What's sexier than an accent? I'll admit, I find Colin Farrell's Irish accent pretty attractive. Movies play up the role of the sexy foreign exchange student with a cute Swedish or sexy Russian accent. We love people's accents who speak Spanish -- so why don't people from other countries appreciate the American accent? The American accent gets no respect as an actual accent. If a French person comes here and speaks English, they have a French accent, but if we go to France and speak French without a perfect accent, we don't have an American accent, we're just saying it wrong.
I've heard several times from people who studied abroad and did internships in England that an American accent is actually a detriment to getting a job there. Why is the American accent not treated as an accent? Is it a reflection on international opinion of Americans, or do people from other countries just think Americans are pronouncing their language "incorrectly" because of our reputation of not knowing any other languages? Of course, all learners of other languages should try to speak the foreign language like native speakers do. I had a teacher from Ghana who could speak in an American accent so that we could understand him, and proved this to us on a few occasions, but said he preferred his Ghanaian accent that was unintelligible to most of the class. So while we should try to appropriate the pronunciation of the language we're learning, even if the American accent is not considered attractive to speakers of other languages, it should at least be considered as a legitimate accent instead of a constant mispronunciation of words.
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My friend went to England and said that she encountered a group of guys who thought that her accent was sexy...
--Mike
Haha excellent!
--Erika
Americans don't have a single accent any more than the Germans have a single accent. It's just that when you go to another country, all the accents sound similar and you can't distinguish them very well.
I personally speak every language except for English with a slight French accent, because I was taught to speak French by a lady who is part French.
~C
Visit my blog.
There are other problems with the way Americans speak compared to other English-speakers, though. For instance, we're kind of lazy and we drawl. We also have terrible grammar. I've heard young English children speak, and their words were so clear and articulated that I could mistake the kids for being ten years older than they were. Perhaps it's not our accent that makes the British wary, but rather everything that comes with the accent.
As with any culture, it depends on the crowd. There are plenty of segments of British society where the accent is almost unintelligible as English (watch Snatch and you'll understand); as there are plenty of segments of American society in which people speak very proper (prep schools).
--Mike