Wow, I'm not deaf, but almost everything you mentioned applies to me too. I've never met anyone else who has experienced this before, yet all of your following points apply exactly to me:
> standard Canadian English is my native language
> Most native English speakers claim my speech is unmarked
> Non-native speakers of English often think I have a foreign accent, too. Often they guess at English or Australian. Like I must have been born there and moved here when I was younger, right?
> They sometimes recognize that I have a speech impediment but there's something about how I talk that is recognized with confidence as a native accent.
At least 2 or 3 times a year, someone asks me if I'm British, but me and my parents were born in Canada, and I've never even been to England, so I'm not really sure why some people think that I have a British accent. Interestingly, the accent checker guesses that my accent is
American English 89%
Australian English 3%
French 3%
I was born in Brooklyn, to Yiddish speaking parents and Yiddish was my first language. I now spend half my time in California and half in Israel. The accent checker said 80% American English, 16% Spanish, and 4% Brazilian Portuguese. In Israel they ask if I’m Russian when I speak Hebrew. In the US, people ask where I’m from all the time because my accent—and especially my grammar—is odd. The accent checker doesn’t look for grammatical oddities but that’s where a lot of my “accent” comes from.
> standard Canadian English is my native language
> Most native English speakers claim my speech is unmarked
> Non-native speakers of English often think I have a foreign accent, too. Often they guess at English or Australian. Like I must have been born there and moved here when I was younger, right?
> They sometimes recognize that I have a speech impediment but there's something about how I talk that is recognized with confidence as a native accent.
At least 2 or 3 times a year, someone asks me if I'm British, but me and my parents were born in Canada, and I've never even been to England, so I'm not really sure why some people think that I have a British accent. Interestingly, the accent checker guesses that my accent is
which is pretty close to correct.