Wannabe?

Hey, native speakers! I have a question for you. I have done some practicing lately (reading out loud and walking around talking to myself - feels really awkward btw) and my foreign accent is *almost* gone. However, as soon as I have to talk to Americans my accent comes back, probably because I know they expect me to talk like a foreigner and also because I don't want to sound like a wannabe. And more importantly, because I had an accent last time we talked.
Ridiculous?
Anyway, what I want to know is:
Would you find it weird/wannabeish if a foreigner had an almost perfect American accent? (who didn't live in the country)
Would you find it weird if someone improved their English greatly from one time to another?
What would your reaction be if you heard someone who had really good pronunciation but made a tiny grammar mistake every once in a while?

"Would you find it weird/wannabeish if a foreigner had an almost perfect American accent? (who didn't live in the country)"

No.

"Would you find it weird if someone improved their English greatly from one time to another?"

I would probably be surprised, but I wouldn't think they were weird.

"What would your reaction be if you heard someone who had really good pronunciation but made a tiny grammar mistake every once in a while?"

I don't think I would have any problem with them unless their grammar mistakes impeded my comprehension of what they were saying.

I agree with guest.

I agree with Guest myself as well. North Americans really are not picky about how foreigners speak English as long as they can be understood by them. In addition, they generally do not get weird about non-native-speakers trying to speak North American English as if they were native speakers of such (unlike some groups where outsiders are expected to *not* be fluent in their language, such as in the case of the Japanese).

Travis,

Though I believe that the young people in Japan are getting a different attitude of that.

>>(unlike some groups where outsiders are expected to *not* be fluent in their language, such as in the case of the Japanese).<<
That is indeed weird about the Japanese!

To be fair, many foreigners in Japan really don't speak Japanese well, so there's truth in the stereotype. It's a hard language to learn and they know it.

- Kef

I can more or less understand what Cassis means. Where I live people with good American accents are considered to be "gomelos" (High class, privileged children, with rich parents). And I have discussed with a friend that it is not trying to be pretentious but to speak it correctly.
Though I've never felt this with a native.

Rodrigo, some people make special emphasis in "sounding" American while on the other hand they commit grammatica mistakes. I prefer to keep my own accent and speak properly. I don't think that it's so desirabe to lose your accent. If they understand you easily, it's ok, and also you accent is part of you personality in some way. Why losing it? Unless you pretend to work as a lawyer in US or something like that, it's completely useless.

Well, you don't speak properly at the moment, so you might want to work on that.

Why not?

Ok, I feel *somewhat* better now. And for your information I'm not Japanese. ;)
I guess it's just that where I come from people are not trying very hard to lose their accent, they would just find it weird if they knew I could talk like this. But it came very naturally to me so instead of forcing myself to speak with a foreign accent I chose to work on it and give it the final touch so to speak. So yeah, Rodrigo I think you do know exactly what I mean!

>>you accent is part of you personality in some way. <<
Cannot agree more!

>> However, as soon as I have to talk to Americans my accent comes back, probably because I know they expect me to talk like a foreigner and also because I don't want to sound like a wannabe. <<

Interesting. The same thing seems to happen with my French and German. When practicing by myself, I can usually get a fairly good native-sounding accent. I can pronounce the "r" properly, and the umlauted vowels fairly well. But... the moment I start talking to a native speaker, then the full force of my accent seems to come back. I think it's because I'm embarrassed to speak in such an odd sounding way, which sounds almost like I'm making a parody of someones accent, or overdoing it. Even though I know I'm not supposed to use a retroflex r, etc., it just seems to come out.

Embarrased from an English-speakers point of view?