Foreign Accents

Arnold SchwazeneggerAs much as I hate to admit it, ‘foreign’ accents don’t pique my interest the way ‘native’ accents do.  That’s not to say I don’t love foreign languages.  I’m fascinated by the grammatic intricacy of Navajo and the differences between dialects of Spanish. But I find language most interesting in the way that it intersects with a person’s identity, and it seems few people want to be identified with foreign accents.  Usually quite the opposite.

The most remarkable thing about foreign accents, in my mind, is the question of why some L2 (second language) speakers have such ‘strong’ accents, while others sound nearly like natives.  While some details of a speakers’ upbringing can provide answers to this question, it remains somewhat mysterious as to why pronunciation vexes some more than others.

Of course, certain languages simply have phonologies ‘closer’ to English than others.  Hence someone from northern Germany may be more likely to speak ‘like a native’ than someone from Spain.  After all, Low Saxon languages have vowel inventories similar to that of English, while Castilian Spanish‘s five vowel system ostensibly makes it difficult to adjust to the tense-lax distinctions important to English pronunciation.

Even within languages, some dialects are more likely to be ‘compatible’ with English. Quebec French‘s vowel system is closer to English than Parisian French’s:  like English, Quebecois distinguish between tense and lax vowels and use a rich variety of diphthongs. I would argue, then, that Quebecois English speakers more easily grasp ‘native-sounding’ pronunciation than their French counterparts.

How a foreign speaker pronounces things, of course, can be misleading.  Some dialects of Chinese have vowel systems strikingly similar to English*, yet the languages have little in common otherwise.  I once met a young Taiwanese man who spoke English with flawless pronunciation, but whose grasp of the language’s syntax was quite poor.

But the phonological structure of someone’s native language doesn’t entirely predict how well they speak English.  Possibly the best non-native English speaker I ever encountered was from Croatia, where the local language offers few tools with which to master English vowels.  Conversely, while one may assume that Scandinavians pick up English without a hitch, I’ve met Norwegians and Swedes who speak with quite marked foreign accents.

But why do speakers of seemingly similar backgrounds vary in their ability pick up English pronunciation?  To cite a celebrity example, why does Austrian actor Christoph Waltz have such a mild accent where Arnold Schwarzenegger (a resident of the US for decades) has such a strong one?  The specific localities where they grew up?  Their socio-economic backgrounds?  Answers to such a question vary by class, upbringing, schooling, age, self-identity and parentage.  Which is to say there are no easy answers at all.

*Really, it’s a matter of numbers.  Because English has an unusually large inventory, you might argue that any language with more than 10 monopthongal vowels is ‘similar’ to English.

Share

About Ben

Ben T. Smith launched his dialect fascination while working in theatre. He has worked as an actor, playwright, director, critic and dialect coach. Other passions include linguistics, urban development, philosophy and film.
This entry was posted in Miscellaneous Accents and Dialects and tagged , , . Bookmark the permalink.

40 Responses to Foreign Accents

  1. Ashley says:

    The best non-native speakers I’ve ever encountered were from the Nordic countries. Finns were actually some of the best I’ve ever heard, even though their language isn’t even Indo-European. I heard one Finnish guy who sounded almost like he was from Texas. I think it just has to do with how early they begin learning English. I have read studies on this.

  2. Ashley says:

    Although I don’t know if I would include Denmark. The Danish people I’ve heard had pretty strong accents. I think that just has to do with the crazy phonology of Danish though 🙂

    • Danny Ryan says:

      Yes, I had a teacher in my Uni-course who was Danish but had lived in Vienna for over 20 years. He spoke German using many Viennese dialect forms, but under all that he still retained a strongish Danish accent. He sounded hilarious, and a little drunk, even though his German was excellent.

  3. ella says:

    I find it interesting that, as an American, you would classify Navajo as a ‘foreign’ language.

    • trawicks says:

      I don’t feel really connect the concept with a ‘foreign country’ with that of a ‘foreign language.’ I see the term ‘foreign’ as applying to a language unrelated to the one under discussion. Regardless, the US has no federally-recognized official language, so all languages spoken here might be described as foreign to one another.

