I’ve been mistaken as being German by a Parisian bar owner. A Parisian bar owner who knows both English and German. I know my accent is thick, but…
I met a guy in Switzerland who, after hearing me speak, asked if I was English or American. Harumph.
When I was in the French-speaking part of Switzerland, a native Italian speaker stopped me on the street to ask for directions in English. After we’d talked for a moment he said he’d figured I spoke English because I looked like an Englishwoman. He asked if he was right and I just said yes because I didn’t want to have a whole conversation with him, but I’m actually an American. Oddly enough, in a different town later that same day another native Italian speaker stopped me to ask for directions in English. He didn’t make any guesses about my nationality, though.
Elsewhere in Switzerland at least two German-speaking Swiss people mistook me for a Frenchwoman or Francophone Swiss, a mistake no one would have made if I’d been speaking French rather than German. I never studied French and am pretty hopeless when it comes to French pronunciation. But I guess I speak German like a French-speaker, or else they just assumed that anyone in the German-speaking part of Switzerland who didn’t speak German that well was probably a native speaker of French.
There was at least one (and maybe more, I can’t remember) contestants on *Survivor *who were subtitled.
I thought they did that a lot when the quality of the audio recording just wasn’t that great, i.e. two contestants whispering about plans and junk. Had nothing to do with accents, just that the microphones weren’t placed optimally.
I don’t get it. You were (presumably) speaking English, and the guy figured you were from one of two well-known English speaking nations. What’s the “Harumph” about?
Perhaps he took it as a slight against his behavior considering the English and Americans are both reputed to be rowdier abroad than Canadians.
Yes, they do, but there have also been a few contestants with some seriously deep Southern accents who were hard to understand. I don’t think they were always subtitled, but some times, and it wasn’t because of the level of the audio. I can’t remember her name, but one woman I think they did this for was an undertaker from Kentucky (or some other Appalachian state).
It was an amused harumph. I can’t see mistaking a Canadian accent (not that there is one) for British. Nothing to do with behaviour. It gave me a chance to try out the very first German I learned to speak and we all had a good laugh and a drink (not much else to do in the bar car at 1:00 am.)
Sly Stallone is subtitled in this short (one of my favorites): Part I - Your Studio and You - YouTube
I figured that’s where you were going with it, but it’s odd to me that you would think people would know the accent hallmarks of languages other than their own.