AIBU to ask if you should adopt the accent when speaking in another language?

[WeBuiltThisBuffetOnSausageRoll]

Every time I hear a British person speaking a foreign language to a native speaker of that language, it makes me irrationally wince when they make no attempt to use a more native-sounding accent. I was always taught at school and college that you should use an authentic-sounding accent and hearing a Brit speaking fluent 'forrin' but in a very British accent sounds to me as though they aren't really trying.

However, this never seems to happen the other way around - and this doesn't seem weird to me at all. Regardless of how flawless and even idiomatic their English is, it's still always very clear from their accent that they ARE actually French, German, Spanish or whatever. And why wouldn't/shouldn't it be?

The only exception that I can think of is when I heard Morten Harket on the radio a little while ago, and I didn't know that it was him at first, as he sounded so very much like a native Brit - but then he might have lived here for a long time.

A Cockney wouldn't adjust their accent when speaking to a Scot or a Geordie. A woman wouldn't feel the need to lower the pitch of her voice in solidarity when talking to a man. And could it be seen as mockery or even cultural appropriation if they did? What about English people learning Welsh - should they try to emulate the accent too?

Any thoughts? Am I just being Anglocentric and/or patronising? Forriners with an alternative perspective on it particularly welcome!

I think you need to get out more OP.

Thanks for your valuable contribution to the topic, @BWatchWatcher

For future reference, if you see any thread topics that don't interest you or which you believe not to be worthy of your attention, you are allowed to just ignore them and scroll on by and, really, nobody will mind at all.

Thank you to everybody else for your replies - many very interesting thoughts to ponder on.

Luxembourgmama "Morten Harket is danish"

Even I know that's not true and I'm not even a fan. He's Norwegian.

I agree that most people try but it is hard. I think some people can end up adopting a local accent without having lost their 'foreign' accent so they end up with two strong accents as per this clip.

I used to try and go local when I spoke Spanish until I saw this clip.

when speaking Spanish in Spain. I just do my best not to sound like a native english speaker now.

Danish is one language I cannot put my mouth in to gear for. I tried for a while and i can understand a good bit written down and even spoken, but I cannot speak it. It is weird when I can see the similarities between English and Danish but there are too many sounds in Danish that English speakers struggle with.

@ribbonaurora, my good friend lives in spain and her children speak English as their first language (at home) well I guess it's their first, but it was funny listening to my daughter talking her gibberish ''I was like, so low key triggered'' and my friend's daughter the same age couldn't understand because she speaks an English that is frozen in time, 1993 when her parents left Ireland.

I would agree with what others have said about the age at which you learn a language. I was brought up bilingually Welsh and English, I speak English with my mum's English accent and Welsh with my dad's Welsh accent. I learnt French, German and Spanish in my teens but never 100% perfected the accents.

@buttermilkwaffles, that is funny. I never know how much wellie to give my pronounciation of pain au chocolate!

Personally when leadning Portugues i found it easier to say it with my English accent and then once i’d got the hang of it try the way the locals say it.
Having said that i reaslised while attened college to learn Portuguese that i’d picked up bad habbits wjere locals shortened words/had thick accients and i never knew and couldn’t understand what the teacher was telling me

N0bodysM0t Brilliant! Frozen in time is exactly what I was looking for as the undefinable something I noticed about my friend's English!

I'm brilliant at accents ! But it always backfires... I ask a simple question, very briefly sound like a native, don't understand any of the reply (because I'm very basic on the language) and they explain in English for me. Awkward. So I try not to sound too convincing in the first place now.

Interesting thread OP!

How strange to think that! Especially speaking english where we hear and see so many non-native speakers speaking accented english with absolutely no issue.

I speak german and have been told I do so very well by many german friends. I still have a british accent though.

Of course if your pronunciations is so bad you won't be understood, but that is a bit different.

Seriously though, the weather’s not too bad. Go for a walk or something. Life is too short to be criticising others for their accents.

Oh FGS Bwatch - everyone else is having an interesting discussion - take yourself off out for a walk if you're that bothered!

I am not sure now whether I am lazy or just bit of a dumdum for not being able to adapt an accent 😂
Even with musical ears! Or if it just happens.
Some people just won't develop great local accent. Moving around England doesn't help either with different accents every 50 miles.

I do agree on the intonation. That's really important.

I too have never understood the 'cringing' surrounding English people speaking another language with an accent. We (as English speakers) don't cringe when we hear someone speaking English with a foreign accent. This language 'snobbery' puts a lot of people off for fear of being judged. We should celebrate their efforts and praise them for learning a language. One friend of mine spoke very fluently with an accent, the other spoke few words but with a good accent and they always received more compliments. Maybe you can create the illusion that you are better than you are.

I also studied linguistics and read that the muscles were formed by the time the reached 11ish (probably an average) and whilst not impossible, it is extremely difficult to pick up another accent. I suppose it boils down to luck to be able to hear and pronounce the finer differences.

I find anything to do with language and accents fascinating and i dont need a walk.

Well said Gottalovethesummer

My 9 year old DS has a very embarrassing habit of speaking English when we go abroad but with a local accent! So for example he sounds like a cast member of Allo Allo when we go to France and Manuel from Fawlty Towers when we go to Spain.
He doesn’t even know he’s doing it until we point it out

I would say that speakers of other languages who speak using the front of their mouths find it easier to eventually speak fairly accentless English; I am thinking of languages such as Flemish, Dutch, German and Swedish.
Speakers of languages which use the nose and throat more (French, Spanish, Italian) find it much harder.

My ds did this when we lived in another country, he had their version of English that he insisted on using a lot including all of the mispronunciations.

I agree with gottaloveasummer. Also, you do want to avoid looking like a middle class twat bellowing CWASSOHN at some poor bemused French shop keeper in your efforts to sound authentic.

Really interesting. Thank you.
I also know exactly what you mean about “frozen in time”. An English friend of a friend moved over to Tenerife when she was 21, back in 1988, and she married over there and remained there not speaking very much English. Apart from the “hunting” for forgotten basic words in her mother tongue (and I’ve experienced this too occasionally), her English was kind of stilted - she looks at you for a millisecond longer than normal before reacting, some of the phrases she uses are no longer really used “that skirt is choice!” etc. I find it fascinating.

When I lived abroad I used to find it like switching radio station - you have to acclimatise to the new language.

Fascinating than the 10 year old has the occasional tiny nuance giveaway but the 8 year old doesn’t. I wonder also if it takes quite a “linguistic” ear to pick that up.

It's actually a hard one to call, if they speak your language better than you speak theirs sometimes it's just easier as long as you're not being snotty about it.

I speak Italian pretty well. Sometimes I meet Italians here asking for directions etc. I would never dream of responding to them in Italian even though my Italian is usually better than their English. If they were really stuck, I might offer, but it's rarely neccessary.

Where I work we often have walk-in visitors, vendors, job applicants and the like who are immigrants from South America - we live in an area of the USA where there are a lot of Spanish speakers - and if their English isn't that strong I will offer to speak Spanish if they'd prefer to do that.

But asking 'Would you prefer to speak in Spanish?' is very different from simply responding in English to an attempt to speak the local language. The former is polite and helpful, the latter - almost always - rude and arrogant.

And I can kinda understand why in a bank the teller would want to get things across as precisely as possible.

But the poster said her friend spoke French quite well, just with a strong accent. There's no indication that the bank teller's English was way better than his French.

95% of people can't tell I'm not a native speaker in my second language, largely because I've worked on my intonation as well as my accent. The only time it slips is when I'm really knackered. They used to mistake me for a native speaker when I worked in a third language as well.