Ah bless you, thank you, it's true!

It does have its advantages. Years ago mum bought some marmite. We hated it. What to do? She went back to the shop and said she'd made a mistake as she was Italian and thought it was jam.

Not about grammar, but about accents. I was having great difficulty understanding a "Kevin" in an Indian call centre. I said to him that I was having difficulty understanding what he was saying because of his accent. He replied that he hadn't got an accent, but spoke perfect English. Unfortunately, I laughed and said "Everyone's got an accent - you have, I have and even the Queen has." He rang off.

So do I


Gosh yes. My French friends thought it hilarious that I spoke with a Toulonnais accent (probably the equivalent would be Scouse, or broad Dorset, or Geordie) and after I'd been there almost a year, when I returned to England my English was oddly inflected so that someone thought I was actually foreign

I'll give you "someone is talking to me and Ola" and "someone is talking to Ola and me" are both grammatically correct.

BIB is uncouth in every language and culture with which I am familiar. Any exceptions?


There are threads on pro's "arses" (sic) ...

This is mild compared with similar comments on Denise Van Outen and Alesha Dixon. Ola's English is a good deal better than theirs.

Is this a thread about Ola leaving one letter off a word?

Before I get shot down I'll correct that to pros' "arses"

My brother picked up his french in Marseilles. On his way home via Paris, friends parents would not let him come home until they had rid him of (in their words) that dreadfully common Marseilles accent.

I'd take that as a compliment - I'm pretty sure the Netherlands are known for being better at languages than most English-speaking countries. In my experience people aren't as good at identifying accents as they think they are. I was mis-identified so many times when I lived abroad that I started making a game out of it; how close would they get, how many guesses would they need.


Ever seen "Bienvenue chez les Chti'is"? I only picked up a hint of the accent but that's the area I was living in the first time I was in France. Such a lovely accent! (It's really not, most French people consider to be incredibly ugly )

By the time I got back from my first year abroad, well... *points to username* For me it wasn't so much infection as it was phrasing (all over the place - kept starting things and then realising it wasn't an English idiom) and a sense that I'd somehow mislaid some pronouns and didn't know what to do about it.

(franglemand = français (French), anglais (English) and allemand (German))

On topic, I think all the non-native English speakers on Strictly do incredibly well. It can be hard enough living and working in a foreign language when you don't have cameras on you all the time. Being on tv, knowing people all over the country will be judging not only your dancing but also your English and the way your personality comes across as a result of the way you express yourself... I take my metaphorical hat off to them.

All accents are quite straight forward to understand Janet, all you have to do is be patient relax and try and tune into them and its surprising that after a few moments its really no problem at all.

Two lovely stories in a row stefthepest, you are on a roll.

I quite like Ola's accent, its cute.

People in Marseilles aren't common, surely not, they are from France.

I started a post this morning, but lost it and didn't managed to find time to post it again.

Anyway, I am one foreigner living in the uk. English is my third language and I have a past in linguistics.

It drives me insane when English natives speak and write with horrendous grammar (including the lack of puntucation but NOT spelling). Spelling issues are more often than not link to dyslexia and accents or diction is impossible to grasp when you learn a language after your teenage years.

But we all have our pet hates. Mine is bad grammar and lack of punctuation when someone is speaking/writing in their own native language.

I have no issue with Ola's English. I do with James' and Alesha's.

Do you remember Jan Molby who played for Liverpool with his Danish/scouse accent!!! Loved it!!

BIB - We don't take this forum seriously especially using pseudonyms. But I suspect that many written errors are generated by a failure to slow down and proof-read content. Now with self-publishing via blogs easy, few published documents are subbed for errors.

I never post here or on facebook / twitter via a phone for fear of a typo.

I'm in a funny position with grammar. It would irk me to make a mistake and I want to speak correctly, yet other people's occasional mistakes hardly bother me at all. Things get said. Meanings tumble out and the more ways the better. Accents, dialects, idiolects, mistakes, metaphors, foreign grammars applied to English words, loan words -- they're all enriching.

On the other hand I want to resist the latest tendency of the OED to enshrine five-minute-old modern definitions. They allow modern usage to change the language too soon, I think. If the OED is going to try to be funky, what's left for slobs, artists and Ola?

'Tis my pet hate, olive. James is not the only guilty party - Robin used to tweet stuff like: 'Thank you so much for voting - it means such a lot to Deborah and I.' I nearly joined Twitter just to correct him...


It took me two weeks to master 'why-aye, booger man' from a Geordie family in Corfu.



I caused equal mirth in Aix-les-Bains speaking with a Marseillaise accent (apparently). I've never been to Marseilles and have no idea how that happened. More


Yes, ridiculous, isn't it? She got a verb tense wrong, roughly the equivalent of a Brit speaking in French and saying 'je va', instead of 'je vais'. Probably with a Marseillaise accent...

iPad autocorrect is pretty fierce. I look back at some of my posts like this

Funny you should mention that. At the weekend I was having a bad tempered discussion with someone on here which is not like me at all, but this poster had been nasty to someone and it racked me off. They pettily picked me up on a typo in one of my posts. I'd posted from my phone (a recent advance for me! ) and the predictive text had got it wrong and I'd not spotted the mistake. At that point I realised I should not be posting from my phone when a discussion gets heated and I should have stopped posting at least ten posts earlier. I was so miffed at getting caught out like that.

I think Ola speaks very good English. She is no worse than any of the other pros who do not have English as their first language. They all make occasional mistakes.

The only one who seemed to have absolutely perfect English was Camilla.