English and American accents have changed beyond telling in the years I've been listening to them; Katherine Hepburn's upper-class American accent is now unrecognisable to the young, who think she's an American putting on an English accent, and World War Two radio announcers sound utterly different to their modern counterparts.

So saying that Scandinavians learn Received Pronunciation - the Oxford accent that became the standard sound of the British ruling class because it was the local accent of the area where they'd gone to boarding school since the 18th century - is only partly correct.

Whatever accent they're taught in school, anyone learning English now has the use of subtitled versions of Hollywood's cultural offerings, and it's standard practice to listen to programmes first with subtitles in your own language, then with English-language subtitles, so the accent you're receiving gradually moderates into mid-Californian.

There's also a certain amount of cross-infection between Europeans who speak English as a second language; listening to these people speaking of medical breakthroughs, European law, their local earthquake or whatever on TV, I notice that no Dutch or Scandinavian second-language-English-speaker can say a sentence without adding earnestly "for sure".