after a bit of prodding, it usually finally comes out that all the people who claimed to do poorly in my sociology professor’s class ‘because of her accent’ were actually (literally) falling asleep in her class because sociology bored them to tears. uh. that isn’t an accent problem, hon. @@

Lorelei,

Yep. For some reason, this excuse was prevalent among undergrads who did poorly or failed their class(es)….and many other friends and co-workers who studied at other students or college classmates who TA courses had similar findings from their experiences.

And then of course there are the opposite cases, of foreign students at my university whose English is better than mine!

Incidentally, one of the few good things about having US public figures like President G.W. Bush or Governor/VP Candidate Sarah Palin was that it boosted the verbal English skills confidence of so many foreign-born co-workers and international students I’ve worked/hung out with. Several have remarked how hearing W or Palin speak in interviews and in speeches made them feel great as their spoken English greatly exceeded theirs despite their having spent only a short time in the US.

A famous conductor from Eastern Europe came to conduct the New York Phil about thirty years ago, and was having trouble keeping control during a rehearsal. Finally he lost it, and shouted “You! You think you’re so clever, all of you! And you think I know fuck nothing, but I promise you, I know FUCK ALL!”

Which silenced them for approximately five seconds…

And then of course there are the opposite cases, of foreign students at my university whose English is better than mine!

One of my best friend is from just outside Newcastle (UK) and he has the most gorgeous accent – he once sent me a text saying, “Are we still gannen oot the neet?” (“are we still going out tonight?”) because he knows I like it so much. My friends and I have a bet that I will end up with someone from Scotland or Ireland – or possibly an Aussie…

An old family friend of ours is Russian but moved to America forty years ago, then to the UK about fifteen years ago – his English is pretty much perfect, but he occasionally gets dialect and slang confused. The best example is when his wife, a Jewish New Yorker, said “Awww, shucks!” and he burst out laughing and asked, “Why do you say Sharks? Why not ‘whales’?”

My great-grandmother was also Russian, and for about ten years her doorbell didn’t always ring properly, and so she wrote a little sign to put above it, that read: “Please push hard the bell in the middle”.

And my own story – when I was in Australia a few years ago, I was ordering a pizza over the phone, and the computer wouldn’t recognise the word “Adelaide” when I tried to tell them where I was! I had to get the barman to say “Adelaide” into the phone.

@lemur–I found that if I started the sound as an r and ended it as an l it came out okay. In Osaka they roll their r’s a lot, but I was told it can sound kind of crude (so please don’t do that my friends told me. I had a bad habit of repeateng whatever new word I heard, an I heard a lot of salty things, apparently.)

my funny memories are mostly of my grandmother, who, although she had a thick french accent, was more valuable comedically for her tendency to say hysterically catty things rather loudly. she was 80 when she died, but i don’t believe she ever thought of herself as anything other than a 20-year-old sexy brash french girl who made all the boys laugh.

my mother, although her accent is just new england townie-ese, is good for mangling words, because she lost feeling in one side of her tongue after dental surgery in her thirties. one of the most common phrases out of her mouth is “YOU KNOW WHAT I MEAN!”