The accent is American. Midwest American.

We all remember this line from Inigo Montoya in The Princess Bride, right?

"Hello. My name is Inigo Montoya. You killed my father. Prepare to die.'

What if the person Inigo addressed responded flatly, "You know...you've got a Spanish accent!" saying Spanish like it was something icky, slimy, and gross.

I've always been a sucker for accents.  Go figure.  This can definitely help explain my James Bond addiction fascination. Today while the nice CV-writing man was helping me with my CV in Danish, he tried to come up with some way to describe my Danish language skills.  (Yeah, here it is normal to have abilities in more than one language, and so one rates their abilities in foreign languages on their CV, sometimes from 1 to 5 or tourist level to fluent.  It is as normal as saying what kinds of computer programs one knows how to use.)  Reading and writing Danish is in the bag, but my speaking skills are admittedly a little rough.  My recognition is MUCH better than my recall!  He said, "The thing is, your accent...."

Usually when someone tells me that I have an accent, they also add that I have an American accent.  And most of the time I reply sarcastically, "Really? Because I was trying to have a Chinese accent instead..." and that always gets lots of laughs.  I do like making people laugh.

But that was not the case today.

Everyone here says that Danes are just not used to hearing their language spoken by foreigners who learned it as a second language; therefore, they simply cannot understand what the foreign person is saying.  Compare this to Americans, who are very used to and quite adept at understanding hundreds of different accents from people speaking English as their second language.  OK maybe not the person working at the call center or your first-year math professor, but for the most part, we have an ear to understand a wide range of accents.

Whether this idea about the Danes is true or not (I vote for "TRUE!"), I do wonder if any of them think that a foreigner should NEVER have an accent.  I mean, in the US, it is quite sexy for a foreigner who has lived there a long time to have an accent.  In fact, it would be downright weird if a foreigner living there for a long time didn't have an accent! Here, I guess not.

One compliment I did receive today is that I do have a better handle on the language than the Queen's husband Henri from France.  They've been married since 1967.  Apparently he is HORRIBLE at speaking Danish.  But I'll take any compliment I can get about my Danish abilities. One ex-royal family member who I do hold disdain for is the ex-princess Alexandra, the ex-wife of Prince Joachim.

Oh boy, Danes LOVE to tell foreigners trying to learn Danish about that evil *itch her!  Why?  Well she learned Danish within ONE year, PERFECTLY, without ANY kind of accent.  Whenever my Danish language school teachers told us of this success story to which we should aspire, I wanted to ask, "Well were you her teacher? No?" and demand, "Well, who were her teachers, so we can get them in here!!!"

What is ALWAYS left out about Precious Ex-Princess Alexandra's story is that she is a native English and German speaker, thanks to having been born to a set of multi-national parents.  English and Danish are both Germanic languages.  She has said that having German as one of her native languages helped immensely with learning Danish.  What is also left out of her story is that despite having been born in Hong Kong and being educated there, she never learned to speak Cantonese.  HM, how about that!  Also, it is not known if she finished her university degree.  I kick her butt on that one!

And for those of you who may be questioning my foreign language skills at all, I would like to add that I excelled at 2 years of French, at least 4 of Spanish, and taught myself a minimum of tourist-level Greek.  Even Greek, with its weird alphabet, was a snap in comparison.  My only mistake was stopping with studying those languages.  Oh, what a stupid mistake!

So maybe someday I will either have an accent-free Danish speaking ability, or else be appreciated for my cute accent.  Who knows.  Fat chance for either happening, I think.  But until then, I will continue being a sucker for those hot foreign accents.  Music to my ears.  When is that next Bond film coming out, anyway, and where's my martini shaker?