  4. Charles Sullivan says:

    As an undergraduate in college I was told by my professors that my Spanish accent was so good that I could pass for a native (although curiously, they were never quite sure what Latin American country my Spanish accent would be native to).

    So I began to wonder why it was so easy for me to zero in on Spanish pronunciation. For the first 4-5 years of my life in northern New Jersey my daycare (while my parents were at work) involved staying at a neighboring Cuban grandma’s home along with her granddaughter who was about my age. The Cuban grandmother spoke very little English, although her daughter, the mother of the granddaughter, spoke it just fine.

    Even though I really have no or little recollection of this time, I wonder if the Spanish language in that household shaped my ability to easily use Spanish phonemes.

  5. Dw says:

    It’s obvious, but should be said: some people really want to sound like a native speaker; others are content merely to be understood, while a few actively want to sound foreign.

    In the case of Schwarzenegger, the Austrian accent is as much part of his acting persona
    as Sean Connery’s Scottish accent is of his.

    • Jimmy says:

      I really want to sound like a native speaker of Spanish (so I would be in the first group), but I have to say, it does seem to get more difficult the older you get. I’m only 21 and when I try to sound more like a native in Spanish class I have to try very hard and concentrate so much that I don’t even know what I’m reading if I’m reading a passage from a book. If I were actually trying to speak the language at a normal pace I would probably have a very strong accent.

      • Dw says:

        Yeah: I started learning French in middle school, and have been told that I could pass for a native, at least in terms of accent.

        I started learning Hindi in my mid-twenties, and I’m a long way from a native accent, even though I’m very motivated and I’ve been able to bring my knowledge of phonetics to bear on Hindi in a way I didn’t with French.

        Desire to sound like a native is neither necessary nor sufficient to be successful, but it must be relevant.

  6. Josh McNeill says:

    My good friend, who has lived in Mexico all her life up until 3 years ago, can pronounce English so well that everyone I’ve ever seen her meet does the, “You’re Mexican?!”, thing to her, including myself. She learned English in school, starting at the age of 5. Certainly age isn’t everything but anecdotal evidence like this seems right in line with the critical period for normal language development. It’s hard for me to imagine that this wouldn’t be one of the largest contributing factors.

    Perhaps it has a lot to do with how focused someone is on pronunciation when picking up a second language also. Bad habits are possibly harder to break than good habits are to learn. I’m being highly speculative though; I guess I should search for some studies done along these lines.

  7. gaelsano says:

    The biggest problem I think, anecdotally of course, is the inability to even recognize a problem in pronunciation on the part of L2 speakers. Though I may not distinguish between Korean 으 and 어 consistently in casual speech, I am aware of the distinction and make it as much as I can.

    On the other hand, there are Koreans who teach English who cannot even HEAR a difference between and , nor the difference between and (in any accent, regardless of British downward chain shift or Australian-NZ upward chain shift or General American), nor even the difference between and . There are Japanese I’ve met who have raised American families in America and yet cannot even pronounce a single diphthong–for whom is [noU.i:.zi:] and is [bA:.i:.t@], each as three syllables with no vowel coloration.

    And there are people learning Korean who can’t distinguish between 어 and 오 in any situation, emphasized or not. It really baffles me. The 오 is a rounded O like in Goat for an American or Canadian but without the quick u sound. It’s [o] not [oU]. The 어 is either a schwa sound like the in , or the in old RP [kVt], or the in [klO:]. Yet they are oblivious to any distinction. This can’t be chalked to phonotactics, because the phenomenon happens after a /w/ glide and also in isolation. Oddly enough, this happens almost exclusively with cot-caught merged people. I have distinguish cot-caught 90% of the time, but when I first started learning Korean I was probably 50% cot-caught merged (I try to speak more standard when I teach English).

    I don’t understand the science behind it, but sometimes people latch onto these perceptions that phoneme 1 = phoneme 2 and have it reinforced by peers and are not corrected by teachers and persist in it until their brains and ears change reality to match perceptions. Korean only has 7 vowels /a/ /e/ /i/ /o/ /u/ /ɨ/ /ə/ and 3 glides /j/ /w/ and the rare /ɰ/ (only in /ɰi/).

