If you speak with perfect tones, is there really such a thing as speaking with an “accent” in Chinese?

I was thinking and discussed this with my tutor the other day. The concept of accents in Chinese is interesting to me; I’m currently in Shanghai and what is considered a Shanghai “accent” is literally just pronouncing words differently (like all “sh” and “zh” sounds are pronounced like “s” and “z”). In english, if someone has an accent you can usually guess what country they are from from their manner of speech rather than from incorrect or unique pronunciation of certain words.

I was wondering what you guys thought about this; I asked my tutor and he said that as long as you pronounce all words correctly and with the write flow, where you were from would be indetectable (aside from what region you learned Chinese in). Compared to English, unless someone was born in a native speaking country and grew up speaking it an accent is almost always detectable.

Is this a flawed assumption? Obviously speaking perfect tones is an incredibly hard task for a non-native speaker, but the concept of accents in Chinese has peaked my interest as ive gone through the country.

submitted by /u/bchm16
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