Originally Posted By: twosleepy

2. "Accent" is mostly unimportant in communication,... A poor one can hinder native listeners from focusing on the message.


Which is it? Certainly in Hindi, the latter is definitely true, to the extent that actors and actresses who grew up in Hindi-speaking households outside India have been dubbed over in their films not because they couldn't speak the language, but because their accent was too distracting. Hardly "unimportant in communication."