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Actors love to speak in accents. I do, too. It's fun, there's no doubt. Most actors aren't very good at it, though. There is hope for actors to get better at speaking lines with accents and mostly it just requires paying attention. In this post I will use mainstream Mexican Spanish accents but the principles pertain to any accent an actor wants to speak in.

Consonants

How this language approximate the consonants of English will determine how you will speak. Spanish doesn't have a "sh" sound, so they will use "ch" instead. They will say "choot" instead of "shoot". Also most Mexicans can't say "j" so they use "y" instead. Thus you are often greeted at "Yack in the Box" or "Carl's Yunior" fast food restaurants. Often certain consonants are pronounced differently depending on where they are in the word: saying "red" would require a rolling of the "r" but "very" would be said with the "r" sounding more like a "d". To confuse even more, an "r" at the end of a word has only a slight rolling.

Vowels

In Spanish their vowels are much simpler. They use their five vowels to approximate the many more in English. They can't say "no" like people in California would, which sounds more like "noh-ooh". All they can say is "noh". Also they don't have the vowel sound we have in "er" words like "better". So they use the closest thing which will sound more like "air". So they would say "better" and it would sound like "bet-tair". Just keeping in mind they only can make these vowel sound will help anything you say sound more Mexican: "ah", "eh", "ee", "oh", oo". The thing that may not make sense is that our vowels A, E, I, O, U are the same but most aren't simple sounds but diphthongs. We say "eh-ee", "ee", "ah-ee", "oh-oo", "uh-oo".

Grammar

In Spanish they put adjectives after nouns and many new English speakers will this way with English words. So they would describe you as a "person nice" instead of "nice person" and your "red car" as a "car red". Soon they would grow out of it but for many it will always be a struggle. They will say "car" and remember they need to say "red" first and then say "red car", correcting themselves. Other basic grammar differences with Spanish is not having an equivalent word for "do" in regards to asking questions. So they might say "You like that one?" instead of "Do you like that one?".

Rhythm

Spanish is extremely legato. Words spill over into each other and sentences seem to come together to amass as one big sound. This way of speaking will, at least at first, be used when they speak English. They don't enunciate words distinctly and in fact will alter the beginning and ends of words to make them better blend with the preceding or following word. Though the words are spoken in this manner, the way it's delivered often has a feel of that's almost like triplets, like: one, TWO, three; one, TWO, three; one, TWO, three. This manner is often used when speaking in English, too.

Pitch

Certain languages have a pitch preference across the culture and many just have pitch changes in certain parts of speech. In Vietnamese there is a proclivity for higher pitches even in men, while in English we lean toward lower pitches as signifying power (even in women). In Spanish pitch is mostly used as an indicator of emotion or intention. At the end of questions pitch bends up to make it clear that what was just said was indeed a question. Unless the questions begins with "what, "when", "where", "which", "how" there is no way to know if it's a questions since there is no word that equals "do". So the difference between "He likes you." and "Does he like you?" is the latter would be said with an upward pitch shift at the end.

Some of these techniques can help the way you say words that have already been written and many will help you rewrite stuff to make it sound more authentic. You could also use these techniques to be able to improvise in a foreign accent. The important thing is to hear real people of the culture you are trying to mimic and make notes for yourself on what are the guidelines you should follow. You could even go so far as to rewrite a script phonetically and memorize it that way if you have trouble internalizing the structure of a foreign language. Don't just do accents like you've heard other actors do them, take your cues from real people and you'll have something unique and worthwhile.