    I think the problem might be that Californians and Canadians tend to merge as many things as they can. The cot-caught merger does not explain the 어 오 confusion, since a cot-caught merger would map /ə ~ ɔ/ to /ɑ: ~ ɒ/….never /o ~ oʊ/.

    These Californians and Canadians do not exhibit any new mergers. Nothing on the scale of creating the STRUT-but-dull class out of the FOOT-put-pull class. Nothing minor like the can-can split (noun-aux.verb).

    I think that some speakers tend to prefer a low frequency of phonemes and use context or something else to get by. I’m really baffled. I have struggled with many non-rhotic speakers for example. I hear “I saw some storks” as “I saw some (corn) stalks,” and not as “I saw some birds called storks.”

    As someone who only makes the wales-whales and horse-hoarse mergers (and occasionally poor-pour and cot-caught and father-bother) I ask this question:
    How do native speakers of English even function when they have as many mergers as, say, a Londoner? (tire=tower=tar, spar=spa, court=caught, horse=hoarse, wales=whales, heel=hill [hɪo], owl=ow, pool=poo, three=free, there=dare)

    The analogs of Californians and Londoners in foreign-language-speaking areas might exhibit a similar psychology and simply expect context or inflection or ?? to make the meaning clear.

  8. gaelsano says:

    The biggest problem I think, anecdotally of course, is the inability to even recognize a problem in pronunciation on the part of L2 speakers. Though I may not distinguish between Korean 으 and 어 consistently in casual speech, I am aware of the distinction and make it as much as I can.

    On the other hand, there are Koreans who teach English who cannot even HEAR a difference between “cheese” and “chee-jer”, nor the difference between “bad” and “bed” (in any accent, regardless of British downward chain shift or Australian-NZ upward chain shift or General American), nor even the difference between “food” and “poo’d”. There are Japanese I’ve met who have raised American families in America and yet cannot even pronounce a single diphthong–for whom “noisy” is [noʊ.i:.zi:] and “bite” is [ba:.i:.tə], each as three syllables with no vowel coloration.

    And there are people learning Korean who can’t distinguish between 어 and 오 in any situation, emphasized or not. It really baffles me. The 오 is a rounded O like in Goat for an American or Canadian but without the quick u sound. It’s [o] not [oʊ]. The 어 is either a schwa sound like the “o” in “lemon” [lemən], or the “u” in old RP “cut” [kʌt], or the “aw” in “claw” [klɔ:]. Yet they are oblivious to any distinction. This can’t be chalked to phonotactics, because the phenomenon happens after a /w/ glide and also in isolation. Oddly enough, this happens almost exclusively with cot-caught merged people. I have distinguish cot-caught 90% of the time, but when I first started learning Korean I was probably 50% cot-caught merged (I try to speak more standard when I teach English).

    I don’t understand the science behind it, but sometimes people latch onto these perceptions that phoneme 1 = phoneme 2 and have it reinforced by peers and are not corrected by teachers and persist in it until their brains and ears change reality to match perceptions. Korean only has 7 vowels /a/ /e/ /i/ /o/ /u/ /ɨ/ /ə/ and 3 glides /j/ /w/ and the rare /ɰ/ (only in /ɰi/).

    I think the problem might be that Californians and Canadians tend to merge as many things as they can. The cot-caught merger does not explain the 어 오 confusion, since a cot-caught merger would map /ə ~ ɔ/ to /ɑ: ~ ɒ/….never /o ~ oʊ/.

    These Californians and Canadians do not exhibit any new mergers. Nothing on the scale of creating the STRUT-but-dull class out of the FOOT-put-pull class. Nothing minor like the can-can split (noun-aux.verb).

    I think that some speakers tend to prefer a low frequency of phonemes and use context or something else to get by. I’m really baffled. I have struggled with many non-rhotic speakers for example. I hear “I saw some storks” as “I saw some (corn) stalks,” and not as “I saw some birds called storks.”

