I’m Canadian and the weirdest encounter of English speaking accents I ever heard was in the south of Germany. We were in a rental car and just exploring the country and getting hopelessly lost. We were in the south near Nuremberg and we stopped at a gas station. A young man came up to us to operate the pump. He spoke German at first but then realized we were English speaking so he changed languages.
It was the weirdest form of English accent … it was English with a strong German accent mixed with a heavy southern American country twang. He even asked “How y’all doin?” in that weird accent of his.
We asked him about the accent and he said he had learned his English from an American military base nearby that had a lot of people from the American south, especially Texas.
Reminds me of the first time I tried speaking Spanish with some Mexicans. I learned it with a Dominican accent and boy did they look at me weird. I think I accidentally said something about tits. “What the fuck did this white boy just say to us??”
Don’t think too much of it. If you are a German from the north, visiting the south you’ll get a similar experience if they speak whatever they see as German.
A young men came out to operate the pump? Really? In Germany, within the last 30 years? This seems highly unlikely. Those places are almost never manned with more than one person and they don’t leave the counter.
This was about 20 years ago and we drove off the main highway to try to find the smallest road stop we could find. Driving in Germany is a nightmare by the way … but the people were fantastic. This was just before the period of easy to use GPS, we had to keep stopping to ask for directions. People were always generous, especially when we told them we were Canadian. They gave us detailed directions, suggestions and even led us to friends restaurants and bed and breakfasts where we could stay. At one point, one guy showed us directions on a massive national highway map book. When he was done giving us directions, he said keep the book and that we needed it more than him.
I don’t know if the young man had the job of pumping gas at the time … I remember we talked to him about lots of things, including how to operate the pump, how to pay and what it all cost. We so confused with everything that he ended up pumping the gas for us. We felt like children that didn’t know how to find the toilet.
I’ve travelled lots over the years and in many places in the world, we always saw the ugly German international traveller - the loud, ignorant idiot that gives everyone a hard time. We were afraid of driving in Germany because of this but the opposite was complete true. Average German people were some of the most generous, kind and helpful people we ever met. Danke!
It’s a heartwarming story and I love it, don’t want to mess with it at all, but just one question: Are you by chance a beautiful woman?
I’m indigenous Canadian, with brown skin and long dark hair … from 100 feet away, I’m either a beautiful man or an ugly woman.
Beautiful either way. There are no ugly women, except Republicans.
my ass cycling through all known English accents every damn sentence.
Me being slavic and just unable to speak nicely so I have a slavic accent.
maybe I’m weird but that’s the best accent imo
But why? I struggle with the th sound and the soft r. After sleaking english for more than 20 minutes my tongue just starts making knots when trying to speak.
my people have the worst accent, look up any video of mika häkkinen talking…
it’s not impossible to learn proper pronunciation even though it seems impossible at first. I found it to be helpful to find a video of how to pronounce any word that contains the part you can’t pronounce, just keep trying to make a similar sound. it will take some trying, maybe weeks even, but then again there aren’t that many problem spots. usually r, thr, rd…just make sure nobody is around to hear it, they’ll think you’re having a stroke.
when you have a bit of a handle on it, take an episode of some english spoken tv show (something a bit adhd like modern family, brooklyn 99, IASIP), enable subtitles, then listen to their lines carefully, pause and repeat it yourself. try to sound as much as them as you can, maybe repeat a problematic sentence a few times and just move on to the next. by season 5 you will be quite good at it. read some articles aloud and use tv shows to “calibrate” 😂
I mean I can speak perfectly alright and understandably. I just cannot do it for extended periods of time.
pro tip - wing it, don’t try to downgrade th to t or d, listen to how natives talk and mimic them the best you can. the thing that might be making you struggle more than necessary is that there isn’t one th sound in English, there’s two: þ and ð. this = þis. there = ðere. very few second language English teachers ever point that out
same for soft r but tbf, if you just listen to the Scottish accent (or even Scouse), you can get a hang of th and keep the rolling r
i’m saying this as a fellow slav who learnt English by absorbing English media, natives describe my accent as “like an immigrant who came [to the UK] 30 years ago” (i’m 25 lol)
Well I can speak fine and make all those silly noises I just cannot keep it up for long. Max 1 hour of english speaking before I start slurring words. It’s only english I have issues with though. I also speak german and norwegian and never had such issues with those languages.
practice then, gotta build up your silly sounds stamina
I have been sleaking for longer for the last couple years and nothing has improved.
On the flip side, I was born and raised in London yet everyone thinks I’m Australian since I spent many years as an admin to an Australian community online and heard Aussies for 10 hours per day. I still can’t shake a bit of an Aussie accent, yet I’ve never been to the place!
I am an Aussie raised on a considerable about of BBC shows so I have the opposite problem. An Aussie everyone thinks is English.
Haha that’s brilliant. I apparently have an Adelaide accent.
If I don’t stop listening to The Chats soon I might be on the same path
You need to take precautions very quick. Put yourself in the mind of someone who needs to keep himself away from recommendations. Needs privacy. Like, say you’re buying drugs on the Internet, feeling invincible with your VPN… Wait, shit.
*YouChube
Howdy my old chap.
I write color as color, and aluminium as aluminium.
I have an Indian accent from watching Indian YouTubers.
Millie Bobby Brown actually has (or had) this going on due to her filming Stranger Things during formative years. It’s really fascinating to listen to this weird halfway point between the two. You can hear it well here: https://youtu.be/xhjooxtYf9Q?t=50
A particularly interesting point is around ~1:10 where she’s been largely using her American accent, but she uses the word after, but instead of starting the word with the TRAP vowel we would expect, she uses the BATH vowel instead owing to her original British accent. But I think what’s even more interesting is that when she does this, it doesn’t sound like she swapped back to her British accent for a single word - it sounds much more like someone with a general American accent doing an impression of a British person saying the word after!
My wife has an American accent, but she says things like “torch”, “zed”, and “aluminium” because she grew up with that.
Always felt I had an American accent, that’s what most people say I have. Multiple American friends (Californians mostly) have said I sound British. When I tell non Americans this they laugh.
Personal conclusion: most Americans aren’t great at identifying accents.
Realistically you probably have a mix of both and each person can hear the opposite parts of your accent.
Interesting to think of American and British accents as opposites. I actually learned English (my first and only fully fluent language) living in New Zealand until kindergarten age but no one ever says I have a Kiwi or Aussie accent. I like to tell people I have an “international schooled kid” accent.
I can’t say the word “robot” not sounding like Zoidberg.
last year I had a robotics course, and on the first lecture it took me a while to realize what the hell is a rowboat
That’s called a trans-atlantic accent.
Don’t forget the australian accent.
