Why do L2 speakers of English sound foreign?

0Most probably because they are foreign and English is their L2:) 02br
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00Seriously, it's because speech articulators are shaped (to produce sounds of a particular lg i.e L1) at the early age. Hence when you start learning a foreign lg at the age, say, 15, it 02br
00is very difficult to make a natural foreign sound. 0-

0 It is thought that many factors go into the shaping and retention of accent: 02br
00Motivation - are you learning the language for a specific purpose or because you like the people who speak it and want to become part of their society? 02br
00Prestige of your own and the FL accent. 02br
00How much do you interact with people who speak the FL? 02br


0 I think what most ESLs (at beginners level) will find English difficult to learn is that its spelling system is inconsistent with the pronunciation. Most of European countries made the spelling systems of their languages consistent with pronunciation when they made national states during 18 and 19 centuries. But Britain and USA didn't do such a reform. That inconsistency wouldn't matter much t

0 The basic problem is 'interference'. This is what we bring from L1 to the L2 situation. It can be word order, vocabulary, misuse of cognates, phonetics, etc. A few examples: 02br
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00English speakers have problems with L2 because we reduce most unaccented syllables to schwa; most other languages are much more precise with the articulation of all vowels, so schwa sound

0 01blockquote

00"I went last night to the movies" sounds foreign to the American English speaker, but it is perfect word order in some languages (German, for example, I believe). 12br
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00I think in German they would put "last night" first, which would cause an inversion, and they would use "present perfect": 

0 You are probably perfectly correct. I mentioned German because I have heard this exact wording from a lady I've known for a long time. But then she speaks German, Hebrew and Arabic as well as French and English, so I'm not sure which language is causing this interference. 0-

0 Lol! 02br
00French wouldn't be simple past either: "hier soir je suis allé au cinéma/je suis allé au cinéma hier soir". 02br
00Can't venture anything in Hebrew or Arabic! 050010id1

0 We (you and I) got off the subject here. It matters not what language uses "I went last night to the movie": what is important is that in some languages that would be the word order, and that would make a L2 speaker sound 'foreign'. 0-

Yeah, good example. In Spanish:

Last night=anoche

You can say: Yo fui anoche al cine

or: Yo anoche fui al cine

or: Anoche yo fui al cine

or: Yo fui al cine anoche

The four are correct in Spanish and all of them mean exactly the same. Even a question could have the same word order:

¿Yo fui al cine anoche?
¡Yo fui al cine anoche!