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.
The nice thing about Russian, though, is that the language is remarkably uniform throughout the country. You really only have three phenomena which can really be easily noticed - okanie, akanie and hekanie. The first is the tendency of people in the Volga basin and parts of Siberia to pronounce unstressed "o" as a stressed "o" , while akanie is the tendency to pronounce short "o" like a long "a" . Hekanie is the tendency of people in South Russia to pronounce the "g" as "h" (like in the Ukraine). Of course, a Moscow accent is characterized by akanie and a tendency to drag out certain syllables...
I speak a good French, but with a distinctly Italian accent! And my spoken English is just awful, unfortunately.
I would think there's nothing wrong with French spoken in an Italian accent...
Northern accends are o.k. in Italy. A heavvy southern accent could be frown upon.
I've heard that. Is it true what Umberto Eco says about Piedmontese accents, that their statements sound like questions and their questions like insults?
Sorry to say so, American accented Italian is horrid!
I'll improve on my Italian through Russian, then!
But interesting!
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