Interesting note re Bobyoungbalt's post up there -

I am bilingual in English and German and I have found that the ability to speak German without an accent has aided me in pronouncing (How _does_ one spell that word emoticon!) words in other languages. To wit, my French still sounds American but the accent is softened some by my ability to pronouce "a" and "u" and even "r." Likewise, there are a few really challenging, for English-speakers, Persian words involving the sound "kh" and the guttural "gh." The Persian word for "frog" is my favorite - ghulbahreh (phonetically spelled!). I impressed my Iranian friends to no end when they discovered I could say that correctly!