to find it hilarious that my daughter is ranked lowest in class for her accent by her language tutor?

[WestieMamma]

She is outraged. I can't stop laughing. She's just started training to be an English teacher here in Sweden. Her tutor says she has the worst, least authentic accent in the class, despite being one of the only native English speakers .

The top ranked is the other native speaker. He's a geordie. Apparently the fact that none of the Swedes can understand a word he says doesn't matter, it's the fact that he's consistent .

My mother has been in England SE for forty years and has no accent at all. But as she is from western Norway, the song song isn't as pronounced and more easily overcome!! As for myself.. When I travel to Oslo for work, they know where my accent is from in Norway, but can detect the English behind it.

I speak Norwegian like an immature peasant these days. I need to brush up my "Business Norwegian" as I tend to start using English phrases. - I am from the North.

Speaking also as a TEFL teacher with many years experience......of course non-native speakers hear the difference! Your own example of the Spanish woman disproves your own point!

They might not know what they are hearing, but they will notice the difference, and the more interested among them will ask the reason why some words are pronounced differently by me (Nottinghamshire) and by HRH (not Nottinghamshire )

My post to BurberryQ btw, not Quint!

well that Spanish woman was rather ..advanced ...
yes you are right, they can spot an american accent at lower levels but not much more.

My dad learned German from a little old lady who had emigrated in the days of the Weimar Republic and spoke a rather dated form of Hochdeutsch. His colleagues (Bavaria, 1970s and 1980s) reckoned he talked like some sort of German Bertie Wooster.

It's so hard to learn language without an accent: I have a regional accent in Italian because it's the local accent where I learned.

I thought Geordie originated from a mix of Scandinavians who came to the UK and therefore may be more easily understood by Norweigens than you'd think. I went to Newcastle University and a friend (from there) had a Norweigen mother and that's what she told me.

I love the way MN will immediately get underneath the superficial, and keep digging! A bit like the friend of mine who detected odd stresses in my (supposedly) RP English, four years after I got "home" from a childhood in the (English speaking) "Colonies" (with RP-speaking, also-Colonial mother).

I love the way MN will immediately get underneath the superficial, and keep digging! A bit like the friend of mine who detected odd stresses in my (supposedly) RP English, four years after I got "home" from a childhood in the (English speaking) "Colonies" (with RP-speaking, also-Colonial mother).

I could instantly recognise an american speaking german as the long drawl of certain vowels was so obvious.
However, the germans couldn't as I was often asked if I was american?.

I talk like a german teenager because the last time I was there I was at Uni there. A 1980s german teenager.....

Am I the only Brit who cant tell the difference between the various American accents? I mean, I can hear it, obv, but I have no idea which is which. Apart from deep south.

My accent apparently sounds like the lady they use on the Polish oral tapes when doing English exams, I'd obviously be a shoo-in (Until I confuse people by saying I'm mithered.)

My Spanish however, is a bit...interesting. My first teacher was Spanish, but only taught me for a year, and then my second was from Guyana. I also learned a lot of 'everyday' Spanish from a relative from Venezuela. The first time I spoke to somebody from Madrid, there face was a picture! Apparently, some of the first words/phrases I learned, I still use 'Spanish' pronunciation and then after that it sounds very South American, so all very mixed up. I also flinch when she uses 'coger'

beast I'm American and I can't tell the difference between American accents! I can tell the east coast variations (as that's where I'm from) but everything else gets divided into South/Not South.

My English is fairly RP, I used to teach at a university alongside a Scotswoman and an Irishwoman (start of a bad joke there). Students loved being in my class and prayed it would be me reading the oral comprehension in exams because my accent was 'easier' for them to understand, so they can obviously tell the difference. BUT after a semester with one of the other teachers they had no problem understand them because they'd had consistent exposure. Even Anglophones, let alone the students, had trouble understanding on lecturer because he spoke a mishmash of British/American/South African/Kiwi English. Some phonemes vary hugely between accents which is a problem for consistency.

Just imagine 3 ways to say 'fish and chips' - you get fish and chips/fush un chups/feeyush and cheeyups

Imagine if you say feeyush and chups? Both are accepted variants of the word but it's so inconsistent it would just be so bizarre. So the provenance of the accent isn't as important but consistency is very important.

Similarly if I were to teach French I'd go with a neutral accent rather than broadly Norman with DOM-TOM inflections IYSWIM.

I am a bit at loss as to how the teacher (who is not british and probably has learnt to speak English only in Sweden), can tell that the geordie accent is consistent whereas the OP's dd isn't.

As non native English speaker, I can make out difference between English, American etc... I can hear some difference in accent from one region to the next but can't hear more subtle differences.
How on earth did he manage that?

dreaming, I feel better now!

NomdeClavier, agree- we have a lot of overseas academic staff where I work and it is actually a real barrier to their progression, if they speak English so badly that their students complain. Its usually their accents, not their written or their grammatical English, that is the issue. People cant hear, and if the student is also using English in place of her native language, she will find it even more impossible than a native English speaker.

Geordies use an awful lot of Scandinavian/Norwegian words, or words derived from those lanaguages, we also use similar pronunciation (apparently) so yes, the Geordie is probably far easier to understand. Your daughter shouldn't take it to heart, not everyone can be as awesome as us Geordies!

Get her some Auf Wiedersehn, Pet DVDs as study aids

I was told an Aberdeen accent is the best for learning English.

Anyone know if this is true?

i might have heard that, but have also heard it about Edinburgh and Dublin - I think it is just a matter of clarity.
for example with a south-eastern accent 'stuff' and 'staff' sound remarkably similar to a speaker of another language, whereas in other accents the difference is clearer.

quintessential have you noticed a poster called froken?

My guess would also be that they prefer the Geordie accent because it has strong Scandinavian undertones. On the boat from Newcastle to the continent recently, I spent a good 15 minutes listening to the workmen next to me having a conversation in what I thought was Dutch. I couldn't hear all the words but could hear the intonations and vowel sounds. They were Geordie.

And at a wedding in south west Sweden last year, when the father of the bride started his wedding speech, it sounded nothing more like he was launching into stereotypical broad Yorkshire "Eeeh bah gum"!

Perhaps they just don't like the sound of your daughter's accent OP? I don't like the sound of certain accents in Dutch. Amsterdam "waaaahhhhhter" for "water" etc comes to mind. Hate it.

Aberdeen? Fits at aboot an?

(I heard it was Inverness.)

Oh my, it gets worse. Apparently the teacher told her that her accent is 'estuary English' apart from the northern English input of a short 'a'. So she says bath rather than barth, grass rather than grarse and so on. The teacher said 'estuary English' means she speaks like She's a life long totally obsessed devoted Man City fan :o

I think I love her teacher.