costas wrote:Are pronunciation and accent the same thing?
Costas, where did you learn "Cheers". You're in Brazil, right?
I think these words aren't exactly the same but they're very closely related.
In general, how a child sounds a word is normally governed, not by choice, but simply by the language sounds surrounding him or her. Around puberty the sounds choices become fixed (they can be changed but only with a
lot of work) usually identifying a person to a particular region by their pronunciation - we say they have an accent.
On the other hand, some people can't pronounce the 'r', e.g. Johnathan Ross, sound correctly, or like Shaun Connery, they say /sh/ instead of /s/. We can contrast certain individuals lack of ability with a social group's choice to make or not make a certain sound (e.g. southern English people are non-rhotic speakers).
Iain