[SunnyDay]

An interesting news article, but I rather see "Hindi" as a language itself, as opposed to "accent", after all, you would HARDLY hear anyone saying he's an "English" accent, since "British/American/Australian" accent would've made more sense.

Fair enough. :) (As a side note, I've gotten myself into the habit of saying "Hindi" as opposed to "Indian" because I've had several people ask me before if I ment India Indian or Native American. I'll make an effort to say Indian instead of Hindi when referring to the accent, though.)

It depends, actually. There are many different languages spoken in India -- Hindi is only one of them. It doesn't make sense to say "an Indian accent" because there are so many to choose from.

I hate to sound ignorant, but as I don't know those various languages, and there's a very small chance that the people I talk to know them either, the general "Indian accent" works for me.

On the other hand, American pronounce the same vowel as British do & they stress the same syllable in a particular word, as the American/Australian/Indian themselves, since the "stress" pattern in a particular word is to do with the "English language" itself & not with the individual accent. Afterall, word like "heart" has LONG "a" vowel, which is pronounced by ANY English speaker, regardless of their accent.
I rather see the "vowel" (and consonants, course) articulation i.e the sound articulation itself, as a factor that distinguish between accent.

I see; I confused vowel sounds and articulation. My mistake. ^^;

By the way, since you're American yourself, would you have any idea as whether it's MORE easy for an American accented person to grasp British accent OR for a British accented person to grasp American accent ???

Eh, that's kind of hard to say, especially since there's people that can pick up any accent with fairly little work, no matter what their origonal accent is. Then there's the people that can't do any sort of accent. I'm sure someone with a New York or Boston accent would have an easier time of immitating a Britsh accent and vise versa, while someone with a Southern accent would have a harder time doing a British one. (I've been told that when British people try for an American accent, they usually go for a Southern one . . . .)
I think the harder part would be the lingo - it seems like Britsh people have more exposure to American lingo than American people have to British lingo. For instance, I could start up a (sort of bad) British accent, but I would still be using Southern American words - with the possible exception of "y'all." Unless I was really thinking hard about it, I would still use "elevator" and "stand in line" out of sheer force of habit.
And I'm curious, too: if you started talking in a Southern accent, would you remember to use "y'all?" =P