    As someone who only makes the wales-whales and horse-hoarse mergers (and occasionally poor-pour and cot-caught and father-bother) I ask this question:
    How do native speakers of English even function when they have as many mergers as, say, a Londoner? (tire=tower=tar, spar=spa, court=caught, horse=hoarse, wales=whales, heel=hill [hɪo], owl=ow, pool=poo, three=free, there=dare)

    The analogs of Californians and Londoners in foreign-language-speaking areas might exhibit a similar psychology and simply expect context or inflection or ?? to make the meaning clear.

  9. gaelsano says:

    I meant to say that Californians and Canadians do not seem to have any new lexical or phonemic *SPLITS* to compensate for their mergers. There is allophony in the MOUTH and KITE classes before unvoiced consonants, but that does not qualify as a split.

  10. Charles Sullivan says:

    You really should start your own blog, gaelsano. Let me know when you do, I’ll subscribe.

  11. boynamedsue says:

    Though there are obvious linguistic factors that make pronunciation easier originating in L1 (one could note the difference between say, the excellent accents of Romanians and the appalling accents of Czechs), I have to say that a big part of this is purely individual aptitude, quantity and age of exposure, culture, the way the speaker has learned the language and what other L2s the learner is familiar with.

    The phonemic inventories of South Americans are roughly the same as those of Spaniards, yet South Americans usually have much better accents. Exposure and teaching explain part of this, but Spaniards often seem to have a cultural rejection of pronouncing letters in a different way to the way they are said in their own script, which they consider (incorrectly) to be perfectly phonetic. This even extends to borrowed English words, which are pronounced according to Spanish script in Spain. So while “gay” is pronounced the same in London as it is in Lima, in Leon it sounds like the English “guy”.

    I’m told I speak Italian without an accent, but my grammar and vocab is all over the place. In fact, given I often incorrectly italianise Spanish words due to my greater control of Spanish, people sometimes initially assume I’m a dialect speaker who has imperfectly learned Italian. Conversely, when I speak Spanish with peninsular speakers they usually assume I’m Italian, and point out the mistakes I make (which are often actually South American words). But when I speak with people from Andean countries, I’m often asked if I’m Spanish!

  12. I agree with those who say that many L2 speakers deliberately choose to sound ‘foreign’ in order to indicate that they come from a different background; this can be especially true when an L2 speaker lives in an L2 environment and wants to retain their cultural heritage.
    As to why some language learners sound more native-like than others, it probably has to do with their individual aptitude, but the age at which one starts to learn the foreign language is surely an important factor as well.

  13. Anders Lotsson says:

    What often makes Swedes and Norwegians sound foreign when they speak English is the prosody. Both languages sound sing-songy to others. (We usually aren’t aware of that in ourselves, but Swedes think Norwegians sound sing-songy, and reverse.) And experience seems to indicate that prosody is the hardest thing to get right when learning a foreign language. As one Bosnian learner of Swedish said when he had learned to copy Swedish prosody: It doesn’t sound like me any more.

  14. joan says:

    What puzzles me most about Schwarzenegger is that he sounds weird when he speaks German. I’m from Austria as well and there’s things going on with the way he speaks the language that I would not attribute to a Styrian accent at all. It seems that he somehow is stuck between an Austrian and US accent in both his languages.

    • Danny Ryan says:

      I think that’s a bit of a cliché. Austrians like to point out that Mr Schwarzenegger can neither pronounce English nor German properly, but that’s not really true. His English is a damn sight better than the English of most Austrians and his German, though one hears some interference from English, especially in his realisation of /r/ and /l/, is still absolutely native, and he sounds very Styrian. I’ve heard people in Graz who speak just like that, usually his generation and older. The only thing where his usage in German really differs from his compatriots who stayed home, is in the English loan words. He pronounces them in a US-English fashion (albeit with his accent) whereas other Austrians assimilate English loans to their phonology. An Austrian would pronounce the English loan word as [ˈɛkʧn], whereas Mr Schwarzenegger says [ˈækʃn]. So, yes, the English words he uses in German sound more American than the average Austrian, but otherwise you’d be hard pressed to find features in his German that are only owing to English and not to his Styrian German. Styrian vowels are in many ways more similar to English than the corresponding vowel sounds in Standard German, which is why Austrians always say that Styrians “bark”, à la: “Wie bringt man einen Steyrer zum Bellen?” ‘How do you make a Styrian bark?’ – “Schau, da gibt’s Freibier!” ‘Look, you can get free beer there!’ – “Wou? Wou?” ‘Where? Where?’ (Standard German: “Wo? Wo?”).

