>Ohio, Charles. Agenki deska?

Michigan gozaimasu ! Ainiku Nihongo o hanimasen.
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>>Having a mild accent really doesn't interfere with fluency. The big difference I think is what language you are thinking in while you speak. Real fluency means thinking as well as speaking in a language during conversation. Next best thing is having such a terrific vocabulary in a language grammatically similar to your own that you can simultaneously translate in your head without completely immersing ( works between Engish and Spanish - tougher going to German or Turkish where word order and grammar are a whole different ball game )
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>>Accent really becomes and issue when you get to the tonal languages. Blow the tone and you've changed the word. Try to inflect a sentence to convey meaning and you just said something completely different. Flatten the tones and people have to listen very hard to understand you. ( when I speak Thai and I am tired, I just flatten everything out which the Thais think it really funny because that's the way Indian gangsters talk in Thai movies ) Keeping up the tone thing is for me the hardest thing. Just seems like a lot of work and I sound silly to my own ear <g> The grammar of Chinese, Thai, Lao etc is ridiculously simple compared to other langauges, but the spoken language is daunting.
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>>I think Japanese is the coolest of the lot - grammar is no harder than Spanish, pronunciation is pretty easy and when you speak fast in a low voice you sound like Toshiro Mifune. ( not as much fun for Western women as to sound authentic you have to do kind of a Minnie Mouse thing <g> )
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>But GOD do they sound cute!
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>I used to teach IT skills in a secretarial college. We had several Japanese in successive courses. I'd determined to learn snippets of the lingo, so I could make them feel more at home, and for my own benfit, and found the grammar quite simple. We have many foreign students in Brighton, for the English schools. Once on the street I'd forgotten a Japanese expression I wanted to use that day, and thought, "Never mind - there'll be another Japanese along in a minute to ask". And sure as hell there was; they're plentiful near where I live. So I stopped and asked her.
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>"Domo origato gedzaimass" was my reply :-)
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>(So WHY did she slap me!?) :-)
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>>>Good points. It's funny that I have a good friend from Amsterdam who speaks excellent English with no discernible accent! (unlike me)
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>>>>Well, I often tarry since my a$$ is draggin' so I'll jump in.
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>>>>I think the native speaker requirement is reasonable, if they are teaching spoken language. ( though with the Dutch it gets trickier - the only non-native speakers of English I have ever met with no discernible accent were Dutch )
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>>>>I am sure the point is not "language developments" or correct grammar but a native speaker accent. If I were running an English language school i would look for native speakers and those with accents that represented the most vanilla flavor in the their home country ( BBC - home counties, TV anchor-person US etc ) simply in fairness to the students. If they could reproduce regional dialects for students for demonstration purposes, great, but for basic drilling ( and spoken English is generally taught through TEFL methods ) it is not fair to drill heavy Cajun, Bawstun, Cornwall, Highland Geordie etc.
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>>>>I prefer French as it is spoken in Africa, simply because it easier for me to understand or as they speak it in Langue d'Oc since it sounds more like Spanish to my ear, but for a teacher I want a someone from Tours or Paris. ( actually, I learned most of my spoken French from Levantines in Istanbul and Izmir and I am told I sound like a Corsican gangster in a bad 50s film <g> )
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>>>>I did have a friend, a girl from Texas, who taught in a junior high school in Eastern Turkey and not only did she speak Turkish with a Texas accent but her kids spoke English like Joe Bob Briggs.