I have several. My native accent is what's called "Modified RP" – very very few people speak true Received Pronunciation anymore.
I believe that. By the way, have you been following what's been happening with the BBC News's English? I read some articles about it but had personally noticed it sounded almost Irish some time before that.

After five years of school in Scotland, though, I have a second accent which sometimes surfaces.
That was a very detailed and interesting explanation.

No matter which of those I'm speaking in, my medial and final /t/s frequently become glottal stops.
That's a south English phenomenon, isn't it?

I share your exasperation for people who claim not to have an accent: unless they are mute, this is untrue, and they should know it.
None of them have been mute...

I really don't understand. What on earth do you mean by "mispronunciation"? The example you gave is precisely "simple variant pronunciation" – I pronounce "Korea" and "career" in exactly the same way (except when in Scotland): [k@rI@]. Why is this a "mispronunciation"? I also pronounce "shore", "Shaw" and "sure" in exactly the same way (again, except when in Scotland). You imply some standard of "correct" pronunciation: what is it? And yet at the same time, you allow for "simple variant pronunciation" as something valid. This question makes nonsense to me – I'd be very glad if you could explain.
The phenomenon of which I speak is present in the Bostonian accent of American English. Standard correct pronunciation of career is /ka-ri:-uhr/ (with uh for schwa) and for Korea it is /ka-ri:-uh/ - in both cases, with stress on the ri: . Bostonians drop the postvocalic final r, so career becomes /ka-ri:-uh/ . HOWEVER, they also add a non-existant final -r to words ending in -a. Thus, Korea becomes /ka-ri:-uhr/ . When someone pronounces word A as the standard word B pronunciation, and word B as the standard word A pronunciation, I consider that the dialect mispronounces words.

Unfortunately, the only language I can speak to a reasonable degree of fluency is French (and it's been going downhill since I left my bilingual Prep School ). I've been told I can fool French people for a little bit; but once the conversation gets going properly, they'll notice I'm not a native. If I have any accent in French other than a mild (or otherwise) English one, it would probably be that of very rich Parisians, as that's what most of the children I learnt French from at the said school were. One thing I know I do which is probably unique to that dialect/sociolect is add a hint of a fricative to the end of words that end in /i/. So, for example, the word "mie" will be pronounced [miç].

My accent recognition in French is not good; I simply haven't been exposed to different accents enough. The best I can do is to distinguish a very obvious Southern accent from what I would consider "normal" French speech, and also (if I'm lucky) a Belgian accent. I also remember having a French Listening practice tape with Amiens accents on it: they sound very strange! I want to hear a proper French-Canadian accent sometime, to see what it sounds like and whether I can understand it.

Only by inverse snobs – when I come back from Cambridge I sound pretty "posh" (although I think I do anyway ).

Scottish (does that count as foreign?); Irish (but not Belfast so much – I'm talking real Irish); Greek (Greek girls are amazing: even when they're so pretty that you know they have to be getting regular sex, they still sound really sweet and innocent!); Generic American (as seen on TV) excluding Southern (sorry Texans – nothing personal! I think I might be being influenced by American prejudices – there's a scary thought!).

Any really thick foreign accent will do that; I don't really think any one is worse than another, if the strength is equivalent.

Thanks – it was interesting, especially reading some of the others' responses.

One other note: when I was in Connecticut on a school trip, someone noticed that my accent wasn't Scottish (it was for most of the trip, due to the company I was in, but I must have gone back to English when talking to this lady) and asked where I was from. It turned out she'd guessed that I was from Kent, and probably from Canterbury, before I told her, but she hadn't said so until I confirmed it. I was quite astonished. She had a son-in-law that was from Canterbury, but still, it's bloody impressive!

Yours, Tim .


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