Quote Originally Posted by adoc
Honestly, I think that every time a grown-up is labeled with the "acquired foreign accent", it's purely imaginary. There is a sufficiently broad variety of dialects across Russia to satisfy any "foreign accent" seeker . No longer than a month or two ago, an old lady with a distinct western-siberian accent was marked down as a foreigner, absurdly enough. How is it that those who were raised in Ukraine and other "former republics" are the ones who are rock-solid on the idea of how a genuine Russian accent should sound? No offense intended, obviously.
Usually you are able to distinguish a regional variation from a foreign accent.
If you are talking about my first example, the features there were quite consistent across several people with unrelated, but similar, background (who were originally also from Ukraine, btw).