Generally most of them. Brazilians generally don’t speak unaccented English. Neither do most Europeans.
The idea that Americans are uniquely poor at pronouncing foreign languages is frankly silly.
Americans do tend to be less bilingual than euros, because in the US a foreign county is typically a transoceanic away, not 20 miles.
But the idea that it is hilarious Jesse and his bad case on honky-mouth is some special American phenomenon is hilarious. I have a super common super bog standard name. One that most countries have a version of (even Chinese). I would generally say foreigners more often mispronounce it than get it right. Are they all hicks too?
No people just speak with the speech patterns of the place they are from. It’s not some big mystery.
I never said Americans were uniquely bad at foreign languages, but the fact that their language and country are the dominant ones + geography do explain the difficulties they might encounter. And they are not the only Anglophones in this situation, foreign language proficiency in the UK was pretty abysmal last time I checked.
I asked which "foreigners" because such a use of the term is a sweeping generalization and smacks of complacent ethnocentrism. People in multilingual areas like West Africa typically speak several languages, even at the level of a lingua franca and with an accent. Btw speaking with an accent in and of itself does not demonstrate a poor command of a specific language. As a language teacher, I do emphasize the importance of pronunciation right from the start, but as long as people communicate efficiently and are understood by the natives, there is no reason to ask of them a perfect accent (and from where in the country? upper or middle class? etc.) which some people will never be able to attain anyway.
If you look at Scandinavian countries, the Netherlands, and, to a lesser extent, Germany, you will see that these cultures are usually much better at English than, say, people from southern Europe, because their languages are more closely related to English and they're literally bombarded with English-speaking media, especially in northern Europe. These are countries with tiny populations at the periphery of an empire that are totally dependent on the outside. The speakers of minority languages have no other choice but to "be good at foreign languages" or be condemned to provincial isolation, notwithstanding the class factor. And while everyone is influenced by the speech patterns of the place they are from, some do need foreign languages more than others, which isn't some big mystery either.
The quality of a country's school system is another topic entirely, but it does matter a great deal as well. As far as the US is concerned, I don't think its extreme levels of economic and academic inequality are conducive to foreign language proficiency among monolingual natives.
Which foreigners and which languages? 😂
Generally most of them. Brazilians generally don’t speak unaccented English. Neither do most Europeans.
The idea that Americans are uniquely poor at pronouncing foreign languages is frankly silly.
Americans do tend to be less bilingual than euros, because in the US a foreign county is typically a transoceanic away, not 20 miles.
But the idea that it is hilarious Jesse and his bad case on honky-mouth is some special American phenomenon is hilarious. I have a super common super bog standard name. One that most countries have a version of (even Chinese). I would generally say foreigners more often mispronounce it than get it right. Are they all hicks too?
No people just speak with the speech patterns of the place they are from. It’s not some big mystery.
I never said Americans were uniquely bad at foreign languages, but the fact that their language and country are the dominant ones + geography do explain the difficulties they might encounter. And they are not the only Anglophones in this situation, foreign language proficiency in the UK was pretty abysmal last time I checked.
I asked which "foreigners" because such a use of the term is a sweeping generalization and smacks of complacent ethnocentrism. People in multilingual areas like West Africa typically speak several languages, even at the level of a lingua franca and with an accent. Btw speaking with an accent in and of itself does not demonstrate a poor command of a specific language. As a language teacher, I do emphasize the importance of pronunciation right from the start, but as long as people communicate efficiently and are understood by the natives, there is no reason to ask of them a perfect accent (and from where in the country? upper or middle class? etc.) which some people will never be able to attain anyway.
If you look at Scandinavian countries, the Netherlands, and, to a lesser extent, Germany, you will see that these cultures are usually much better at English than, say, people from southern Europe, because their languages are more closely related to English and they're literally bombarded with English-speaking media, especially in northern Europe. These are countries with tiny populations at the periphery of an empire that are totally dependent on the outside. The speakers of minority languages have no other choice but to "be good at foreign languages" or be condemned to provincial isolation, notwithstanding the class factor. And while everyone is influenced by the speech patterns of the place they are from, some do need foreign languages more than others, which isn't some big mystery either.
The quality of a country's school system is another topic entirely, but it does matter a great deal as well. As far as the US is concerned, I don't think its extreme levels of economic and academic inequality are conducive to foreign language proficiency among monolingual natives.