changing accents...

when i arrived in toronto & started work at the front desk, most of the people i checked in immediately asked me if i was german. i always thought "damn, is it really that obvious? "
in the last few months i have been hanging out with canadians, germans & mexicans a lot, so my accent started to change. but i find it very confusing that now people mistake me as being from South Africa or Sweden. How is that even possible?? Hardly anyone thinks of me as being German anymore and i find this very startling. How on earth can I have a swedish or south african accent without ever having been to any of those countries???

LOL

Lol I would take it as a compliment if someone was mistaking my accent for Swedish or South African! The South African accent is lovely and I always find that the Swedish have the best English accent of all the non-native English speakers.

But yeah it's weird. When I was in Australia about 5 year back ( time surely flies!) first people thought I had a German or a Dutch accent. That was gradually changing to various Scandinavian accents, until after half a year they thought I was from New Zealand (and in New Zealand they figured I was from Australia). Which is about the best compliment I had on my accent .

That is a compliment, Sara. The Dutch accent sucks So does the German accent, btw.

i think the Dutch accent is cute

It can only take a German to think the Dutch accent is cute; the German one sucks even harder

lol its like when i go to college your accent becomes stronger and minor things that you would say at home get pointed out alot more like all the ewts and newts and t'town lol

its mad really

on the other hand you have all the scousers and plastic scousers who have the worst accents in the world

To be honest, Sara, when I met you in 2004, I could tell that you were Dutch, but only because I did speak more than just a few words to you. It was only a slight accent though.

To Jana- You definitely didn't sound THAT German when you spoke English, maybe just a little also. Haha, next time we catch up I can speak some German to you and you can make fun of my accent as much as you like! Oh, and if someone said you have a South African accent, it means that your accent is somewhat muddled, which is perfectly understandable, given the corners of the globe you've been to!!

Haha yeah I know - unfortunately it was only temporary that people didn't figure I was from The Netherlands . It took me 6 months Downunder to get that far, but when I came back home and stopped speaking English on a daily basis I lost it all . Now I'm almost back where I once started.

Time to move to Australia and New Zealand for a longer time again I guess !

Jana im surprised you dont have your own language with all the countries youve been to!!!