Foreign accents : Awful or beautiful?

Hermione Granger   Wed Oct 19, 2005 8:35 pm GMT
This question is more for the English-speaking persons but everybody can answer if they want to:

What do you think of foreign accents when people are speaking in English? Do you find them understandable or certain accents are difficult to understand?

And what accent do you like, prefer or dislike?
Someone else   Wed Oct 19, 2005 9:31 pm GMT
Latin European accents are soft and nice (Italian,Spanish etc.) German is awful and Russian is awful as well and all the other non European accents.
Tom K.   Thu Oct 20, 2005 1:40 am GMT
I like anything from western Europe. French, German, Dutch, anything Scandinavian...in those places people seem to start studying English the moment they're born so their accents sound less like foreign accents and more like strange dialects of English. I don't really dislike anything, except maybe for some Indian accents which can be REALLY hard to decipher sometimes.
Uriel   Thu Oct 20, 2005 1:53 am GMT
I think any accent has the potential to sound nice. It depends on the person who has it, not on the sounds they produce.
Damian in Edinburgh   Thu Oct 20, 2005 9:52 am GMT
I think some foreign accents are great.....I really liked Milton Keynes.
Easterner   Thu Oct 20, 2005 10:25 am GMT
I don't really like it when somebody speaks with a very marked Hungarian or East European accent (I heard that a couple of times, although the situation is improving as more and more East Europeans have access to authentic spoken English). I recently saw a film, "The Passion of Ayn Rand", where Helen Mirren spoke with a supposedly Russian accent: all those "z"-s instead of the voiced "th" spoken out in her rather harsh voice! - it was very tiresome to listen to after a time, even if it wasn't a native Russian's accent. However, a slight native acccent doesn't bother me, if the speaker otherwise talks intelligibly. On the other hand, I agree with Steve K that other Germanic persons speaking English can sound very pleasant - I had this experience in the Netherlands in particular (even if some older Dutch people have a curious Dutch accent, which can be a little funny - some even mixed Dutch words in their speech - they must have been better used to speaking German, not English). The accent of French people speaking English is very interesting with their raised (as opposed to flat) vowels and frequent end stresses - it is so much more more musical than the speech of natives.
Candy   Thu Oct 20, 2005 10:31 am GMT
Some accents are easier to understand than others, of course - personally I find Northern Europeans the easiest to understand, Russians and Indians the hardest - but I would never describe any foreign accent as 'awful'. For me, any non-native who speaks English sounds great! I hear Germans speaking English every day, for hours on end :-), and I can't agree with 'Someone else' above who describes their accent as 'awful'. It's sometimes a little harsh, but perfectly clear.
-   Thu Oct 20, 2005 4:11 pm GMT
i think there's something charming about the way Japanese people speak english. it's like katakana, like their borrowed words, haha. "ai supiku bado Ingulisu!!" ("i speak bad English"). just imagine a pretty young japanese girl with a perfect voice speaking english like that... aaah *drool* ^^

i think the chinese and korean accents are pretty horrible though. can't say why.
eito(jpn)   Thu Oct 20, 2005 4:43 pm GMT
Rather, "ai spiiku baddo Ingurish!"

In Japan, we tend to beleeve that Chinese peeple speak English better than us. Their English sounds pritty good to me. And I think Korean accents are not so horrible.
eito(jpn)   Thu Oct 20, 2005 4:51 pm GMT
Uriel wrote: >>I think any accent has the potential to sound nice. It depends on the person who has it, not on the sounds they produce.<<

"-" wrote: >>just imagine a pretty young japanese girl with a perfect voice speaking english like that... aaah *drool* ^^<<

I am verry happy not to be "a pretty young japanese girl"!
Holly Dutton   Fri Oct 21, 2005 1:30 am GMT
Growing up in Miami, Florida, I have known Latin-American Spanish since age eight, and Brazilian Portuguese since age twenty. Later, I studied both languages in college, and continue to do so on my own. For years now, I have enjoyed helping Latin-American immigrants to learn English. Among them is a nice Puerto Rican Catholic priest whom I taught for a year some nine years ago. He slowly but surely mastered English. While he is understandable, he was at first concerned about the sometimes derisive reactions to his Latino accent. I tried my best to reassure the priest that as long as he was intelligible, that was what mattered. I told him that if others reacted unfavorably to his accent, that was THEIR problem, not his. Other Spanish-speaking American friends encouraged the priest likewise, and soon he learned to simply keep on practicing English without worrying about what others thought. Today, his English is EXCELLENT, and his English sermons are JUST as dynamic as his Spanish ones!
Mxsmanic   Fri Oct 21, 2005 3:52 am GMT
The best accent is no accent. A foreign accent is just as likely to irritate as to please, and in both cases it distracts attention from the person behind it. In contrast, if one speaks without an accent, only the content of what one says is important, and so prejudices are less of a problem.
Uriel   Fri Oct 21, 2005 4:06 am GMT
How can you speak without an accent of SOME kind? Everyone has an accent.
|||   Fri Oct 21, 2005 4:55 am GMT
Modern RP. The best.
Muppet mania   Fri Oct 21, 2005 5:16 am GMT
An "accentless" accent would make for a very dull, depressing world; an Mxsmanic_esque_ existence!