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Non-native speakers of the English language tend to carry the intonation, accent or pronunciation from their mother tongue into their English speech. Even among native speakers, as seen below, many different accents exist. Some of the regional accents are easily identified with certain characteristics.

Grammar differences (e.g. the lack of tense, plural, gender etc.) in different languages often lead to grammatical mistakes that are tell-tale signs of the origin. Sometimes non-verbal body language also gives away the origin of the speaker.

Another factor is how the English language is taught to young school children. The pronunciation students use will be affected by that used by their teachers. So there may be distinctive features of pronunciation in those from a particular country, such as India, Hong Kong, Malaysia, etc.

Origins in alphabetical order:

Australia:

Australians have a distinctive accent, which applies in lesser degrees to Tasmania and New Zealand. The following are some of the charasteristics:

• Vowels are heavily pronounced; sometimes /i:/ becomes /oi/.
• The /l/ sound in "Australia" is smashed; it becomes "Austray-yah".
• Australians have a unique vocabulary; e.g. not many people outside of Australia come into contact with Vegemite on a daily basis. "Good day" becomes "G'day".

Reference: Listen to various Australian singers and native speakers; the singer of the Australian band Midnight Oil has the thickest accent that this author has heard. Steve Irwin, a wiry herpetologist known in the U.S. as the "Crocodile Hunter", has a much-parodied speaking style.

Canada:

• "A bit about a boat I bought." The diphthong in "about" is a schwa followed by an u. See Canadian raising.
• "Eh?" This interrogative is frequently used in some parts of Canada.

Cantonese (Hong Kong Chinese):

• many differences in pronunciation due to the large differences in the sounds used by English and Chinese language, and from the teachers
• 'r', read as 'l' sound. (opposite of Japanese accent)
• 'v', read as 'w' sound.
• 'wh', read as 'w' sound.
• 'th', read as 'd' sound.
• Differences in ending sounds.
• trouble with past tense.
• forgetting to add 's' for plurals.
• Confusion of 'he', 'she', and sometimes 'it', as all are one "word" in Mandarin Chinese.
• tendency to raise their voice unknowingly probably due to high noise pollution in Hong Kong.
• trouble with numbers larger than ten thousand, in the Chinese language, ten thousand is read as one myriad, 100 thousand as 10 myriad, one million as 100 myriad etc. Chinese speakers often pause before saying big numbers because of the mental conversion taking place in the head.

East Asia (including Vietnamese, Chinese):

• Due to the syllabic nature of their native languages, East Asians tend to drop the ending sound of English words, e.g. "an", "ant", & "and" sound the same.

Finnish:

• Due to Finnish always stressing the first syllable, English words accented on the second syllable are often misstressed. "VOcaPUlary".
• P and B confused (in Finnish 'p' is pronounced almost the same as 'b').
• Difficulty with 'z', pronounced as 's'.

German:

• 'th', pronounced as 's' or 'z'. (German lacks both and .)
• 's' sometimes also pronounced as 'z'.
• 'd' , 'g' or 'b' at the end of a word may be pronounced as 't', 'ck' or 'p'.
• German doesn't distinguish between adjectives and adverbs, so Germans often drop '-ly' from adverbs.
• Use of for English syllabic .

Hebrew:

• Hebrew uses a palatalized ("soft") /l'/, whereas English uses a non-palatalized ("hard") /l/
• Hebrew has only 5 vowels and generally does not use diphthongs (except for foreign borrowings); Hebrew speakers may therefore mispronounce some of the English vowels.
• Hebrew speakers may sometimes gesture or raise their voice in a way which native English speakers may find excessive, although it is considered perfectly normal in Israel.

Italian:

• tendency to add vowels to English words that end in consonants, because Italian words hardly ever end in consonants.

Japanese:

• trouble with 'l', read as 'r' sound. (opposite of Cantonese accent)
• Might use /fu/ and /hu/ interchangeably as both are the same sound in Japanese. (For instance, "who" might be pronounced as "foo".)
• Similar to Spanish in the lacking of the /v/ sound. It now has two accepted pronunciations, /b/ and /wh/ (i.e. Video becomes bideo or whideo).
• tend to insert vowels particularly at the end of a words ending in a consonant, e.g. sound as soundo.
• often drop articles like "the" and "a"
• don't distinguish between singular and plural
• trouble with numbers larger than ten thousand, in the Japanese language, ten thousand is read as one myriad, 100 thousand as 10 myriad, one million as 100 myriad etc. Japanese speakers often pause before saying big numbers because of the mental conversion taking place in the head.
• often nod their head when they speak as if they are bowing repeatedly.

