[Dan in Pasadena]

Milt, I actually have a bit of a different take on the accent in commercials thing.

As a Hispanic person I notice (as do at least a couple of the hispanic people that work for me and are native Spanish speakers - I am not completely fluent) that most commercials for places like Taco Bell or Del Taco INTENTIONALLY use an announcer that is not a native Spanish speaker. And not only are they not native speakers, they seem to be reading the commercials phonetically and seem to want them to Anglicize Spanish words.

My opinion on the reason for this is that there is an Anglo (for lack of a better label) backlash against Spanish because of illegal immigration so they don't want their product names to sound "too Spanish"....actually, I am being PC, my real opinion is that they do it because the white people making these decisions would say they don't want their products sounding "too Mexican" - which is a lame label of course because Spanish is spoken by peoples from South, Central and North America, the Carribean Islands and Spain.

Believe me there are PLENTY of semi-native speakers (like me) that can sound much more authentic (or at least not as down right LAME as the announcers they use) but would not be difficult to understand like a native speaker might be to an Anglo person. People like me are capable of proper pronunciation without running all the words together like a native speaker. Not to mention the lame, made-up, and frankly semi-insulting words they come up with like "enchiritos" or "queso-cheese".