“I guess I shouldn’t apologize, but I do apologize for the fact that the United States -- the last administration -- pulled out of the Paris Accords and put us sort of behind the eight ball,” said Biden, testing the colloquial flair of summit translators with his saloon bar American English.
-CNN
I got a laugh out of this as accents really are difficult sometimes and there are a lot of differences in accents of people who speak English. American accents and to a lesser degree Canadian accents are often disdained by other countries. The French who learn English usually learn to speak it with a British accent and value that. We were asked by a couple in France we got to know whether we would teach our child to speak English with a British accent. It seemed perfectly reasonable (and no doubt desirable) to them.
I've perhaps mentioned this before but once when we were in the south of France and I was having real difficulty understanding what I thought was a heavy "Provencale" accent" at a neigbouring table. I did have difficulty with the accent of some people in the south of France. When I mentioned it to Jim, he informed me they were speaking German. Ah...languages and travel...always fascinating.
Some photos from France:
https://www.flickr.com/photos/jsexton/sets/72057594121544741/
