DDavies

I actually just read something on this topic. No one actually thinks they have an accent in their native language because everyone thinks they speak in the standard and correct way. I don't know if I entirely agree with this statement, but I can see some truth to it.

I believe it's more along the lines of you are used to the way people surrounding you sound, so you don't notice an accent. I don't necessarily believe people think their way is the correct way. Then again, maybe they did believe that before people traveled so much, TV entered the scene and the Internet made the world a smaller place. I grew up in an exceptionally diverse city (long before the Internet), so I was exposed to a lot of accents from birth.

As for American accents, they differ according to where you grew up. Someone from Chicago has a completely different accent than someone from any other city. People who are highly trained can even detect the difference between what "side" of the city you come from. I'm from the south side of the city. Apparently, our accents is thicker than people from the northside.

I know some Spanish but am by no means fluent in the language. I should know far more than I do because I have always been surrounded by people whose mother tongue is Spanish.

One of my aunts is from Germany. She speaks German, French, Spanish and English. She said English was by far the hardest to learn. I also had a professor from Germany. He said the same thing. My Spanish professor also believed English was one of the hardest languages to learn because it is "backwards" from many other languages.