      • Andrej Bjelaković says:

        Hi, Danny. Could you recommend some sources regarding the differences in Austrian and German pronunciation of German?

        • Danny Ryan says:

          The best book I know in English about German dialects, includes Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Alsace, South Tyrol, North Frisian and Luxembourg is “The Dialects of Modern German – A Linguistic Survey” edited by Charles V. J. Russ, published by Routledge (1990, 2000, 2006).

          As far as Standard German in Germany vis a vis Austria is concerned, the recommendations for pronunciation are essentially the same, though realizations may differ regionally within Germany and Austria as the local or regional dialects tend to exert a strong influence on the colloquial near-standard and the standard language.
          As a general rule Austrian Standard German is a little more lax in pronunciation, differs somewhat in intonation, the voiceless stops /p t k/ tend to be unaspirated and word-final ‹ig› is /ik/ rather than /iç/. Some verbs prefer the use of “sein” ‘to be’ rather than “haben” in compound tenses such as “sitzen” ‘to sit’, “stehen” ‘to stand’, but this is also a feature of southern German German. There are differences in vocabulary and some stylistic preferences.

  15. Marc Leavitt says:

    This is one of those subjects that we can talk about forever without arriving at a resolution. It reminds me of the late puppeteer Shari Lewis’s “Song Without An End.” Anders Lotsson’s insight carries a great deal of weight. When I started to learn French at age 15, my greatest difficulty was the prosody. German was easier, Italian easier still, and Spanish easiest of all; as you learn more languages, the skills needed to learn the prosody continue to be refined. I’m not speaking about mastery of grammar, syntax and vocabulary. But beyond that, think of the great comic mimics like Danny Kaye and Robin Williams; their success, including correct use of native phonemics, finally resolves itself in successfully mimicking the prosody of the original language. Age, cultural, educational background and the desire to “speak like a native” are all major components of speaking without an accent. On the highest level, it is a near impossibility to speak another language without an accent, unless you hear it from birth.

  16. gaelsano says:

    First off, Thanks for the words of support Charles

    Second, one thing I’ll point out to anyone wanting to sound non-foreign, adopt a non-standard accent. I don’t mean to speak in a way that further hampers intelligibility with most native speakers. I mean to pick up little touches, subtle features. For people learning English as a second language, those with a touch of the Australian/NZ chain shift in their lax vowels, those with a Southern US pacing and intonation often fool me into believing they are native speakers. I can distinguish native speakers with a mixed or generalized accent of course and they don’t sound affected or like ESL learners. What I am suggesting is that the listener is often so taken aback at how you’ve picked up a non-textbook accent or at how much you sound like someone from XYZ, that they will be far less likely to make remarks about your speech being marked with L1 features.

    A friend lived in a Brazilian city once (the name escapes me). He went in just speaking English and Spanish, but modified his Spanish enough to get by in Portuguese and in 4 months’ time was soon assumed to be a native Brazilian because he spoke with features of his city’s urban dialect.

    Think about it. If you were in New York City and spoke to someone who said “I’d like to see a proper film,” you’re more likely to think “English person” than “EFL student.” Likewise, if a Dubliner heard someone say “It was real tasty,” s/he would thin “Yank.”

    • IVV says:

      I’d have to disagree. My wife is from East Germany. She had started with English classes in high school/college, and then she moved to the United States.

      Because she was from East Germany, the English she learned was strictly RP. When she first arrived, her English was only fair, but it has gotten much better over time, she got an American MBA, and now she’s more comfortable conducting business in English instead of German. In addition, she has a very strong grasp on American English idioms and grammar, and can write excellent business communication in English–better than many natives.

