Quote Originally Posted by brett
There was a woman in my French class who'd make zero effort to shed her Aussie accent. No, I'm not saying one's native accent should be undetectable. I'm merely saying that the target language's pronunciation should be. She'd say "s'il vous plait" as "seal voo plate", and "merci beaucoup" as "muhr seee booo kooop". I can't stress enough the whininess and flagrant Aussie un-Frenchness of her accent. No matter how many times the teacher told the whole class not to stretch the 'eee' and 'ooo' vowels to the end of the bloody earth, and to not hit the end consonants, this woman would continue to do so. It would be utterly incomprehensible to someone in France. Everytime she spoke, I'd ask her, in my head, "Why are you even here?. Are you going to make a cultural leap or not?". Perhaps I should have asked aloud, because I don't think the teacher pressed the issue enough to her. I think this woman was under the false impression that she was, infact, speaking French. I speak English AND French now... and she was speaking neither.
I tried to be patient with her, but she just didn't seem to be even trying to meet the language half way, so it 'pissed me off no end', just as you with that Russian student. Just a little effort is all I need to see, inorder to not be pissed-off by such cases.
I can't stop imagining Kath and Kim speaking French now.