# Thick American accents and foreign language **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [July 11, 2012, 5:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/thick-american-accents-and-foreign-language/627910 "2012-07-11T17:23:11Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 19\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![GameHat](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/ed655f/32.png) [@GameHat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GameHat)\ **Post date:** [July 12, 2012, 2:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/thick-american-accents-and-foreign-language/627910/21 "2012-07-12T02:09:53Z")
Shit, I’m American, but a northern midwest guy. I’ve had a few visits to the deep south where though everyone was speaking American English, I had real trouble understanding the language because of the accent. /And I’ve been told we Yankees sound weird to them, too ---
**Author:** ![KneadToKnow](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kneadtoknow/32/3999_2.png) [@KneadToKnow](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/KneadToKnow)\ **Post date:** [July 12, 2012, 4:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/thick-american-accents-and-foreign-language/627910/22 "2012-07-12T04:17:00Z")
> [@njtt](#): > > I can assure you that I am nothing like Apu I assumed that from the fact that you are not a cartoon. I shared with you an anecdote about a completely random happenstance; that’s all. Lighten up, Frances. ---
**Author:** ![hibernicus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/hibernicus/32/2802_2.png) [@hibernicus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/hibernicus)\ **Post date:** [July 12, 2012, 7:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/thick-american-accents-and-foreign-language/627910/23 "2012-07-12T07:05:32Z")
> [@xnylder](#): > > I’ve been told I speak Japanese with a French accent. (English is my first language, Quebec French my second, Japanese a distant third.) For example, I pronounce “j” as “dj” in words like “ha(d)jimemashite” (“nice to meet you”). I’ve been told it’s cute and pleasant, though my hosts might have just been being polite. 🙂 But that _is_ how it’s pronounced (more or less). Your example is confusing, because interference from French would make more sense if you pronounced it without the d sound - “ha **zh** imemashite”. On the OP, I would be surprised if, in general, the variety of English you speak makes any difference to your intelligibility when speaking a foreign language. The differences between regional accents sound big and important to us as native speakers, but to non-native speakers they are almost imperceptible. For example, as a native English speaker I can’t tell the difference between a Colombian and a Spaniard speaking English. I can, however, easily tell the difference between an American speaking Japanese and an English person speaking Japanese (although a Japanese person usually could not - to them it just sounds like a generic “English” foreign accent). ---
**Author:** ![clairobscur](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/839c29/32.png) [@clairobscur](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/clairobscur)\ **Post date:** [July 12, 2012, 9:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/thick-american-accents-and-foreign-language/627910/24 "2012-07-12T09:23:11Z")
Something related I often wondered about : is the accent of English Canadians (when they speak English) similar to the accent of French Canadians (when they speak French)? I’m not sure who could answer that. Probably someone very fluent in both British English and France French. ---
**Author:** ![Nava](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/da6949/32.png) [@Nava](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nava)\ **Post date:** [July 12, 2012, 10:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/thick-american-accents-and-foreign-language/627910/25 "2012-07-12T10:12:40Z")
> [@Onomatopoeia](#): > > I speak Spanish and Japanese. The answer to your question may be that it depends on the language. > > For example, I know a few people with very pronounced Southern American accents who, when they attempt to speak Spanish, do so with their Southern American accent. It is very disconcerting. On the other hand, I know a guy with a heavy Southern accent when he speaks English, but who speaks Japanese beautifully. By Southern American, I gather that you mean from the Southern US, rather than from South America? Because the way you phrased it was disconcerting to say the least… ---
**Author:** ![Onomatopoeia](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/onomatopoeia/32/4145_2.png) [@Onomatopoeia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Onomatopoeia)\ **Post date:** [July 12, 2012, 10:30am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/thick-american-accents-and-foreign-language/627910/26 "2012-07-12T10:30:42Z")
> [@Nava](#): > > By Southern American, I gather that you mean from the Southern US, rather than from South America? Yes, I meant southern US. > [@Nava](#): > > Because the way you phrased it was \*\*disconcerting \*\*to say the least… You misspelled ‘confusing’. 🙂 Bolding mine. ---