      However, she still speaks with a thick German accent. Certainly, part of that is because she learned the language later in life, but because her English is RP, it does her no favors. She doesn’t sound English, and has never been mistaken for English (except perhaps once). She has commented that RP’s vowels are much closer to German vowels than American English vowels are. In some ways, RP has specifically let her keep her German accent intact.

      But ultimately, I think it’s a question of the specific accent you try to emulate. My German, for example, tends to be Saxon–because I learned the language listening to her family. I find that as a result, I can converse more freely in Saxony than in other regions of Germany, and that I’m not immediately called out as the foreigner (it takes a couple seconds). So perhaps some accents are better than others, depending on your native tongue.

      • dw says:

        She has commented that RP’s vowels are much closer to German vowels than American English vowels are.

        Do you think she was referring to non-rhoticity? Otherwise, I’m a bit surprised by this claim. Looking at this table of German vowels, I would have thought traditional “General American” vowel set might even be closer to it than RP, because of the German [o] and [o:] vowels, which are close in quality to a traditional GenAm GOAT vowel but have no close RP equivalent.

        • IVV says:

          Non-rhoticity is definitely part of it, but I think it’s more the common use of [a] and [ɐ] and never [æ] or [ʌ] (especially in the American style) that she’s thinking of. Of course, she was also taught by Germans behind the Iron Curtain, so their exposure to English was limited anyway–she might not have been actually learning RP.

          Her [æ] and [ʌ] kind of merge to [a], leading to a situation where “damn” and “dumb” are homophones (and, because they tend to be used as epithets, pretty much interchangeable).

        • James says:

          I don’t think General American ever used [o] or [o:]. That sounds completely foreign.

        • dw says:

          @James:

          The [oʊ] of classic General American is far closer to German [o:] than is the [ɜʊ] of RP in GOAT words.

      • actuallykindaclueless says:

        Shouldn’t she sound a little bit Scottirish, though, if she’s from Saxony? 😉
        ((((((https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4c4iOq6FFng#t=33)))))

    • gaelsano says:

      There’s more to it than just RP, IVV. If an East German had her speech filled with Cockney-rhyming slang, for example, or a Bristolian intonation or whatever, that would make a difference. RP is will sound like a learned language if you’re not a native speaker. I’m not saying speaking RP in America will disguise a German accent. I’m not talking about people who grasp the phonemes and do not pronounce “thing” the same as “think” (sorry for the stereotyping). The dead-ringer for Koreans who speak English practically perfectly, is a habit to add a slight pause after the second syllable of a sentence. It’s usually from introducing the topic 나는, 너는 (As for me, as for you) or an adverb like 지금 (now). Hence I hear “I think … you’re a little nervous” instead of think “I think you’re a … little nervous.”

      My point is if that person had said “I think… you’re a wee bit nervous” I would wonder if the person was Scottish and not pick up on the odd placement of the softening pause.

  17. Danny Ryan says:

    I think, as with many things, some people are more talented in doing accents, even a foreign accent, than others. It also has to do with ear, perhaps musicality, and interest as well as general enjoyment of accents.

  18. Danny Ryan says:

    I always found it interesting why German speakers had such a hard time doing an English “th”-sound, although most of them have no problem immitating someone with a lisp. I think the reason is that the English “th”-sound is perceived as a speech impediment rather than a sound you should actually strive to reproduce accurately.

  19. Pingback: This Week’s Language Blog Roundup | Wordnik ~ all the words

  20. HCL says:

    I’m German, born in Switzerland and now live in Vienna. My parents are from Northern Germany, but we’ve only lived in the South. The first four years of my life I only spoke Swiss German, but my parents only spoke ‘Normal’ German (so they would ask in German, I’d reply in Swiss). After we moved to Germany I never fully adapted a dialect, mostly, because I refused to. Even now in Vienna, I won’t speak Austrian/Viennese. Every time I try it sounds awful. I think it’s a mental blockade, because really, I don’t want to sound like that.

