U wot m8?
I'm dutch, I'd say it's my...secondary (or otherwise tertiary) language.
I'm somewhat curious though, could you give a few examples of obvious tells?
Hmm, honestly it's a bit hard to, since it's not a conscious thing that I look for ("French people always add extra u's to words"), it's just a certain "feel" you get when someone makes the same sort of English errors often enough that they obviously aren't typos, but rather the result of coming from a different linguistic base.
I mean, I'm sure there
are obvious tells you can categorize, it's just more subconscious in my case. If I had to try to think of specific cases:
People who speak Spanish as their first language will often conjugate verbs in certain ways that are mildly incorrect but easy to understand the intended meaning, or omit a needed contraction where one was necessary. (Examples: "Snake just need to stay off cameras" as opposed to "Snake just needs to stay off cameras"; "Hey John, where Sam?" as opposed to "Hey John, where's Sam?")
French mostly seems to be a matter of spelling (no surprise there, as I can't spell anything right in French) and attempting to use gender/gendered terms where it isn't appropriate in English. (I don't see this very often from other languages with gendered nouns and verbs, oddly.)
You get the basic idea. It's very different from, for example, an Asian "accent" in writing which usually has to do with syntax errors. (Misplaced or omitted subjects and verbs, etc.) Most romance languages have similar enough structure that those types of errors are uncommon even across lingual barriers.
