definition of each word in The Oxford English Dictionary. Shouldn't this be the standard for teaching English as a second language? Thanks, anyway, for your leniency.

Michael W. Marek The discussion will be more realised by centering it around its heading: tradition, culture. I am only asking that if history had occurred in a different sequence, would the things we do to identify ourselves as African even matter? That is, if English was taught to Africans with enough rigour, would my African brothers still shun me for not honouring our ancestors because I say educayshn (which is the correct way), instead of educay'shnawn?

Michael W. Marek Regional accents in the UK and USA are still native, aren't they? I suppose regional accents in the UK are closer to BBC English than African pronunciation is. Correct? If an African speaks with a Manchester accent or a Liverpool accent, are they not both closer to each other than African English? So we can now claim there is no proper English, but when it comes to interviews and exams, Africans are still expected to compete with everyone. This leniency or Affirmative Action does not help us much. Is the same lack of rigour exercised when it comes to football, driving, etc? So Africans can be allowed to play football (a European sport) with loose rules, while other people should have defined rules?