    I spend one year in Texas and my goal was to lose my German accent entirely and I pretty much succeeded. Only people that knew me better noticed a slight accent. It wasn’t my first time in America and I started learning English pretty early in school (and was always good at it). And I paid a lot of attention to pronunciation and detail! At the end of my time in TX, people wouldn’t believe that I wasn’t a native speaker – they mostly thought I was from NY (I refused to adapt the Southern Slang – I said y’all once). I lost it over the years, but when I went to Australia for two months, I improved again. Australian and British all were convinced that I was American. I’m returning to the US this summer for about three months . I hope to erase my accent entirely this time.

    I know German and English are very similar, but I didn’t have a problem to pronounce Italian or French without a thick accent.

    In my case, I think what helped is that I was exposed to different languages and dialects since I was a baby, my attention to detail, a certain talent for languages, my time spend abroad, the many different languages in Europe and mostly my will to speak without an accent.

    In Germany we joke that Schwarzenegger can’t speak one language without an accent.

  21. Patrycja says:

    Just because both Waltz & Schwarzenegger are from the same country, doesn’t mean that their language abilities and accents are the same. The education and background make a huge difference: Waltz studied acting and attended the Lee Strasberg Theatre and Film Institute in New York and is fluent in German, French and English. I believe that his educational background certainly included an emphasis on a beautiful speech (diction, pronunciation, etc) – a professional actor cannot mumble or whatsoever. Waltz also grew up in Vienna, the capital, whereas Arnold was born in a small village, and his family was not the wealthiest. At the age of 14 he chose to be a bodybuilder, and he moved to America at the age of 21, ‘speaking little English’ as Wikipedia claims. Hope that it helps. Also, I should be studying and writing three papers right now. Instead I did this tiny Wikipedia safari/research for you. Enjoy.

    • Patrycja says:

      …* and as you know 21 years old is way too late to learn a second language perfectly and almost effortlessly. So appreciate Arnold’s English as it is 🙂 As to Waltz’s (Waltz’?) English I can say only one thing: aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah.

    • actuallykindaclueless says:

      Arnold speaks with an Austro-BAVARIAN accent. In fact, with nothing to go on other than his English pronunciation, I’m not even sure if I could tell that he’s from Austria rather than Southern Germany; when he speaks German, that’s obviously another story… 🙂

      In the case of Waltz, all I can say is that he speaks with a characteristic “posh Austrian” accent, and that I can’t hear anything remotely Bavarian in his speech – I don’t know if it’s just a variation of the standard Austrian German, or whether it’s one of those “Allemannic” accents I keep reading about, or if maybe it is somehow related to Bavarian after all and I’m just too dumb to hear it – can’t really rule out any “theater influences”, either.
      All I know is that they simply… speak with different Austrian accents, of which there are obviously many. I’m not even sure if Arnie’s accent is all that much “thicker” than Waltz’ – it sure is much flashier, but then again, a thick Bavarian accent IS flashier than Standard German/Austrian (which Waltz, in either case, isn’t that far from), and the “Murican” drone appropriately adopted by Schwarzenegger is obviously flashier than the toned down, much more “neutral” pronunciation Waltz is aiming for (and I, as I’m sure you all have guessed, can’t identify). And while Waltz does a decent and tasty “half-job” of concealing the “choppy” pronunciation of his own accent, like most educated Germans do, the highly fluent, diphthong filled Bavarian (or at least his variation of it – there are sure others lol) is strangely compatible with American – plus, you can find certain paralells to what I know as the New York accent (morning -> moahning; gut -> guahd, Norm -> Noahm) and the Southern drawl (image -> eeyeemage; lieb -> liahb; and he does say “Ah’ll be back”, though I don’t think it’s the accent’s fault in this case), all of which sure don’t prevent him from “succeeding” more with less effort.

      Anyway – given how I’m basically an ignorant twit from Bavaria and this is a forum named “dialectblog.com”, everyone obviously feel free to correct any of the numerous errors and gaps in the above post!

  22. Very great post. I simply stumbled upon your weblog and wanted to mention that I’ve really
    loved surfing around your weblog posts. After all I will
    be subscribing on your feed and I’m hoping you write again very soon!