Re: Accents

On Fri, 19 Aug 2005 16:15:00 GMT, Jim Lawton
<ucan@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

>On Fri, 19 Aug 2005 15:49:50 GMT, "Charles Wm. Dimmick" <cdimmick@xxxxxxxx>
>wrote:
>
>>Frances Kemmish wrote:
>>
>>> the Omrud wrote:
>>>
>>>> That happens to me in France (more in the north, certainly). I get
>>>> mildly irritated by the assumption that because I have an English
>>>> accent, I can't speak the language. Although I have been mistaken for
>>>> Belgian (presumably Flemish speaking) which would prove difficult if I
>>>> were then addressed in Dutch.
>>>>
>>>
>>> My mother, after a couple of decades living in England, had an English
>>> accent when speaking Dutch. It used to irritate her terribly that Dutch
>>> people would answer her in English; one person even commented that they
>>> didn't see many English people who could speak Dutch.
>>
>>I have a friend who, although he was born in the US of A, had
>>parents from Norway who moved to this country as adults. His
>>mother never did learn to speak English, although she understood
>>a few words of it. One day she had a visitor who was from Scotland,
>>and engaged in long conversation with her. After the visitor left,
>>Martin's mother said to him: "That woman speaks Norwegian with
>>the strangest accent". Of course, "that woman" thought she was
>>speaking English.
>
>My father reported that /his/ father, listening to a broadcast from Hilversum in
>the early days of radio said, after a little while : "Why. If they'd nobbut
>speak English, Ah'd understand every word." , the accent seeming so familiar.

On a couple of occasions, once with Dutch speakers and once with
Danish, I've had the odd experience of understanding perfectly what
they were saying as long as I continued not to remember that I didn't
understand their language at all.

--

Katy Jennison

spamtrap: remove the first two letters after the @
.

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