**Author:** ![Onomatopoeia](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/onomatopoeia/32/4145_2.png) [@Onomatopoeia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Onomatopoeia)\ **Post date:** [July 12, 2012, 10:35am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/thick-american-accents-and-foreign-language/627910/27 "2012-07-12T10:35:47Z")
> [@xnylder](#): > > I’ve been told I speak Japanese with a French accent. (English is my first language, Quebec French my second, Japanese a distant third.) For example, I pronounce “j” as “dj” in words like “ha(d)jimemashite” (“nice to meet you”). I’ve been told it’s cute and pleasant, though my hosts might have just been being polite. 🙂 > [@hibernicus](#): > > But that _is_ how it’s pronounced (more or less). Your example is confusing, because interference from French would make more sense if you pronounced it without the d sound - “ha **zh** imemashite”. I was going to post the same thing, but you beat me too it. 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![Nava](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/da6949/32.png) [@Nava](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nava)\ **Post date:** [July 12, 2012, 10:55am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/thick-american-accents-and-foreign-language/627910/28 "2012-07-12T10:55:06Z")
> [@Onomatopoeia](#): > > Yes, I meant southern US.You misspelled ‘confusing’. 🙂 Bolding mine. … but [disconcerting](http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/disconcert) is correct… I have big words and I’m not afraid to use them, damnit! 😛 ---
**Author:** ![hibernicus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/hibernicus/32/2802_2.png) [@hibernicus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/hibernicus)\ **Post date:** [July 12, 2012, 12:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/thick-american-accents-and-foreign-language/627910/29 "2012-07-12T12:32:55Z")
> [@clairobscur](#): > > Something related I often wondered about : is the accent of English Canadians (when they speak English) similar to the accent of French Canadians (when they speak French)? Yes, in my subjective opinion. I’ve remarked before (including in this forum) that Quebec French vowels seem to differ from France French vowels in a way that is similar to how American vowels differ from British. The example I gave before is that the word _vin_ is pronounced with a similar vowel to the English word “van” on both continents, even though that vowel differs between North America and Europe. I think the pronunciation of _même_ is another example. ---
**Author:** ![Kevbo](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/e47774/32.png) [@Kevbo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kevbo)\ **Post date:** [July 13, 2012, 10:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/thick-american-accents-and-foreign-language/627910/30 "2012-07-13T22:36:55Z")
One semester in college I shared a German class with a kid from Georgia. You don’t know funny sounding until you have heard Hochdeutsch spoken with a thick southern drawl. Everytime that guy spoke people were pissing themselves and staring holes in the floor not to laugh out loud. By the end of the semester we could all do it. I’ll be happy to demonstrate if we ever meet at a Dopefest. ---
**Author:** ![Raguleader](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/258eb7/32.png) [@Raguleader](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Raguleader)\ **Post date:** [July 14, 2012, 12:58am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/thick-american-accents-and-foreign-language/627910/31 "2012-07-14T00:58:20Z")
I spent a year studying Mandarin Chinese. The teachers (native speakers from PRC and Taiwan) tended to be of the opinion that Americans could be very difficult to understand in Chinese, even if they were fluent speakers, due to the fact that Mandarin relies on tones far more heavily than English does. Basically, you have a given syllable, let’s say “Ting”. Depending on which tone you use, or how you emphasize the different parts of that syllable, there are five different ways you can say that one syllable. As I recall, “Soup” “Candy” and “Sour” can all be said with that same sound, just emphasized differently. That’s not to say that there still aren’t many homophones that share the same tones and have entirely different meanings, but making bisyllabic words, or just talking a bit longer to get context, does a lot to reduce confusion. That all said, English does not typically use tones this way. English will use it in a more general way to give indication of things like asking a question, or being sarcastic or angry or happy. And I’m told that many Americans who speak Chinese tend to use their tones that way if they are not being mindful, making them a good bit trickier to understand at times. I guess it’d be like if a foreigner mumbled all he time when speaking English. ---
