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The phenomenon of accent really stems from phonetic influence of first-language influence on the second language, in this case, the phonetics of Mandarin or Cantonese on that of English. One of the major features of Chinese phonetics is the paucity of voiced consonants. E.g. the "d" in "大" (Mandarin: da; Cantonese: daai) is voiceless, while the "d" in "dog" in English is voiced. So a native Chinese speaker when speaking in English mistakenly think the two "d"s are the same and thus pronounce and "d" in "dog" as voiceless, which is the case in their native language. To extend that, native Chinese speakers also tend to "unvoice" the supposedly voiced consonants "g", "b", "z", etc. in English too, producing an accent.

Of course this is only one reason for the rise of a "Chinese accent". Other factors include the difference in "r", lack of "th" in Chinese, etc.

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