Quotes / Just a Stupid Accent

Man: "I 'ate your paintings!
Woman: You ate mah paintings!?
Man: No, I hhhate zem! Why do we 'ave to talk fucking English?"

— Dylan Moran poking fun at the French.

King Arthur: Can we come up and have a look?
French Soldier: Of course not! You're English types-a.
King Arthur: What are you then?
French Soldier: I'm French! Why do you think I have this outrrrageous accent, you silly king-a?

— Monty Python and the Holy Grail

Russian Soldier to another: "Why aren't we speaking Russian?"

— Grand Theft Auto V

"The idea that people from other countries talk funny even when speaking their native language, and that we should mark them as foreign by artificially skewing their speech but not by allowing them to use their actual languages, has made for a lot of crappy movies (cf. The Reader)."

—Anna North, Jezebel.com

If you are playing a Nazi in a Hollywood movie, say, you have three options. One, you speak German, and you are subtitled. Two, you speak in your normal tone, and your German identity is implied and understood. Then, there is the third and most common option, which defies all logic: you enter a weird catarrhal limbo that requires you to expectorate the words in English with a heavy Gothic croak. That might make sense if you were addressing your English-speaking enemy in his own tongue, but, no, you must maintain the habit even when talking to your fellow-Germans—or, as they would call themselves, Tchermansz, since they indulge in the same nonexistent patois. Who laid down this risible rule? And which actor has ever felt anything but discomfort when asked to obey it? Thank heaven for major players like Sean Connery, who are wise enough (and major enough) to treat it with disdain. As the captain of a Russian submarine in The Hunt for Red October (1990), he delivered his lines in purest unadulterated Connery, and nobody complained.

—Anthony Lane, The New Yorker