>that nobody hearing their American accents presumes that they are less capable, less ambitious or less honest than if their R’s had a nicer trill<p>I don't know if i'd say...less capable personally, but I'm a Urban-Modern-Australian english speaker, as distinct from what I'll call the lower-class suburban australian, rural-strine, or "snooty adeladian-recieved". I've included 4 accents there where most older australian academic literature seems to recognise 3, and I'm not including the various ethno-tinges based on how you might pronounce the phrase "fully-sick sub-woofer" for example.<p>I've been personally told my accent sounds "upper-class and educated" from an american perspective, which I find hilarious considering I think i sound like an absolute bogan whenever in the presence of americans/english. However, I've also been told by non-english speaking persons that they really like the way myself and my wife speak: something to do with clear annunciation or something.<p>Anyway, back to the main point: I question whether this is true, because you can bet I pick up on and have various aesthetic opinions on the various english accents. I find it very hard to believe that there are not connotations attached to how various english speakers speak and pronounce other languages. This would make english some kind of "magical" language that overcomes social-regional-contextual interpretation, and I simply do not believe that can be the case. And i know enough american friend's experiences overseas. I know there were parts/towns of the middle east while travelling I was advised not to stay in for very long with my accent, and I am well aware of the general advice for certain american accents to take advantage of the ambiguity and identify as canadian while travelling.<p>For the record, the non-exhaustive list of accents I identify and their subjective opinion are something along the lines of (keeping in mind, I'm not saying these are my explicit-acted on opinions, they're the subjective-connotations I recognise them as carrying in my own subculture):<p>> Californian: loud, extroverted, a little bit of extroverted stupidity, annoying.<p>> New-york: loud, extroverted, annoying in a different way.<p>> Boston-twang: personally, a bit humorous, not exactly intellectual (park the car in the harvard yard)<p>> Various-southern US: slow, naive but friendly<p>> English-RP: snooty, but never hear anyone who actually talks like this, except on some BBC programs, where sometimes it comes across as a bit comical like someone's taking the piss.<p>> English-other: pretty friendly/approachable in general, obviously can't list all the many english-native accents<p>> Scottish: cool, though stronger ones border on unintelligible until you get used to it<p>> Irish: extremely cool + attractive<p>> New Zealand: its practically urban-australian except for a handful of fish and chips-esque give-aways, basically one of us<p>> Wog-english (using the term in a friendly way, not as a put-down): generally to cover the greek, lebanese, italian accents. Does have lower-middle class connotations for better or worse.