Foreign accents : Awful or beautiful?

<<The best accent is no accent. A foreign accent is just as likely to irritate as to please, and in both cases it distracts attention from the person behind it. In contrast, if one speaks without an accent, only the content of what one says is important, and so prejudices are less of a problem.>>

Apparently I haven't been able to drill this into your thick skull, so I will repeat it yet again: If you are speaking, then you are using some kind of accent. "Speaking without an accent" is as meaningless a concept as "speaking without using sounds".

Here's a pertinent quote from Jim from a few months ago:

<<Mxsmanic's "definition" leads you to the absurd conclusion that whether or not you have an accent depends on to whom you're speaking. According to this defintion, if I were to speak to Aussies, I'd have no accent but if I were to speak to Kiwi's, would have one. What if my audience is 50% Aussie and 50% Kiwi, do I have half an accent? Would my accent become stronger if we asked some of the Aussies to leave?>>

Even Stephen Hawking's robotic voice has an accent! As bland as it sounds, it's American!

Lazar : toujours aussi percutant ! Tu fais mouche à tous les coups. Bravo !

Hmm, I wonder what Hawking himself, being British, thinks of his machine's robitic voice ;-)

I don't think of Stephen Hawking's voice synthesizer as sounding American; it just sounds robotic and inhuman, with no identifiable accent at all. But I've heard it said before, so I'll have to accept that it sounds American to non-Americans.