Quote Originally Posted by Marcus View Post
All the sothern Russia (most people there) pronounce voiced х [γ ] instead of г. (x at the end of words and before a voiceless consonant).
It can be considered uneducated because of the dominance of the Moscow dialect.
Freqent Belorussian (probably rural) features: hard ч, hard p instead of soft.
Lukashenko was laughed at because of it.
(No need for "the" when you say Southern Russia.
It's either "Southern Russia" or "in the South of Russia" )

So why is it said that there is no accent in Russian then?
All of this stuff including the A/O thing that xdns mentions is accent!
It means you can listen to the person speaking and say where he comes from.
You can say for example, "you come from the South of Russia, near Ukraine".
Just like I can listen to someone and say "you come from the North of England, near the Scottish border".


hard ч, hard p instead of soft.
This, I don't notice either - I have to really focus to say it right. To me it is the same sound with only a very minor difference.

But x and G are two different letters. It's impossible to miss....

The A/O thing I would notice I think, but I have never met anyone that speaks this way, at least not that I know of.

On the Youtuble polyglot. I know of the guy called Luca because he was discussed at a forum I used to participate in before I joined MR. He was speaking Swedish but his accent was pretty bad and he was just saying some nonsense pickup phrases. It was not impressive at all.

I agree with what Gromozeka was saying that it is better to know 2-3 languages really well, and this is most peoples realistic upper level - than mess around in lots of languages but not have any depth.

Of course, if you live in Europe and get around a bit (all of the EU is smaller geographically than both Russia and the USA as far as I know) then it is good to be able to say simple things in some other langauges. Order food, ask for your clothes size or ask directions. But that is not the same as speaking a language.