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 .

DD1 was taught French for a year by a native Spaniard who'd been at Glasgow University. That was interesting .

I'm from NE Scotland although never really spoke Doric, so don't have a strong accent, just the scottish vowels and pronouncing r in words, and was taught German by non native speakers. For years any Germans I spoke to thought I was Dutch.

Mixing of accents can cause problems

If someone said an english accent they were going to 'bid' i'd ask them what on. If someone said it with a kiwi accent i'd wish them goodnight

It would be a very strange circumstance when you couldn't work out from the context which of the two the speaker meant.

I'm not a native speaker and was taught English at school and I remember that in my A-level classes me and several school colleagues had rather epic arguments with our English teacher because we were more fluent than her.

The one I remember most vividly was an argument about vocabulary. The teacher insisted 'beneath' meant 'next to' - I kept on saying "BUT WHAT ABOUT 'WIND BENEATH MY WINGS', I DOESN'T MAKE ANY SENSE!!!!" over and over and over. We all gave up in the end.

She graded so strictly that no one ever managed an 'A', either (except me in my A-Level exam smug), which was infuriating to us when we knew that she wasn't exactly up to scratch on her language skills...

I'm a Finn as well, and all the English teachers I knew at school had (clunky) American accents. I wanted an English one (it was in the midst of "Cool Britannia" in the 90's), so had to learn from Monty Python, Ab Fab and the likes. I now live in Scotland with a (mainly accentless, maybe slightly Northern/from all over the place) DH. My accent is a bit of a fluctuating mix. Still, I'm mostly perceived as native, but people have trouble putting me in a "slot". From the regional British accents I can distinguish Welsh and general Scottish one. Everything else is too hard for me to distinguish. E.g. Liverpool vs. Geordie or Glaswegian vs. Aberdeen. I have to say that the only people I have ever had massive trouble understanding have been from around Glasgow and Northern Ireland (funnily enough I had two of them as boyfriends and found the accent really.. ahem.. sexy , as well as slightly incomprehensible).

I am still trying to figure out what the poster upthread meant about the American and British pronunciation of "apple" being different. I say the "a" in "apple" like the "a" in "cat." I am American. Isn't the British pronunciation essentially the same?

When I went on a school exchange to part of Bavaria many years ago, most of the German pupils there spoke English with a fairly pronounced American accent, as they had American tapes rather than RP English tapes. They also did NOT speak "hoch Deutsch" which was a bit of a PITA for us, as we learnt a few "mis"pronunciations from our spoken word examiner's point of view! Still valid German, but we were taught and expected to reproduce "hoch" Deutsch, not Bavarian.

Not so relevant but I thought it was quite amusing - the only girl in our class who had a German mother had the most inflexible English accent - her German accent was execrable! She just still sounded utterly English.

YANBU to find it hilarious, but I can kind of see their point - although it is a bit daft to have rated her the "lowest" ability, given that she is a native speaker.

Scone- most American English accents pronounce the "a" in apple more like a hybrid between an "a" and an "e". It will come over as "airple" (but with no real "r" sound) An English "a" is more flat and open. Cat would be the same.

Scone - it depends on how you pronounce that "a" - for e.g., my DS1 says "Oh man!" with a MASSIVE American inflection on the a - it's almost like sticking a y in front of it = "oh M'yan!" That's overdoing it of course - but that's not as open as the "a" in south east UK English.

I'm married to an Aussie - they can't pronounce the open "a" properly when it's in some words, although can in others. More of an "e" in front of the "a" for the Aussies - it's all to do with mouth shape.

Surely the only issue is if the child speaking English cannot be understood because her accent is so strong, and this is not very common when living abroad, as most of us soften our accents.

Since moving back to Scotland, a lot of people have asked if I am from the Highlands - I think it is because I got used to speaking English abroad, speaking more clearly.

My daughter is now in UK school and has already commented that her teacher pronounces Mademoiselle incorrectly. Not expecting too much from the French lessons then.

Including a "bath" pronounced the northern way, into a sentence that is otherwise pretty neutral as far as accents go, will sound totally ridiculous

That's how I speak (as a native speaker) and I am far from being alone. Can't see it as a problem, really.

The problem with all of this is people ascribing a status value to certain accents, e.g. not wanting to learn anything Northern English because it is perceived, rightly or wrongly, as conveying a lower social status than RP. It's understandable if you are a foreigner learning English that you want to learn neutral business-speak conveying the right social messages, but don't expect native speakers with accents other than RP to show you any sympathy!

