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PaperclipPerfector  1mo ago (text post)   2275 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for May 31, 2026

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What's the worst-sounding foreign accent in English? Right now I think it's Mandarin, but I am open to suggestions.

The worst accents in English are all Anglophone but for non-Anglophone maybe Brazilian.

I feel bad for my relatives now šŸ˜­. Curious: what makes it such a bad accent?

It's hard to describe. It's the verbal equivalent of a double pendulum.

Singapore is grating especially because, if you watch old clips, the Chinese elite spoke with a much more English inflection / style until about 40 years ago; Singlish is a relatively recent invention.

I dislike the ā€œinternational schoolā€ accent that wealthy Europeans have speaking English. They think it makes them far superior to their poorer countrymen who speak with more identifiable accents but I disagree - it melds aspects of standard American with a kind of almost Dutch twang. Give me a Tcherman any day. Itā€™s an uncanny valley American. There are a few who cross it and are completely stealth Europeans who sound fully American, but far fewer pass than think they do.

There is a certain charm to Indians when they use bizarre words or antiquated expressions. As far as native accents go, Australians have an annoying attitude tied to their strenuously feigned nonchalance but the accent can be entertaining. The New Zealand accent has a nice melancholy to it. I dislike the Upper Midwest accent for reasons I struggle to describe, but it just has a kind of Winnie the Pooh fakeness to it. I love all the accents of the British Isles (although some, like Birmingham/Midlands, make me laugh because it seems almost comically depressed, a kind of eeyore accent if weā€™re continuing that analogy). The deep Toronto / Tronno accent is annoying.

I like Singapore English. All the phonetic mergers (FLEECEā€“KIT, PALM-STRUT, FOOT-GOOSE, LOT-THOUGHT and TRAP-DRESS) make it sound damn weird, but strangely European. Took me an embarrassingly long time to answer if I like pock, though.

Singlish is a relatively recent invention.

PMC Singaporeans can code-switch between Standard Singapore English (which is British English with a few Malay loanwords, and worryingly many uncles) and Singlish, and speak SSE with a broadly similar accent to other people whose first language is Mandarin. (The same is true of PMC Brits whose native tongue is one of the barely-comprehensible regional dialects like Geordie or Scouse).

My understanding is that Singlish is what happens if you take 90-105 IQ Hokkien-speakers and educate them bilingually in English and Mandarin, neither of which their parents speak.

90-105 IQ Hokkien-speakers and educate them bilingually in English and Mandarin

What distinguishes Singapore English from other organic expressions of english as second language is in fact the multiculturalism in the population. Because everyone ended up thinking in their native tongue first before speaking in english there is a corresponding emphasis placement in the register and enunciation. However since an indian and a chinese have different emphasis points they both become information points for the other party to internalize and consider this is what english SHOULD sound like, and variation ends up being flattened. Maybe a similar case exists for penn/iowa/ohio/illinois accent convergence.

As an example, look at how Chin Han who played Lau in The Dark Knight speaks https://youtube.com/watch?v=os2EZeGlw7k&pp=ygUKYmF0bWFuIGxhdQ%3D%3D

versus a Singaporean Indian politician https://youtube.com/watch?v=JsXdBMV5zkY&pp=ygUHdGhhcm1uYQ%3D%3D

The tonal exaggerations and musicality of either mainland or subcontinent are absent. Chin Hans entire career was basically due to the golden period when there was a need for Chinese actors that didn't sound retarded or american when speaking english. Benedict Wong occupies that role now but he suppresses his British accent heavily.

Finally, SINGLISH is distinctly different from Singapore Accented English. Singlish is perversely abstract in its grammatical rules and expressive flexibility. Elite Singaporeans code switch as identity markers as mentioned, but also just to fuck with white people when funny.

Sure, and I mean there are degrees of Singlish. By Singlish accent I mean more ā€œfluent Englishā€ (as in your former example), with few loanwords, but a very pronounced accent. Itā€™s not about grammar. You have as I was saying above that type of very well educated upper middle (or indeed upper) class English person who speaks fluent French with the most hideous pronunciation because they simply donā€™t care to put on a French accent when speaking French.

PMC Brits whose native tongue is a strong regional working class dialect (is there another kind? I guess the posh Edinburgh accent still sounds a little Scottish) probably used to hide it, although less often now (they donā€™t in government or media, I suspect some still do in finance and corporate law). Still I respect them for having accomplished something far more impressive than being just another upper middle class striver.

I find strong Scandinavian accents irritating in their dullness and weirdly Indian rhythm. Though I will say that many Scandinavian people speak really good english without much accent at all so I don't mind those speakers. Finnish, Swedish and Norwegian are pretty languages to my ear.

French and European Spanish speakers are also a bit monotonous to me, the German accent is fine but their speech patterns are usually too pedantic for my tastes

Certain overly nasal midwestern accents are irritating to me and east coast accents sound aggressive and unpleasant. AAVE can be charming but is grating in my internal monologue.

