This is fairly useless nitpicking in this context – he's talking about a non-native English speaker, who has learned English to the point that her accent is nearly indistinguishable from some native English accent. This is a very common, and very well understood use of accentless (in the context of non-native speakers).
This, exactly. If I would have to identify an accent it would be television news anchor, the sort of speech which lacks any distinctive regional indicators.
I did student teaching at a high school a mile and a half away from the high school I attended just outside Chicago. I remember the students (mostly Mexican-American) mocking how I said “root” (and other oo-words) where I use the short o͝o sound rather than the long o͞o sound of, e.g., boot. Everyone I grew up with (except my Mom who was born in Western Pennsylvania), pronounces these words the same as I do, but the changes in the demographics of the area (from mostly Slavs, Italians and some Greeks and Serbs to mostly Latino) have also changed the micro-regional accent as well.
It is interesting to note that Barack Obama, despite his cosmopolitan upbringing, has acquired the Chicago habit of truncating a lot of vowels to schwas so he will, for example, say “tuh” for “to.” Then again, I’ve picked up a lot of L.A. regionalisms in my own speech thanks to living there for 18 years of my life (the most notable is saying freeway rather than expressway).
Interesting. I've always been confused by "accentless", and since I had only heard the term used by Americans, had always interpreted it the same uncharitable way as GP. Your interpretation makes much more sense. TIL!
