Misplaced Accent

Unless the actors are Not Even Bothering with the Accent, a character that is supposed to be from a specific country or region will usually speak with a non-standard accent (relative to what language is being spoken) to reflect this fact. Often, however, this accent will be completely wrong for the character's supposed origin. This may happen because they did not take the trouble to find out what the accent should be like, or assumed the audience would not know or care.

A variation of As Long as It Sounds Foreign, it can be quite jarring to those who are familiar with whatever language or dialect is supposed to be native to the speaker. The Queen's Latin is an example of this if it is used in a work produced outside Britain. Sometimes caused by Faux Fluency.

Examples of Misplaced Accent include:

Anime and manga

• The anime Senko no Night Raid featured (historical) British diplomat Victor Bulwer-Lytton in one episode. The actor was clearly a native speaker of English, but he spoke with a distinct North American accent. Also, native residents of Shanghai were apparently speaking Mandarin Chinese rather than the local dialect of the Wu language.
• Negi Springfield in the Negima anime sounds nothing like a Welsh kid in either the original Japanese or the English language dub. In the English language dub, it sounds like an American doing an impression of a "proper" English accent. In the Japanese original, it is a case of Not Even Bothering with the Accent.

Film

• In Federico Fellini's film La Dolce Vita, Swedish actress Anita Ekberg plays American blonde bombshell Sylvia. Her accent is unlikely to fool anyone familiar with U.S. English.
• In the Scandinavian co-produced biopic Hamsun, Norwegian author Knut Hamsun and his equally Norwegian wife, Marie, were played by Swedish actor Max Von Sydow and Danish actress Ghita Nørby, respectively. Neither made any attempt to speak Norwegian, but both spoke instead in their native languages.
• In Jan Guillou's book Ondskan ("Evil") there's a poor Finnish girl who has come to Sweden as a guestworker and speaks Swedish with a bad Funetik Aksent. In the Film of the Book she's played by an actress who speaks in one of the poshest upper-crust accents to be found in Finland.
• In My Life As A Dog, brothers Ingemar and Erik inexplicably have very different accents - Gothenburg and Stockholm respectively. Also, Gunnar, supposedly from Smaland, has a strong Gothenburg accent as well.
• In The Dark Knight, the villain Lau speaks Mandarin when he would more likely speak Cantonese if he's from Hong Kong.
• In the film version of Gorky Park, Michael Apted decided that all the Russian characters (which is to say, almost all the characters, since the film's set in Russia) should speak with British accents. This greatly annoyed William Hurt, who'd spent a lot of time perfecting a Russian accent for the film.
• In Trading Places for the plan to steal the orange crop reports on a train, Jamie Lee Curtis disguised herself by speaking in a Swedish accent even though she's wearing lederhosen, which is German.

Live Action TV

• Bones: Squintern Arastoo Vaziri faked a Middle Eastern accent in order to justify his devout Muslim-ness to the other characters, pretending he's fresh off the boat from Iran, but the accent he uses is Jordanian rather than Iranian. At one point he loses his temper and speaks without the accent, then confesses. Bones is not surprised.

Cam: Were you guys aware that Arastoo doesn't really have an accent?
Booth: Yeah, he does. Yeah, it's thicker than Achmed the rug merchant. Whispering to Brennan Was that racist? It sounded racist.
Brennan: I knew that despite the fact that Arastoo said he was Iranian, his accent was Jordanian.
Cam: Don't you find it odd that he was faking an Arab accent of any kind?
Brennan: Iranian isn't actually Arab.

• In How I Met Your Mother, Barney performs an in-universe example, claiming to be Swedish but talking with a French accent.
• Star Trek: The Next Generation: Frenchman Jean-Luc Picard speaks with a British accent. His brother doesn't.
• In Friends, Joey Tribbiani evidently had vocal training to learn how to do an American Southern accent for a play about the American Civil War. However, due to his stupidity it ends up coming out as a Jamaican accent.

Video Games

• The game Resident Evil 4 is apparently set in a Spanish-speaking European country...where they speak Mexican Spanish.
• Arie van Bruggen from Deus Ex Human Revolution is repeatedly called "the Dutchman" and uses "windmill" as an alias yet speaks in a Caribbean accent.
  • Though there is a fan theory that he is from Suriname, a former dutch colony in northern South America. This could explain the Carribean accent and (sort of) Dutch ancestry.
  • "Jaron Namir" (Or rather should be "Yaron Namir") is clearly meant to be a hebrew-israeli name. In game, he speaks with an arab accent. (Well, sorts of)
• While having the civilization leaders speak their native languages in Civilization V was a nice touch, several people criticized some of their accents as historically inaccurate: not only do they make the same mistake with Napoleon as stated below, but George Washington has a Bill Clinton-esque American accent despite being British, and Catherine speaks perfect Russian despite being born as and raised by Germans. Queen Elizabeth (I) speaks with a posh modern accent that certainly did not exist in her own time.
• Strangelove in Metal Gear Solid Peace Walker was born and raised in Manchester, but has a posh U.S. Southern accent (performed by an American voice actress). To be fair, the accent itself is convincing - just ill fitting.

Western Animation

• Minor Family Guy characters Santos and Pasqual are supposedly Portuguese fishermen yet speak in heavily accented Brazilian Portuguese.
• In the South Park episode "Crack Baby Athletic Association", Slash is revealed to be "Vunter Slaush", a parody on the Dutch Sinterklaas, complete with parody song. The problem? The name and song are in German, not Dutch...
  • More importantly, Butters is stated to be from Dallas (or at least the new girl he's pretending to be in "Marjorine" is) and he has a very strong Dallas accent. The problem? He's lived in Colorado since he was at least four (see "Preschool"), and his parents only have a generic Mid-States accent (which means he couldn't have gotten it from them).

Real Life

• Often happens with historical characters: Napoleon Bonaparte was noted by his contemporaries as having such a thick Corsican accent that he was difficult to understand. If he is depicted as speaking with a French accent or, in works with Translation Convention in effect, as speaking in a similar manner to the Frenchmen around him, then this trope is at work. Probably there are also examples with Hitler lacking an Austrian accent and Stalin a Georgian one.
  • Similarly, Lord Nelson had a thick Norfolk accent (and may have inspired the sailor/pirate stereotype of saying "Arrr" all the time).
    • The stereotypical 'pirate' accent has probaly more to do with Francis Drake or Walter Raleigh who both spoke with very strong West Country accents and therefore sounded out of place in Elizabeth II's court.
• WWE: Kofi Kingston is from Ghana (West Africa) but uses (or did for a while) an accent more like he's from Jamaica.