I'm proud of the fact that I speak Swedish with almost no noticeable accent. What little imperfections there are in my pronunciation and language only serve to make people wonder if I'm not from 'round here, but without them being able to guess where I am from. Every year when we get new students I ask each class to guess where I'm from. I do this at the end of the first lesson I have with them, so they've had plenty of time to hear me speak. Each class gets 20 guesses. None of them have ever won.
That's why I smile a bit when people say ”I DID hear that you had a bit of an American accent!” Without fail, a person has always said that AFTER finding out that I'm American. Again, forced to come up with it on their own, there are few that venture to ask if I'm foreign, and none that have managed to guess where I'm from. Their confidence that they could hear a characteristic American ”R” really only comes after I'm said where I'm from.
So I was a bit put out this morning when I was at the playground with Bennie and, after I'd exchanged about 3 sentences with her, another mom said ”Are you from the U.S.?”
But I was only crushed for a few seconds before realizing: 1) I'd been walking around the place speaking English with Bennie (or even yelling English AT Bennie) and 2) Bennie was wearing a t-shirt with a stars and stripes monkey on it.
Still, I feel the need to practice some vowels.