Korean:

• Difficulty distinguishing 'r' and 'l' sounds.
• 'v' is pronounced 'b'. 'Video' becomes 'bideo'.
• Unable to distinguish 'j' and 'z'. The names 'Jack' and 'Zack' sound exactly the same to most Koreans.
• Tendency to add schwa sounds to words ending with consonants.
• Short 'a' and short 'e' vowel sounds are pronounced identically.
• Short 'o' sounds are lengthened.
• Short 'i' sounds are lengthened.

Mandarin Chinese:

• Trouble with final 'm' sound, as 'm' does not occur at the end of a syllable in Mandarin pronunciation, e.g. "time" read as "tine".
• Voiced sounds pronounced as their unvoiced counterparts, eg: "duck" for "dog", "root" for "rude". Mandarin does not distinguish /p/ vs. /b/, /t/ vs. /d/, /k/ vs. /g/, etc. (these letters represent aspirated pairs, not voiced pairs, in pinyin)
• Confusion of 'he', 'she', and sometimes 'it', as all are one "word" in Mandarin Chinese.
• Difficulty with verb tenses in general, as well as plurals. (Mandarin has no direct equivalent to either in its grammar.)
• trouble with numbers larger than ten thousand, in the Chinese language, ten thousand is read as one myriad, 100 thousand as 10 myriad, one million as 100 myriad etc. Chinese speakers often pause before saying big numbers because of the mental conversion taking place in the head.

New Zealand English:

• American English lax (as in "did") and are centralized in NZ pronunciation, so --> and --> ("would").
• Most other vowels follow British RP style in general form, with minor differences.
• NZ English is a non-rhotic dialect.

• Has a large vocabulary of words borrowed from the Maori language, and NZ English permits syllable-initial in these borrowings, e.g. (Mount) Ngaruhoe is Maori --> NZE --> USA

Farsi (Persian, Iranian):

• throat noise in 'k' sound.
• SAMPA /I/, /E/, /}/ pronounced as or
• SAMPA /U/, /O/, /o/ pronounced as or
• /T/ pronounced as /s/ and /D/ pronounced as /d/ or /z/
• trilled /r/
• /w/ pronounced as (or IPA )

Philippines

• tend to pronounce /f/ as /p/
• often use "he" for females.

Polish:

• Trouble with 'th', pronounced as 'd', 't' or - less commonly - 'v', 'f'. (Polish lacks both and .) Examples: think --> fink, the --> de.
  There also existed an "old school" of pronouncing th as 's' or 'z', like brother --> "brozzer", smith --> "smiss".
• Voiced stops ('d' , 'g', 'b' or 'v') at the end of a word or before voiceless stops may become voiceless ('t', 'k', 'p' or 'f'). Examples: Paddington --> "paddinkton".
• Trouble differentiating similar vowels like /i:/ and /I/ or /E/ and /{/. Example: both "man" and "men" are pronounced /mEn/.
• A few commonly used false friends, most prominently "actually" with intended meaning of "at present".
• Generally all sounds are very audible: The Beatles --> /dE bitEls/

Russian:

• often a palatalized dental /r'/ is used before vowels, which is absent in English.
• lack of differentiation between /x/ (as in "Jose") and /h/ (as in "hot")

The Indian Subcontinent:

• Fast speech tempo with choppy syllables
• Questions worded like statements. Detected by native speakers because of stress on verb in case of questions.
• Using 'ing': Instead of "He has a car", "He is having a car".
• English alveolars are perceived by many native Indic and Dravidian language speakers as allophones of retroflex consonants, when Subcontinental dental phonemes are in fact more appropriate equivalents to the English alveolars. This leads to the "hollow" pronunciation of English by many Asian Indians.
• they shook their head sideway as they speak as if they are saying no-no-no even when they say yes-yes-yes.

Spanish

• Trouble with /Z/ and /dZ/, which don't exist in Spanish.
• Pronunciation of /v/ as /b/, as the letter "v" is pronounced /b/ in Spanish.
• If a word begins with /s/ + consonant, adding an /E/ to it: Espanish. #/s/+consonant is not permitted in Spanish.

South African: South Africa has 11 official languages, one of which is English. Afrikaners, descendants of mainly Dutch settlers, tend to pronounce English phonemes with a strong Afrikaans inflection, which is very similar to a Dutch accent. Native English speakers in South Africa have an accent that generally resembles a middle to upper class British accent modified with varying degrees of Germanic inflection, due to the Afrikaner influence. Native South African English speakers also insert a number of Afrikaans loanwords into their speech. Please add information about the English accents of native speakers of African languages.