I find strong Scandinavian accents irritating in their dullness and weirdly Indian rhythm.

Are you implying this is not top tier pronunciation? How dare you?!

Perhaps there should be a separate category for the funniest English accents.

There is already a Wikipedia article.

Indian and itā€™s not even close. Like nails on a chalkboard.

Hard agree on indian. Chinese and especially honkies have weird tonal registers that make their inflections and cadence off, but indians combine tonal misalignment with loudness. Not even getting into the unnecessary and overconfident usage of big words as well as the the psychological association of indian accent with scammy scumfucks.

Are we talking like Apu stereotyped or an educated Indian professor or a street vendor in New Delhi who speaks certain phrases?

Probably outsourced tech support.

Does Boston accent ('Bahstahn') count as foreign? It's not in England. They did the whole tea-into-the-bay thing to solidify that position.

It has only one vowel (Ʀ?)

French or Dominican-English.

The French have the thing where there is zero effort at accent, even among French who are absolutely fluent in grammatically perfect English. To be fair, there is a certain kind of Englishman who is exactly the same in French.

If everybody thinks your accent is one of the sexiest on the planet, I can see why there isn't much incentive to change it.

You just made me realize that I have literally never heard a French person (or other native Romance language speaker, for that matter. The germanics' native pronunciation gives them a leg up and the Asians actually try) even attempt to pronounce my simple, white bread American name correctly, despite them presumably hearing it constantly in American media their whole lives. Which makes me wonder why I, as an American, bother putting so much effort into shit like that. Nobody else seems to be extending the courtesy back to us except for the Asians, who ironically probably have the hardest time actually making the appropriate mouth sounds.

pronounce my simple, white bread American name correctly, despite them presumably hearing it constantly in American media their whole lives

I think you might be overestimating the importance of hearing specific but rarely used words when it comes to pronouncing them. When your native language lacks specific syllables, it can be quite difficult to incorporate them without practise. This isn't particularly helped by English basically having zero logic when it comes to knowing how to pronounce a word you aren't familiar with.

I have an Irish friend whose surname I'm completely unable to pronounce correctly even after hearing it plenty of times. The syllables that a native speaker hears don't map 1:1 to the syllables that I hear (or even know) and no amount of listening is going to help with that. And then there's things like V vs W and names like Vicky vs Vicki which I hear as exactly the same but apparently consistently mispronounced (even after the person tried to teach me how!).

Indian accents from a guy. The musicality is so annoying. It's fine for women.

I don't mind listening to Indian women speak English with heavy accents, but I must admit I can't say the same of Indian men. (Apologies to @self_made_human.)

That being said, if I may be permitted to stretch the definition of "foreign" a bit, Multicultural London English (that mish-mash of Pakistani, Afro-Carribean, Arabic and Indian accents and slang spoken by urban youths throughout the Yookay) is verbal sewage. "Wha' you lookin' at bruv? I wiw fucking kiw you bruv! Watch yourself, innit." Give me a thousand "don'd dell me whad do do"s over that. Unlike the former case, there's no gendered element to it: I honestly don't think I could bring myself to have sex with an otherwise attractive woman who spoke with this accent.

My read was that MLE was largely restricted to north-east London. In my bit of south-east London accents assimilate to Estuary, or occasionally to RP among upwardly-mobile privately-educated 2nd and 3rd generation immigrants. Old-school "sarf-east London" is going the same way as Cockney for the same reasons.

Are there any studies from linguists what makes the Indian accent so hard on the ears? Btw - I expect this to change in generation or two - everyone is immersed in english media now from birth, so more kids learn english simultaneously with their maternal one.

Honestly, I do think that's basically cultural prejudice. Coupled with perhaps an unusual amount of time spent with other ESL speakers.

I've known Russian professors etc. who were basically incomprehensible, the Indians have no monopoly on that. Rather that than chavvy London accents.

100% I've never had to translate a Russian accent over a shit quality phone line, while most of my formative experiences with Indian accents were telemarketers and frustrating interactions with IT/customer service. Whenever I had incomprehensible professors in college I'd just skip the lectures, and I grew up in Southern California so Hispanic accents always just sounded normal to me. Indian is the only foreign accent I consistently interact with under almost exclusively unpleasant circumstances I have no means of avoiding. We'd probably all hate Italian accents if Italy was where all the call centers were located.

100% I've never had to translate a Russian accent over a shit quality phone line,

It's not much more comprehensible in a lecture theatre.

Are we talking about Russians who live in Russia or ones who've spent some time living in the west?

I know a fair few Russians and can't say I've ever had any problems at all understanding their accent. Occasionally challenges with their English knowledge but nothing related to pronunciation.

