[jodrellblank]

Long after they’ve mastered its syntax and vocabulary, a lifelong accent may mark them as latecomers to the language. Arnold Schwarzenegger was the star of many American movies and the governor of the country’s biggest state, but his Austrian accent is a constant reminder that he could never run for president.

Unfortunate Daily Mail source[1], but Mr Schwarzenegger says he can speak unaccented English, but he keeps his accent deliberately because it's what people expect of him.

And the popular claim is that he uses a vocal coach to help him keep it, after using a vocal coach to lose it early in his career. Can't quickly find any source for this claim, but it's plausible enough that it's part of his brand and image and worth a lot, that it doesn't seem a good idea to use him as an example in this article. Doubly so when he did run for Gov. of California, the largest economy of the individual states, and his accent didn't stop his success there.

[1] https://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-3141778/Arnold...

[mumblemumble]

The Arnold Schwarzenegger example has always struck me as an example of how unforgiving people can be about accent. His English accent - the one he uses in public; I've no idea how he speaks off camera - is phenomenal. The vowels aren't located quite where you'd expect for someone who speaks a well groomed American "cable TV news" accent, but it has everything necessary to be perfectly comprehensible to virtually any fluent North American English speaker. Which is a heck of an accomplishment for any non-native speaker. And yet people still consider him "marked", somehow.

Also, the very idea of "unaccented English" bothers me. In any language that has more than one regional or socioeconomic accent, that's a loaded concept.

[Decade]

It’s not about whether the electorate would vote for him. It’s that the Constitution of the United States of America forbids anyone other than natural-born citizens from becoming President.

In theory, you can have natural-born citizens with other first languages; Bruce Lee would have been eligible to run for president if he had lived long enough; but the author was being rhetorical.

[jhbadger]

There actually has been a natural-born US President whose first language wasn't English. Martin Van Buren, the 8th President of the US, was from the Dutch minority of New York and spoke only Dutch as a child.

[alxlaz]

It's a pretty common thing among non-native speakers who have nonetheless interacted or lived in the English-speaking world for virtually all their lives. I know a bunch of people who are in the same situation (although, clearly, not as famous :) ).

My slight Irish accent is an endless source of fun when I'm abroad -- I'm not a native speaker and wasn't born anywhere near Ireland, or anywhere near the English-speaking world for that matter. I haven't even lived in the English-speaking world. The longest time I've spent is an English-speaking country was two weeks, which I spent in Scotland during my honeymoon. When I tell people where I'm from, no one believes me. They're skeptical even after I show them my ID card.

But I've been reading, writing and speaking English, during work and leisure hours, for God knows how many years now, so I can read, write and speak it pretty well. The accent was an accident -- I have an ear for this sort of stuff but I didn't really try to develop one, I just acquired it because I ran into The Dubliners and Christy Moore at a time when I was very interested in this type of music and for some reason I ended up borrowing some of the sound. Frankly, it's a little embarrassing at times -- for example, I do my best to hide it when I'm speaking to someone who is actually from Ireland, because I'm always afraid it might sound like I'm mocking them or trying to hard.

But other than that, it's been one my biggest assets. I've spent some time in $bigcorp world, and I've met a lot of people who were smarter and more experienced than me but nonetheless didn't get as much credit or attention as I got, partly because their thick Eastern-European accents and improper use of English idioms made it hard for them to communicate and painted them in a stereotypical light.

[wodenokoto]

It's hard to say if he is playing for the camera, but it doesn't sound like he is trying to sound stereotypically Arnold Schwarzenegger, but it is obvious that he is speaking with a German accent in this interview video with mens health, which appears to be the newest video of him, on youtube:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jFk-L7Wcg0g

[azangru]

> but Mr Schwarzenegger says he can speak unaccented English, but he keeps his accent deliberately because it's what people expect of him.

Could well be boasting, unless there are sound recordings of him speaking without a German/Austrian accent.