Spot the Difference: How to Identify Non-Americans Even with Perfect English
Americans tend to have an American accent. If you don’t have one, you're probably not from the United States. This applies regardless of the standard of your spoken English.
I have played this game with various people. At a certain point, you start mentioning place names. Obviously, you could try something else like old television programs or schools. But place names are easy to work in to an existing conversation. Imagine you are trying to catch a foreign spy.
Occasional Cues in Conversations
The cheeky part of me wants to say that if you are American, there is no way you are going to speak perfect English. Even in the United States, people rarely speak perfect English. Local dialects, regional accents, and slang terms all contribute to the complexity of English within different geographical areas.
The Yard vs. The Garden
Image: Me and my black Labrador Retriever in our garden in Central California. Well, did you spot it? Right there in my photo description: I used a word not commonly used by Americans but is in common use across the English-speaking world. I said 'in our garden'—many Americans might call it a 'yard.' Even the word 'yard' can work in English; my grandparents lived in a house with a yard, but their yard was paved over, no grass, no plants, no greenery. Just hard stone pavement. My yard now has plants: a small area of grass, some shrubs, flowers, herbs, and trees. A tiny garden, but still to my mind, a garden.
British English and American English
The fact that one speaks English as spoken in the United Kingdom is one of the surest ways to indicate that one is not from the United States. One might claim that their English is perfect, but that in itself is wrong because I cannot think of any person who can speak perfect English. Even in Britain, any average person will speak imperfect English. It might pass for the purpose of understanding but probably will not be perfect in all usage. It will be full of dialect words, local misuse, and accent differences.
Signifiers Beyond Language
Perfect English is an indication that the person is not going to be a native English speaker. Even George Bernard Shaw in his play 'Pygmalion' noted that perfection in speaking English denotes the person as being a foreigner from outside the English-speaking world. As an Englishman abroad, everyone I meet knows that I am not American the moment I open my mouth and utter a noise often referred to as 'speech.' My accent is Northern English with a touch of Welsh. The words I use are English, though after sixteen years, I am beginning to add some local words. The slang terms I use are still very English—take my tendency to use 'Bloody' as a means of reinforcement. Many Americans will not use it that way. I also do not get upset if I am described as a liberal because the term as used in the US has no resemblance to the term used in my birthplace.
American English: Not Perfect
American English is not perfect, sorry, my fellow Americans. There I did it again. Notice it. 'Sorry' here offered as a sincere apology for a previous statement. But anyway, for some reason, Americans hardly say 'sorry' as much as the average perfect English speaker might use it. Sorry for the contradiction since earlier I said that there is no one who will speak perfectly. The overuse of 'sorry' in British English, as an emphatic buffer word, is a common signifier of non-native English speakers, including a wide range of Brits.
These linguistic and cultural differences serve as keen indicators that someone is not from the United States. Whether it's a slip-of-the-tongue term like 'yard' or 'garden,' a different accent, or the overuse of specific words and phrases, non-Americans tend to inadvertently reveal their origins in everyday conversation.