A lot of people speak English as a second language. As a consequence, native English speakers are tolerant of error and capable of understanding an extraordinarily wide range of accents. This is less true for people whose languages are not spoken by as many non-native speakers.
An American who has worked in Denmark recently reported to me the following conversation.
Dane:Â My mother was a migrant, you know.
American: Really?
Dane: Oh yes, she came from Germany though she lived here almost all her adult life.
American: I see.
Dane: She never learnt to speak Danish.
American (surprised): She didn’t? But how did she manage her day to day life? Schools, shopping, socialising?
Dane (surprised): Oh she could write Danish and speak it but she always had an accent.
People, those are high standards.
This is true. My family is of Danish extraction and my uncle, who visited Denmark, once told me of a conversation he had with an ex-pat Englishman living in Denmark with his Danish wife. They had met at a party and were enjoying the chance to speak English. My uncle went to the toilet and when he came back, the Englishman said he’d been paid the best ever complement on his Danish: a Danish acquaintance had seen him speaking with my uncle and said, ‘I didn’t know you spoke such good English.’
Of course, part of the reason Danish is so hard is that they don’t bother with consonants.