**Author:** ![Nava](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/da6949/32.png) [@Nava](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nava)\ **Post date:** [July 14, 2012, 3:33am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/thick-american-accents-and-foreign-language/627910/32 "2012-07-14T03:33:17Z")
Not American and I didn’t met the culprit in person. A friend from Seville told us about a coworker he had. Seseo accent, so the syllables ce ci and anything spelled with a z got pronounced with S; final -s usually got dropped. And then speaking English, the same dude couldn’t pronounce an S to thafe hi’ life, it wa’ (almotht) alwayth a th plu’ o’ course he thtill dropped final Ss and other thomewhat-thimilar letter’… “OK, how the fuck come you can’t pronounce Z in Spanish and can’t pronounce S in English? One or the other damnit!” ---
**Author:** ![Onomatopoeia](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/onomatopoeia/32/4145_2.png) [@Onomatopoeia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Onomatopoeia)\ **Post date:** [July 14, 2012, 10:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/thick-american-accents-and-foreign-language/627910/33 "2012-07-14T10:23:10Z")
> [@Nava](#): > > Not American and I didn’t met the culprit in person. > > A friend from Seville told us about a coworker he had. Seseo accent, so the syllables ce ci and anything spelled with a z got pronounced with S; final -s usually got dropped. > > And then speaking English, the same dude couldn’t pronounce an S to thafe hi’ life, it wa’ (almotht) alwayth a th plu’ o’ course he thtill dropped final Ss and other thomewhat-thimilar letter’… “OK, how the fuck come you can’t pronounce Z in Spanish and can’t pronounce S in English? One or the other damnit!” Heheh. **Nava** , you’re on fire in this thread! I’ll have some of what you had for breakfast yesterday, please. 😉 ---
**Author:** ![JKellyMap](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jkellymap/32/15880_2.png) [@JKellyMap](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JKellyMap)\ **Post date:** [July 14, 2012, 11:49am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/thick-american-accents-and-foreign-language/627910/34 "2012-07-14T11:49:37Z")
Getting back to the OP: In this thread, there have been several amusing anecdotes where a native Engkish speaker’s regional accent (or just personal idiolect) has caused them to speak a second language they are learning with an amusing form of interference. However, I still posit that the people around these folks who find this amusing, do so because: 1. They are familiar with how the second language should be spoken (perhaps fluent in it), and so find interference possibly amusing, just as they would in any language learner; 2. They are also familiar with the REGIONAL ACCENT with which the language learner speaks his native tongue. For the amused observer, this regional accent happens to NOT be the default regional accent by which they are familiar with that language. The observer might even be somewhat amused when he just hears someone speaking native English in that regional accent. So, when they hear the language learner imposing interference with a regional accent on the second language, this observer is doubly amused. But NONE of this means that some regional accents (in a native language) make it more difficult to learn or perfect a second language, in general. (We’ve noted that sometimes there are a few sounds here and there in common between certain regional accents and certain second languages, so that might have a minor effect sometimes). In other words, the extra trouble that some people have in reducing interference when they learn a second language is, by and large, a personal issue. It has to do with that person (how good an ear they have for sound subtleties, how much effort they’re putting into learning, whether they have patient friends who speak the new language, etc.). It has little to do with what regional accent they might happen to have in their native language – although it might SEEM lime this is an issue to the amused observers. What the observers fail to understand is that the learner would have expressed the same level of interference no matter what – it’s just that it wouldn’t have been so amusing, because it would have been expressed using sounds that the observer happens to process as the “default” one’s for that language (English, in this case). ---
**Author:** ![Lasciel](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/e79b87/32.png) [@Lasciel](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lasciel)\ **Post date:** [July 14, 2012, 3:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/thick-american-accents-and-foreign-language/627910/35 "2012-07-14T15:06:29Z")
**JKelly** , I like your thoughts above, but I would add another idea about what might limit people’s acquisition of a new language in an “un-accented” manner, building off of your comment about the person’s individual ability to perceive and reproduce sounds. While reading, I had the thought that about the person learning the new language - let’s go with an American learning Japanese, because it’s one that I’m working on myself. What if the American in question had a very strong regional accent, and wasn’t familiar with (or wasn’t able to reproduce correctly) any other variations on their own language? (And