I am often mistaken for being no native english speaker, mostly since I write and speak pretty accent free. I have gotten in touch with a big number of accents in my life, and acquired a bit here and a bit there in the pursuit of getting my Georgia tongue out of me.
Last year I have taken a travel around Europe, which involved a lot of flying, and once again I have been impressed by the clear and precise pronunciation that most traffic controllers there feature, especially in Germany and Switzerland. My significant other is a German immigrant too, but after 20 years in the US, his accent has faded almost completely.
However, I would like to throw in a little question that is not completely on the specific topic, but closely related. Who else on here who has taken a language course feels like his language skills fade once he gets in contact with the language outside the classroom? For my man's sake I have enrolled for a German language course, and he tries my abilities every now and then, but whenever he does, I feel stunned. I stuble over words, I have to try hard to understand him, things like that. I just wonder whether the course has had no effect on me, or whether this has also occurred to others.