This is crazy true and comes up a lot in both Netherlands where I'm from and Portugal where I live Dutch and Portuguese speak very good English and their accent while present gets close to American English Their neighboring Germans and Spanish both have extremely thick accents and often quite broken (but understandable) English Subtitles is the direct result of this, all our cartoons as kids were in English with Dutch subtitles while the Germans would get German dubbed cartoons We're simply way more exposed to the right pronounciation of English as kids than for ex Germans