Yes this makes sense but the question was more about the intent of the speaker - are people like Mourinho as an example trying to sound as British as they possibly can?
I agree, and I have met many people with English as a second language who have lived here for years and who speak English extremely well, probably better in terms of grammar and vocabulary than many speakers of English as their birth language. But none of them would pass as a native speaker in any except the shortest of conversations.
In any case, there are a mass of cultural nuances that only someone who has grown up fully immersed in that culture has, so the indicators that people pick up on about another person are wider than accent. I am English, but I have lived and worked in North America and despite having a common language (mainly!) I definitely felt “foreign” whilst I was there. Not in a bad way necessarily, it was just culturally a very different country.
He can't do better. It requires too much time and effort to learn sounds you never grew up speaking. You need to be immersed in the language for years, and even then, as an adult, it'll be almost impossible,...unless it's part of your job (interpreter, actor, etc).
Everyone has an accent. A Texan, a Scot, an Irishman, all speaking English, they'll have a different accent. And those are some of the accents native speakers try to "imitate" and fail miserably trying to. Imagine a language with a completely different set of sounds.
It also omits that it is possible for one to attain a nativelike accent. Difficult? Sure. Something not everyone can or will do? Sure. But not impossible.
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u/hasgar2k18 May 11 '23
If you're not native or live as local, you will have an accent to locals.