A Moogle  🏳️‍🌈 💻 🎮 🎶 🇸🇪

Strange question, but: Is it really that unusual for an American to be able to distinguish between English spoken with an English, Australian, Irish, Scottish, Dutch, German, French, or Finnish accent?

Not generally, but lack of familiarity can make certain accents difficult to distinguish. Also, when I travelled in Europe, some people I met had an accent closer to that of someone they learned a lot of English from; met a couple Dutch furs who sounded British, etc.

Once I got to know them I could usually notice bits of the local accent when they pronounced certain things, but that took some time and familiarity.

Interesting. All of the Dutch coworkers I've had, the accent rings as clear as a bell. Meanwhile, I have absolutely met Swedes in their early 20's who could be mistaken for Brits.

What I've found in Swedish at least is that a person's characteristic Swedish accent is proportional to their age. Younger Swedes started learning English and being inundated with media in English at a younger age, so it's more natural to speak it.

Beyond that, whether their English voice trends towards English-English or American English depends on where the inevitable school instructor or instructor(s) were from for the English classes.

Yeah, makes sense. I found with people whose pronunciation was excellent, word choice would sometimes give origin away, but that's a much more vague thing to go by.

Strangely, you can usually tell Swedish/Norwegian/Danish people by how they write English online. The biggest tell is phrases like "he were" or "she were" instead of "was", as Swedish only conjugates verbs differently based on tense, not on subject.