How not to do an accent from Mwolta

An American speech coach who thought it was a good idea to illustrate the “Maltese accent” to her audience was in for scathing reviews from thousands of people who thought the accent she did sounded nothing like Maltese. In the video, uploaded on You Tube by Howcast, a website providing short how-to videos, voice coach Andrea Caban says that the accent from “Mwolta” has the oral posture of a smile. However, what came out of her mouth sounded more like a blend of East-European and Italian accents. “The musicality of the Maltese accent is very fast and very expressive,” she said, reiterating that speaking in the accent somehow came with a smiling oral posture that “kind of tells you a little bit about who the Maltese people are – they’re friendly people”. But despite meaning well, Ms Caban got an avalanche of negative responses. In fact, the two-minute clip spread like wildfire on the social media, pushing the number of views for the video to 26,000 and breeding memes and a video in response. Most noted that the accent was off, more similar to the Italian one. Many urged the coach to do her research better. But what seems to have added fuel to the fire is Ms Caban’s geographic faux...