Yeah, but I could always skip the lectures and get by spending that time in the library and relying on the TA. And since I wasn't STEM, most of my professors were home grown American communists who unfortunately were quite articulate.

I find listening to Slavs or people from post-Soviet countries speaking English quite endearing. "Why you have to be mad? Is only game!"

The flat cyrilic intonations make russian speakers incredibly easy to listen to compared to tonally variant nordic sinic and indic languages. Slavic ASMR is practically digital melatonin for my sleep cycle, but maybe the lack of comprehension helps.

It is not about comprehension. Heavy Indian accent speakers are way easier to understand than some other.

Heavy Indian accent speakers are way easier to understand than some other.

That... really hasn't been my experience. At a previous job much of the IT was outsourced to India and we always dreaded having to speak with them because it was complete crapshoot whether we could understand anything they said. We had no such problems with the ones who'd moved to Europe nor with any of the native Europeans.

French speakers from gulf of africa are on the top of my list.

I knew a very nice Japanese girl with impeccable middle-class credentials. She spoke Japanese with a pleasant Tokyo accent (which the Japanese equivalent to RP these days) and she spoke English impeccably... except that she'd been to university in Plymouth and had picked up an incredibly gutter accent and speech patterns that she seemed to be completely unaware of. It was incredibly disorienting.

I don't have an Indian accent. Quite the opposite. I get asked, almost every day, where I'm from. By people talking to me in person too, mind you.

So far, people have told me I sound American, Canadian, Dutch, German and god knows what else. The standard consensus seems to be from exactly wherever they're not, so Americans wonder if I'm Canadian/European, and Europeans wonder if I'm from the other side of the pond.

In fact, this happens so frequently I have a whole canned speech ready. Surprisingly LLMs can usually still tell I'm probably Indian from pure audio logs, last time I tried was with Gemini 2.5 Pro. I sound very slightly Scottish when very inebriated, but I avoid picking up another accent since at that point nobody would understand me.

Funny and very recent story: I had a date with my Emotional Support Lesbian yesterday. I took her to the shady gay pub that's my usual haunt. The other Lesbian at the counter (much worse at the emotional support bit) could understand precisely what I was saying, and couldn't understand the white woman with the upperclass British accent. Well, she admits that she sounds like a "posh Tory cunt", and that is all the proof I need.

For what it's worth, I hate Indian accents too, they grate on my ears, and I mostly grew up there. I do agree Roadmen sound atrocious, and I'd walk into traffic if I see them on the streets.

Holland and New Zealand tends to give the most ā€˜neutral but not localā€™ English accent, so I'm surprised those arent the top two guesses by a million.

I find Philippino accents incredibly grating, far worse than Indian, for what itā€™s worth- although to flatter our Indian readers, I will say Pakistani accents tend to be worse than standard Indian.

I don't think there enough Kiwies around for people to pattern match to that one.

what is this new zealand you speak of. The maps dont show any such country.

The map is not the territory, and I believe there's some acknowledging being done about it.

I don't have an Indian accent.

"It pays ten thousand!"

I'd do it for $9,999, just Indian like that.

The next indian guy in line will do it for 9998 and then the first guy will counteroffer and next thing you know the ad agency finds a guy on fiver to just do the read

I get asked, almost every day, where I'm from. By people talking to me in person too, mind you.

So far, people have told me I sound American, Canadian, Dutch, German and god knows what else. The standard consensus seems to be from exactly wherever they're not, so Americans wonder if I'm Canadian/European, and Europeans wonder if I'm from the other side of the pond.

... are you me? In my case, it's the result of years of speech therapy when I was young.

No, I don't think I'm you. Too handsome for that, and given the username, possibly less German or Dutch?

I didn't get any speech therapy. I give the speeches and the therapy. I just learned to speak English while in the States and it stuck and morphed into something so neutral it's remarkable.

Huh, that's interesting.

Apologies to @ self_made_human.

He has mentioned that he actually does not have an Indian accent.

Korean is the hardest for me to understand.

Have been to South Korea a handful of times, they learn American english there, everyone around 35 or so and younger speaks really good english in my experience. Older people may not know it at all though. I'm surprised you find Koreans hard to understand.

For spoken English accents in general, top three worst sounding to me would be (in order):

  1. AAVE
  2. Chinese
  3. Indian

Where, for example, Iā€™m undecided between Mandarin and Cantonese being worse.

(1) Is a goshdarned furriner authorized to judge such nuances in the first place?

(2) My memory of exactly how annoying accented English is fades as my distance from my immigrant-filled workplace increases. But it is my impression that any language-based variation is drowned out by proficiency-based variation. I can say that 80-percent-intelligible Indian*-accented English < 90-percent-intelligible Cantonese-accented or Vietnamese-accented English < 100-percent-intelligible Sri Lankan*ā€“accented English. But that doesn't give any information regarding the languages.

*Yes, I know these aren't languages, but I don't know the actual native language of the speaker.

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