English accent in other langauges

Jonno   Wed Dec 19, 2007 4:54 pm GMT
How does the English accent sound like in other langagues? By English accent I mean the accent of a person who is a native English (any type) speaker. I am specifically wanting to know what it sounds like in German, but any other languages would be interesting too.

And also, I am assuming that a native English speaker speaking another language sounds the same no matter if they speak UK English or US English or Australian English, but is this true?
Guest   Wed Dec 19, 2007 5:26 pm GMT
That's not true, American and English people speaking my language do have different accents
Guest   Wed Dec 19, 2007 8:29 pm GMT
Is the English accent one of the strongest in your languages as well?
Guest   Wed Dec 19, 2007 8:36 pm GMT
Who XXX care????????
OïL   Wed Dec 19, 2007 9:18 pm GMT
All native English speakers are betrayed at once by:
• their idiosyncratic 'R's,
• a strong tendency to diphtonguize all vowels,
• some difficulty to properly pronounce close front rounded vowels (like German "ü").
I suppose that all of the above doesn't come as a surprise.

"I am assuming that a native English speaker speaking another language sounds the same no matter if they speak UK English or US English or Australian English, but is this true?"
— British and American accents are often easy to differentiale. As a rule of thumb the tones of British prosody use a larger bandwith. American speech sounds relatively flat in comparison, a little bit less stress-timed, with a markedly more voiced content.
Guest   Thu Dec 20, 2007 7:07 pm GMT
French speaking people have generally a very strong and peculiar accent.
Xie   Fri Dec 21, 2007 1:41 am GMT
>>British and American accents are often easy to differentiale. As a rule of thumb the tones of British prosody use a larger bandwith. American speech sounds relatively flat in comparison, a little bit less stress-timed, with a markedly more voiced content.

As a beginner-level listener, I'd agree with everything above, not just things quoted. I don't know how a Scottish accent is like, though. It seems to be remarkably different from the "British" which I think to be rather clear and, yes, more stress-timed.
Guest   Fri Dec 21, 2007 2:21 am GMT
Listening to British people is like listening to Morse code.
furrykef   Fri Dec 21, 2007 10:45 am GMT
<< a strong tendency to diphtonguize all vowels >>

Another tendency is to reduce vowels. For instance, Spanish generally doesn't use the schwa sound, but some speakers, especially beginners, tend to insert it in place of a proper vowel in unstressed positions at times.

- Kef
Guest   Fri Dec 21, 2007 6:16 pm GMT
<<Another tendency is to reduce vowels. For instance, Spanish generally doesn't use the schwa sound, but some speakers, especially beginners, tend to insert it in place of a proper vowel in unstressed positions at times. >>

Yup, noticed that too. On TV the other day there was an American guy speaking French who would stress the last syllable of every word (stress is done at the phrase level, not the word level in French) and would reduce every unstressed vowel. He was difficult to understand.