[jessriedel]

> Notice that, for the case of English, most speakers are not native, by a huge margin!

I'm well aware, and this does not rebut any of my points.

> I, for one, tend to find most non-native English speakers vastly easier to understand than many native speakers.

That "many" native speakers in a language of hundreds of millions of speakers are hard to understand does not challenge the claim that a non-native accent brought closer to any native accent, much less the mean native accent, will for the large majority if listeners be easier rather than harder to understand.

[_-___________-_]

What is the "mean native accent" for English? Would it be possible to somehow synthesise that? I'd love to hear what it sounds like!