A German friend, whose wife sang in various choirs back home in Germany, told me that the various foreign members of the choirs (I think he said Japanese but I may be wrong there) could sing in perfect unaccented German, but had very thick foreign accents whenever they were speaking. Has anyone had similar experiences with people singing in languages not their own?

I have a friend who sings in the Newfoundland Symphony Choir, or something like that, and apparently the director is always giving them hell for singing with a Newfie accent. What I gather from this is that speakers of some languages are better able to cross over than others.