My Russian friends and other Russians whom I am introduced to have all noticed that, in the past year or so, I've started speaking with a Moscow accent. Now, my gf is from Moscow, and although she hasn't noticed a change in my intonation, HER friends and other people are now telling her that she's losing the slight NY accent she has when she speaks English. This evening, as we were leaving a party in Manhattan (pronounced mn-HAT-n if you live in the area), she said she's now started speaking English with "an Iowa accent" ...

So...here are some questions:

1. What accent do you speak in when you speak your native language? Don't tell me you don't have one, because everyone has an accent, even if it's the "standard" accent for the language in question.
Well, I have two native languages : Italian and Russian. They tell me (I of course dont'remember) that I started speaking both at the same time. So, my Italian has a Milan accent, since here I spent most of my life. I don't speak any dialects howewer, wich in Italy is unusual. As for my Russian : my parents got out of Russia in '43 and never went back since, so I learned a very good, literate Russian but "frozen" at the beginning of the Forthies. So when I finally went to Moscow in '84 nobody local could place my way of speaking. They kept saying that it was "strange", but apparently there was no foreing accent.
2. Do you mispronounce words because of your accent? I'm not talking about simple variant pronunciation. I'm talking about the way people in Boston say the word "career" like "Korea" and "Korea" like "career" (or, for example, the way Billy Joel sings about "Brender & Eddie" in "Scenes from an Italian Restaurant" ).
Not as far that I know.
3. Do you speak any other languages fluently enough to have a distinctive local accent in that language? For example, my Moscow accent, my friend's Parisian accent when he speaks French, etc.
I speak a good French, but with a distinctly Italian accent! And my spoken English is just awful, unfortunately.
4. Are any of your accents "looked down" upon? (For example, Cockney or similar accents in England, Algerian accents in French, Caucasus accents in Russian, Long Island accents in American English, etc., etc., etc. )
Northern accends are o.k. in Italy. A heavvy southern accent could be frown upon.
5. As long as we're speaking about accents, are there any foreign accents which, when you hear your native language spoken in, turn you on/sound pretty ?
In Italian, French and Russian accents are nice.
6. Are there any foreign accents which make your language sound awful?
Sorry to say so, American accented Italian is horrid!

Okay, that's it. 'Twas a short survey.
But interesting!


Melambra

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one immediately thinks of the CMB"
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