The Danes see the North Europeans as competent and people from the Middle East as dumb and incompetent
Many Danes are irritated when hearing their language spoken with an accent, but a new study shows that there are big differences in how people are regarded based on their accent, regardless of how well they speak the language.
Copenhaven University has asked 232 Danes to evaluate 16 people’s personality based on how they spoke. They were also asked to guess where the accent comes from. The 16 people came from 8 countries, a man and woman from each country.
The study shows that Danes were most irritated with people who spoke with an accent when they thought those people come from the Middle East – and weren’t as irritated when they thought the speakers came Germanic countries such as England, Germany or Scandinavia.
The ‘Germanic’ speakers were seen as independent, ambitious, effective, interesting, reliable, talented, clever and pleasant. If the person was thought to come from a Middle Eastern country, such as Turkey, he was seen as uncertain, indifferent, incompetent, boring, unreliable, dumb, obnoxious and irritating. The 232 Danes agreed on this, though the 16 people had a university education and spoke Danish at a high level. According to Danish linguist Marta Kirilova who ran the study, there was a marked difference in estimating people by their accent. Kirilova says that the study shows that it isn’t inconsequential which land the accent comes from. There are distinct hierarchies. The Danes see the North Europeans as competent and people from the Middle East as dumb and incompetent, based solely on their accent.
http://islamineurope.blogspot.com/2007/07/denmark-middle-eastern-accent-more.html