Hi,
I want to make a statement regarding foreign accents and then ask questions. (Let's not JUST talk about whether or not an accent is good or bad).
I'm a native German speaker and have moved to the US a couple months ago, having previously dated an American girl for 1.5 years. It's very funny, some people tell me I don't have any accent at all. One girl once asked me if I was from Virigina after we had talked for 30 minutes. On other occassions, people immediately discovered I am foreign, and sometimes even attributed me to a German speaking country.
Now, I generally agree with the analysis by most people on this board. 1) A foreign accent is, in principle, not bad. I was even told that American think of themselves as rather stupid in comparison to Europeans, which is why especially a German accent helps a lot. 2) I also agree, however, that you have to work harder to prove yourself worthy of promotion and to show that your work is just as good as that of anybody else. This is because, the basic assumption is that non-native speakers struggle to speak/read/write English.
Leaving that aside, what can one do, to improve one's accent? I have found that one very important thing is that consonants are less clearly pronounced. Try reading this post without the consonant and you will find what I mean. Also, there seems to be something very unique about the way Americans stress words. More precisely, there seem to be much more "ups" than "downs" in any given sentence when an American speaks, i.e. more emphasis (sp?) are used.
What do you think?