The German accent when speaking English

(Michael) The thing with the German accent is something I constantly work on, but there's no end in sight: Someone who has spoken German their whole life probably can never sound 100% like an American or English person. It's like when an American speaks fluent German, but you can still tell from the "r"s and "w"s that the Anglo-American world pronounces letters slightly differently than the German-speaking world. To avoid any misunderstandings: I don't speak like Helmut Kohl or use grammatically incorrect English, and I choose the words to express what I mean according to the local context as much as I can. For example, in America, people often say things you wouldn't learn in any English course in the world, like "I'm gonna do this" for "I'll do that" or in California "What's up, dude?" for "How's it going, buddy?" -- so it's not about the slang, that's easy to copy.

What really trips me up is that the sounds are different. Since the differences are minimal and hardly noticeable to non-Americans, I wasn't aware of it for a long time. I always thought that eventually, no one would be able to tell the difference, but I was way off: The longer I listen to my English, the clearer it becomes where the differences lie. But of course, I won't give up. Currently, I play pool every day on AOL with a guy who grew up in a rough neighborhood in San Francisco, and he teaches me the exact pronunciation of slang terms from the "hoods" like "Whyya sweaten me?" for "Hey, don't hassle me!", "Whaddup gee?" for "Hey, buddy!" and "Audi 5000" for "Goodbye". When I also do the hand gesture that black youths in street gangs use to symbolize a gun, the guys on AOL completely crack up with laughter. My old English teacher Haueisen must be turning in his grave.

Back to the East Coast: The area where AOL's headquarters is located consists only of highways and giant supermarkets and is really boring. You can really see what an exception San Francisco is among American cities with its international, colorful mix. Who would want to live anywhere else!