yes, I know several people who fit this description quite well.) I would think that this limitation to one particular spoken variation of their own language would be very likely to limit their proper acquisition of all of the correct workings of the second language, both because they would be working from a more limited original “vocabulary” of sounds and rhythms and tones, as well as a possible indication of an underlying disability in perceiving or reproducing sounds as they are, rather than as they “should” be to the person’s preconceptions, which I think is what you were focusing on. I do think however, that the first reason alone, even if the second reason isn’t supported (for example in a case where the person was simply unfamiliar with other accents of their original language before attempting to learn a second one), that restriction to the original accent would be enough of a liability to someone learning a language that it could impact perfection of that new language above and beyond the limits of someone speaking in a different accent of the first language, or someone who had mastered several different accents of their first language. Now I want to know which (if any) English accents work best for correctly learning different languages, or whether it’s simply better to master all the variants of your own language to give you the best possible odds of successfully attempting another. ---
**Author:** ![John\_Mace](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/john_mace/32/185_2.png) [@John\_Mace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/John_Mace)\ **Post date:** [July 14, 2012, 3:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/thick-american-accents-and-foreign-language/627910/36 "2012-07-14T15:37:22Z")
> [@clairobscur](#): > > Something related I often wondered about : is the accent of English Canadians (when they speak English) similar to the accent of French Canadians (when they speak French)? I’m not fluent in French, but I can answer that: No. Most Canadian English is barely discernible to Americans until they say something like “about”, which to us sounds like “a-boot”. French Canadian sounds, to me, completely different from Parisian French. I can tell immediately if I’m hearing a French Canadian speak French. Hard to describe the difference, but it’s actually easier for me to understand Canadian French than Parisian French. Maybe they don’t slur the sounds together so much…? ---
**Author:** ![JKellyMap](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jkellymap/32/15880_2.png) [@JKellyMap](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JKellyMap)\ **Post date:** [July 14, 2012, 3:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/thick-american-accents-and-foreign-language/627910/37 "2012-07-14T15:44:39Z")
Lasciel– I agree totally! One of the factors that makes someone more likely to acquire another language relatively deeply and easily, is their previous experience in trying to imitate (consciously or otherwise) sounds which are not present in their own speech – and by “not present in their own speech”, I mean EITHER “present in a different regional accent”, OR “present in some foreign language”, OR BOTH. The only change I would make in your post is with the phrase “strong regional accent”. All regional accents are equally “strong” (or, to put it another way, the word “strong” doesn’t mean anything in this context.) Perhaps you meant “compared to other regional accents, especially distinct from the one which many perceive as the current ‘default’ regional accent.”. Or, to fit in with the thrust of the rest of your post, it seems “strong” here means “that person is so closely tied to their regional accent that they have difficulty learning sounds outside of it, whether those sounds are in a different accent of the same language, or in a different language altogether.” ---
**Author:** ![Lasciel](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/e79b87/32.png) [@Lasciel](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lasciel)\ **Post date:** [July 14, 2012, 4:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/thick-american-accents-and-foreign-language/627910/38 "2012-07-14T16:30:34Z")
I was thinking more in line with the first definition, although I agree with you that the second makes more sense in the scope of the discussion, and now that you suggested it, I like it better. ---
**Author:** ![rivulus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/839c29/32.png) [@rivulus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/rivulus)\ **Post date:** [July 15, 2012, 12:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/thick-american-accents-and-foreign-language/627910/39 "2012-07-15T00:53:48Z")
I dated a guy once whose first language was Mandarin Chinese, but who immigrated to Texas when he was young-ish (during adolescence, I think). Then he went on a mission to somewhere in Central America. So… he basically spoke Spanish with a mix of Chinese accent and Texan drawl. Apparently, the effect-- to the native Spanish speakers – was pretty hilarious. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/thick-american-accents-and-foreign-language/627910.md?page=1)