Re: Speaking without a foreign accent

From: Angantyr (Angantyr_at_rogers.com)
Date: 11/13/04 

Date: Sat, 13 Nov 2004 10:58:12 -0500

"Mxsmanic" <mxsmanic@hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:hhacp01h8ko52irjj65vgkhjvr96ruuuq0@4ax.com...
> Angantyr writes:
>
>> The fact is that your "neutral" English is not neutral in
>> Australia or anywhere else.
>
> It's neutral among the 300+ million speakers who use it, the largest
> single group of native English speakers in the world. It's a
> pronunciation that many students wish to emulate, since the English
> speakers they must deal with most often are from precisely this group.

Your numbers do not add up. According to you, there are more speakers of
American English than there are people in the United States. That ignores
the fact that over 12% of the population of the United States is Latino and
that there are many other non-Anglophones, let alone the fact that there are
regional accents in the United States. Nevertheless, let us ignore that
error in your logic and facts for the time being.

You have now admitted that your neutral English is not neutral except
amongst speakers of the same variety of English as yourself. It is
irrelevant whether or not is is the most widely spoken variety of English.
Accordingly, an Englishman will point you out as non-English just as a
Frenchman will point you out as non-French.

>
> --
> Transpose hotmail and mxsmanic in my e-mail address to reach me directly.

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