Depending on whether, where and with whom I’ve been speaking English recently, and on how tired I am, I go from “strong northern-Hispanic aksent” to “undefined American.” Often people take my accent for Italian (Italians don’t, but lots of actors with northern-Spanish accents have played Italians on movies or TV, our accent is different from what Americans think of as “a Hispanic accent”).
In Spanish I go from “Ebro valley accent” (¡euuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuu!) to “northern Spain accent - newscaster accent” (buenos días), depending on the setting. The Ebro one is partly put on, the main differences are vocabulary and where are words stressed.
My PhD supervisor was almost the only American in the group, and he would sometimes make fun of our accents. One day an Argentinian finally got pissed off at him and said:
“hey, yes, i do have an aksent, but yunowhat, you haf an aksent too, only yous is American and mine is Argentinian, and excuse me but English is my FOURTH language and you only speak ONE! If I can’t have an aksent in my fourth language when I happen to have one in my first, (stream of Spanish curses)!”
Prof claimed he didn’t have an accent, we all said he did, after some back and forth I heard another American professor outside, talking with a student. So I opened our lab’s door and when this other professor was done, I asked him to come in and referee.
According to the California-born referee, our advisor’s Indiana accent “makes me see seas of corn every time you open your mouth!” He was even able to point out some pronunciation differences between the two of them.
Tomahto, tomayto… it’s all edible.
