MYTH: Dialect coaches are constantly judging others on the way they speak.

REALITY: Probably not. Here’s why: The amount of energy and focus involved in listening to every single sound that an actor utters and analyzing those sounds in light of some particular dialect goal is enormous.

Trust me, it’s intense work!

If a dialect coach were to try to judge every sound every person in their vicinity spoke every day, they’d burn out quickly. (I just read this blog post aloud–including this sentence- and it clocked in at 44 seconds, during which time over 400 individual sounds were uttered. That’s around ten sounds per second…Intense, yes?)

So relax! If you see your coach somewhere and they aren’t ‘on the clock’ they are probably listening to what you are saying rather than how you are saying it.

A version of this article originally appeared on Dialect411.com.