Thanks for the replies. I do understand (and hear, now that I think about it) the "airple" example, but that is more a mid-Western pronunciation. I am from the South; we use the a as in cat sound, but drawn out a bit depending on the speaker. Just goes to show, so many variations.

As a foreigner I would love to be able to learn a regional British accent, but mine is very neutral and boring. Whenever I mimic any accent it sounds like I'm taking the piss and somehow I always end up sounding Welsh anyway

I was once told I speak German with a dutch accent.

Which is bizarre as I haven't spoken dutch since I was five and had an Irish accent when I did

My dad almost died laughing

My dad speaks dutch with an upper class accent, when he was going business there he used to dumb down his accent as his clients were put off by it..... He grew up in a block of flats near Amsterdam.

Oh and thanks to all the random languages I spoke up til age 7 I have what has variously been described as an American, mayo, foreign, weird, posh, or English accent. people are always amazed I don't have a cork accent as that's where I grew up.

Accents are funny things!

I found it really irks people here when they can't figure out your accent straight away. It's really funny. I think Brits are very accustomed to making a quick evaluation about the speaker's origins and class, and get annoyed when they are left guessing, so don't know how to respond to them..

Now that ^^ is completely true Toys.

That's just drift, AFAIK, Renter. There's even variations within a locality as relatively small as Gateshead between how certain words are pronounced - eg cold (couled/cald/calt). When I was living in Gateshead, some people rarely even crossed the Tyne - you'd think you needed a passport to do so. Sunderland might as well have been the other side of the world, to some. It's that old tradition of sticking to a small patch which keeps accents intact, even within small localities.

After 10 years of living in this village, I'm no longer the only person who doesn't have a local accent. Must be hell for at least one of the local GPs, whose English isn't great - he asked me once how long I'd lived here because he didn't understand me!

FIL uses a lot of pitmatic when he speaks. DS1 just used to look at him blankly. He simply runs away and hides, now.

Thanks, ouryve!

I'm German living in NI and people always assume I am from South Africa. OH grew up in the South of England and at our wedding his family kept on taking the piss because I sounded more NI than he did.

My BiL learned German while in Switzerland, my mom had a good chortle when he asked her whether you could here that he learned German there because it was just pure Swiss German, there is no way you can't hear it....

I've taught English and German on and off since I was 16 and never had problem with my accent in either language, my English is mostly RP and my German is quite Hochdeutsch, I just struggle with my 'r's as they are very rhotic in German. If you're learning to teach your own language as a foreign language grammar tends to be the bigger issue as there are a lot of grammar rules you don't know because you never had to learn your own language that way.

DH, who went to public school (but only because he got a discount in fees) has different accents for different people/situations: Posh for business and calling utility companies and the like (sadly they tend to take your complaints more seriously like that), normal for every day stuff and Sort-of-Yorkshire for when he visits or calls DBIL. It always amuses me when he changes like that.

Is there actually a neutral sound though? Obviously, being born in Berkshire I like to pretend I have no accent and that it's all the other weirdos, but it's not actually true.

My daughter was born in Berkshire so you'd most likely be sat in the corner with her sharing the dunce's cap ;)

I too am REALLY shocked at Quint's posts.
I am still at a loss as to what people expect.
No to a local accent. because its not consistent? I'm sorry if I'm being a bit dim, but what do you mean, not consistent?

So what are we suggesting?
Queens English?

I taught English abroad.
I studied Russian at Uni. We all spoke Russian differently, because we all had different accents.

I am at a loss as to what to say ( in a certain accent, if you like)

westie No change there then

I just struggle with my 'r's as they are very rhotic in German

Of course, most American accents are rhotic. This posed a problem for me when I first joined Mumsnet, and encountered people using "ar" to phonetically lengthen an "a" sound as in "barth" to indicate what I would render as "bahth." It finally dawned on me that they were non-rhotic speakers.

But, of course, many British accents are rhotic, too.

How strong an accent are you really talking about here?
Jasper Carrott - Brummie?
Steven Gerrard - Liverpool?

Come on.
Most people I know have a non-descript accent.

I have a tiny bit of Kent, a bit of Devon , a bit of = non-descript, most people have no idea where I am from, and assume I come from the Home Counties.

Are you seriously suggesting that people shouldn't use their accents? Should tame them?
Learning Russian in different areas of Russia, was the best thing that ever happened to me. I didn't have a problem with many accents. Apart from the odd few that were very strong and were spoken my men who generally had no teeth !!