Swedish:

• Sing-songy intonation. Swedes often speak English with a melodic intonation, ending sentences on an up-note, much parodized (the Swedish chef from The Muppet Show is a well known example and a Usenet institution.)
• Trouble with the ending -ed, as the following sentence (from the parody sitcom Soap): "Do you think I'm finished?" (pronounced "Finnish"). Answer: "No, Swedish!"
• 'th' is often pronounced as 'd' or 't'
• Frequently uses the wrong case of verbs. (e.g. "They is") Swedish verbs have no cases.

United Kingdom Accents and dialects vary more widely within within the U.K. itself than they do in other parts of the world owing to the longer history of the language within the countries of the U.K. Here are some of the distinctions to be found:

Cockney:

• Initial h sounds are dropped; i.e. "house" becomes "ouse"; "help" becomes "elp"
• T sounds in the middle of words are replaced with a glottal stop; i.e. "water" becomes "wa><er"
• Dipthongs shift tongue positioning distinctively

Southern English:

• Terminal "r" is smashed; i.e. "doorway" becomes "doe-way", "forever" becomes "forevuh"
• Unstressed vowels are also smashed

London accents:

• The tongue is more forward in the mouth
• Words can be overpronounced
• th becomes v. "Fo'i fouzand fevvers on a frush's froat."

Northern English:

• The tongue is swallowed, cutting off nasal passages and making speech sound as if the speaker has a cold.

Welsh:

• Distinctive pitch differences giving a "sing-song" effect

Scots:

• pronounces "wh" differently from "w" (watt and what, weather and whether, wales and whales do not sound the same).
• Does not pronounce technology as if it were spelled teknology.
• Pronounces "r" whenever it occurs in a word.

Reference: For London accents, listen to old recordings by Petula Clark, Julie Andrews, Rolling Stones, and The Who. For Liverpool accents, recordings by The Beatles (George Harrison's accent was the thickest of the four of them), Gerry and the Pacemakers, Herman's Hermits, Echo and the Bunnymen.

USA (Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania): Pittsburgh accents have a number of distinctive features. Please reference that article for more information.

USA (African American, sometimes referred to as Ebonics): This is actually a cluster of dialects with numerous regional variations. The below describes some features found in many (but not necessarily all) varieties, and emphasizes a stereotype that may or may not be true in some areas of the United States.

• Use of double negative; in some speakers, multiple negation is used for emphasis: "I ain't never done nuthin' like that."
• Use of "ain't" where Standard American English (SAE) uses "isn't".
• Auxiliary "be" + verb is used for the habitual aspect of a verb. "It be dat way sometime" = "It's like that, sometimes".
• Auxiliary "done" + verb is used for the completive aspect of a verb "He done gone to the store" means that he completed the errand he set out to do. SAE has no direct equivalent to this.
• Some speakers may pronounce /D/ as initially and as between vowels; and /T/ as . <ed. note: I've not heard this in MN, but am told it happens elsewhere.>
• People who live in the northern USA may perceive the dialect as having a distinct "Southern" quality to it, because of a tendency to monophthongize /ay/ as (see "USA (Southern)" below).
• African American dialects are not only non-rhotic, but in some cases may also delete /r/ between vowels. Thus, "Carol never made drop rate art" may be pronounced "Ca'ol nevah made drop rate aht" . "Store" is pronounced "stow".

USA (Boston, Massachusetts):

• loss of non-prevocalic <r>. "Park the car in Harvard Yard" becomes "Pahk the cah in Hahvahd Yahd."

USA (Brooklyn, New York):

• loss of non-prevocalic <r>.
• faster speech tempo

Reference: Old Bugs Bunny cartoons (Bugs has a Brooklyn accent). The accent may be an old stereotype and current natives of Brooklyn may or may not have it.

USA (Midwest and West Coast):

• /O/ merged with /a/. "not" sounds like "naht" (/nOt/ --> ), "opportunity" like "ahppertunity" (NOTE: This is standard in Connecticut, an eastern state.)
• preservation of non-prevocalic <r>
• (near Canadian border:) monophthongization of /ow/ as , eg. most dialects "boat" /bowt/ --> "boot" . (To check.)

USA (South):

• monopthongization of /ay/ as , eg. most dialects' "I" --> "Ah" in the South.
• (also some East Coast:) loss of non-prevocalic r.
• slower speech tempo
• putting two modals together as if the second were an infinitive: "I might could do that."

USA (New England and East Coast):

• (also South:) loss of non-prevocalic r in some dialects.
• faster speech tempo

USA (Maine and Downeast):

• Older native Maine (USA) residents pronounce "yes" or "yeah" as "ayuh", with the stress on the the second syllable.

USA (Valley girl):

• use a lot of "like", "totally awesome" etc.