According to an item (Talk of the Town) in the New Yorker I got today, those spies alibied they accents by claiming to be Belgian, French Canadians, Scandinavians, whatever. This makes no sense to me. I can tell a Russian accent after 30 seconds or less of conversation. If a person with an obvious Russian accent claimed to be Belgian, say, I would get extremely suspicious. Extremely. But there must be hundreds of thousands of Russians in the US and someone had a Russian accent and claimed to be Russian, I wouldn’t give it a second thought.
Is there any rational explanation for this?
(Mods, if you think this belongs in another forum, feel free.)
Well, everybody believed the Coneheads when they said they were from France, didn’t they?
: )
There used to be a Country band from Russia (Bering Strait) whose lead singer took lessons to develop a Southern US accent and she was quite good at it.
It’s also much easier to eliminate just the more obvious traits that are dead giveaway of a particular foreign accent, than to acquire a completely flawless accent that can fool a native speaker. Most Americans will say I sound like I’m “not from here”, but my accent doesn’t sound anything like a stereotypical Hong Kong accent.
Though very American, apparently I speak German with a Bavarian accent, I’ve been told by several Germans and Austrians. Apparently I picked this up from a couple of my High School German teachers, who studied in Munich. (we just had one German teacher but she took a year off, and her replacement)
Also, so few Americans speak German, that German’s assume none do, so that I am American is their last guess.