Actually, the line is “Why is the Pakistani gentleman called Scotty?”
And Melville.
Scotty’s accent was at least as good as Patty Duke’s.
So are most Russian males’.
I actually met a French person once whose accent was just as English as Picard’s. Being from Europe, when she learned English, she learned it from teachers from England, and apparently she learned it well enough that she didn’t have an accent (i.e., she had the same accent as her teachers).
Right, “Scotty”'s accent was a completely made-up accent, aka the what-the-hell-is-that accent.
Real Scottish accent:
Real Irish accent:
Let’s not forget all the regional variations…
When I was teaching English in Moscow, I knew a Russian teacher who was living with her Scottish boyfriend. Her Scottish accent was impeccable.
Some people have good ears and can pick up a foreign accent in no time at all. Others never seem to acquire one even after 20 years of exposure.
The best time to learn a language is the first four years of life. Kids that age can not only hear every sound in every language, they can mimic them perfectly. People lose that ability as they grow older, which is why those who start learning a foreign language in high school will almost always speak it with an accent.
I feel y’all are picking on Doohan a wee bit too much. 
I think his accent can be explained by the fact Scotty lied about everything. He’d routinely pad his repair estimates, so why couldn’t he be “padding” his accent? Maybe that’s what 23rd century people expect and engineer to sound like.
“I didn’t know he was meant to be Scottish. I thought he was a Pakistani guy that had a stroke.”
Note that his parents were both from Northern Ireland, where many of the people are descended from ancestors who lived in Scotland before 1745, and, I believe, are even today known as the “Ulster Scots”. So there’s probably a substrate of genuine Scottish in the mix.
FWIW, Gordon Ramsay doesn’t have a Scottish accent. He was mostly brought up in the English Midlands and has a standard near-RP accent.
To be fair, Gordon Ramsey doesn’t have a Scottish accent either.
ed: ninja’ed
Craig Ferguson once commented that nobody in Scotland understood Scotty. “It was like an Arab had an epileptic seizure.” James Doohan himself explained that in auditions, he tried various authentic Scottish accents – he could, in fact, do a very good Aberdonian and other regional accents – but the producers were absolutely appalled, especially when he read the part in broad Glaswegian. Fearing that Americans would not understand any genuine Scots accent without subtitles, the mangled accent was an unsatisfactory compromise between reality and the demands of American television.
Richard Dawson had a similar problem when he auditioned for the role of Cpl Peter Newkirk on Hogan’s Heroes. IIRC, he read with a Liverpudlian accent (because of the popularity of the Beatles at the time, I guess), but the producers insisted he go “Cockney.”
Interesting. He refers to himself as a Scotsman so much that I assumed that he was born and raised there.
So he’s not a True Scotsman?
He was born there, to Scottish parents, so he’s officially Scottish. But grew up in England and has a totally mainstream, non-regionally-identifiable English accent.
You’re sure she didn’t say “no Tribble at all”?
Yup. Scotty doesn’t sound much like Gordon Ramsey because he’s not trying to sound English.
TBH I didn’t find Scotty’s accent bad at all. I’m not Scottish, but I partially grew up with my Scottish Grandad (in London) and heard more Scottish accents than the average. Scotty sounded like a posh Scottish person who’d maybe moved around a bit, and I would definitely never have mixed it up with any Irish accents, even Belfast. He was pretty consistent with the way he said things, which helped.
For the time, in comparison to other fake Scottish accents, it was excellent, and is still better than almost much every fake Scottish or (especially) Irish accent now.
FWIW I just reheard Stewart being interviewed after S1 of Picard was released and his answer was that they had him doing a French accent in audition, quickly deciding that it would be a very bad idea. He offered no canonic answer. OTOH his personal history melds some. He describes his speaking in a very broad dialect as a child, learning to speak in RP for theater, code switching between worlds (and getting teased by friends when he did some RP by accident when with them).
Then again I don’t think we ever hear Picard code switch.