Accents, who'd have one.

[rdearman]

https://www.sciencealert.com/how-and-wh ... p-new-ones

[CaroleR]

https://www.sciencealert.com/how-and-why-some-people-lose-their-accents-or-pick-up-new-ones

Interesting article. It's always seemed strange to me that someone's accent can change, depending on where they've been. I used to work with a guy who went to England to study for a year and came back with a posh British accent. Everyone thought it was an affectation. My grandmother, who came to Canada from England when she was 29, went back to "the old country" when she was in her 60s. Someone asked her if she was American and she was so insulted. Not that they thought she was American, but that they didn't realize, in her own hometown, that she was British. I always thought she had a British accent but I didn't realize how much of it she had lost.

[tastyonions]

When someone loses their accent in their NL as an adult after just a few years abroad it’s most definitely an affectation, imo. It’s as goofy as Hilaria Baldwin putting on a Spanish accent when she speaks English.

[Cainntear]

When someone loses their accent in their NL after just a few years abroad it’s most definitely an affectation, imo.

Sorry, but I don't think "imo" really cuts it here. You've responded to an article by a science journalist that has been well researched abcd is intended to dispel myths that lead to linguistic prejudice... by resorting to what looks a lot like linguistic prejudice, because you are judging a large number of people without knowing their personal circumstances.

[Nogon]

When someone loses their accent in their NL as an adult after just a few years abroad it’s most definitely an affectation, imo.

Affectation? My father once told me how he was laughed at because of his accent, when he as a young man moved from one part of Germany to another. He "lost" his accent due to self preservation.

[tastyonions]

Yeah, that was a dumb post from me.

[stell]

Very interesting article!

I'm a natural mimic, and it's extremely embarrassing at times. I'll talk to someone from New Zealand for an hour, and by the end of the conversation, I may find myself saying a word like "battery" in their accent. I also find my intonation and rhythm changing based on who I'm talking to, if I'm immersed for long enough. It's embarrassing, because it absolutely looks like an affectation. But it isn't! If anything, I try very hard NOT to change my accent in my native language, because the last thing I want is to appear pretentious, or - far worse - as though I'm making fun of the person I'm talking to.

So I'm pretty sure I would fit firmly into the group of people whose accents change after moving abroad. I'm sure I'd come home after a year or two in England with a half-British accent, and that everyone would roll their eyes at me.

[Iversen]

I hardly ever speak my foreign languages at home in Denmark, so it's not important what accent I have here. However when I'm abroad in a country where I know the language I also automatically slide into the local way of speaking - and that is not only a question of accent: I also tend to think more and more in the local language, and before I even try to have conversations in the language I start translating things in my head - both those I hear and those I'm going to say myself in whatever language I can muster. But when I go home I revert to my usual idiolect which must be either the least common denominator or a averaged mixture of everything I hear. And frankly I don't care because nobody will be have to listen to it. If I moved permanently to another country I would probably end up speaking and thinking in the local language ... BUT that's not going to happen. I am perfectly satisfied with living in my own country and speaking its language with its native population.

By the way: I once knew a boy whose father was an immigrant with an accent. The boy spoke like his father until he got into school - then he almost overnight started to speak Standard Danish like his mother and his teachers and comrades. I guess that must be a case of latent bilingualism.

[Le Baron]

Yeah, that was a dumb post from me.

Maybe not, and the article was hardly 'research', it's just a magazine type overview. My uncle moved to Canada aged 25, he might have been older, 28 perhaps, and within a year he had a 'Canadian accent'. Also deliberately saying uncharacteristic things like 'trash' instead of 'rubbish' or just 'the bins'. He also once referred to microwaving something as 'nuking it', when we all thought it just sounded daft. I feel confident in saying it's a form of fakery, because about a decade ago he started reverting to his real accent when he telephoned my father and grandmother. I once answered the phone on a visit and he spoke and I said 'who is it?' and when we'd confirmed each other he dropped back into the Canadian voice and explained he did it for my grandmother. Can it be possible for him to have two 'real' accents?

Some people just don't want to stick out like a sore thumb or are willing and eager to blend in. I still have the same accent - more or less - I had when I was about, say, 15 and I've lived outside England for a long time. It's not a 'prestige' accent, but its the one I speak in and it's fine. Here are two more notable examples I experienced:

Two brothers from around where I lived as a boy in Cumbria. Their parents divorced and they went to Great Yarmouth for the summer to be with their father and came back with accents local to Great Yarmouth. One summer!

A friend from university. One day halfway through the second or third year I arranged to meet him at the central library and he didn't arrive. So I went into town and to a sandwich shop and from inside I saw him sauntering past. So I caught up with him and asked why he'd not turned up. He said he didn't recall making an appointment. But he said it in a completely artificial RP-type accent. His real accent was from Stockport, somewhat Mancunian-like. He also said to me: you'll get nowhere in life with your 'alreet' and your flat cap (I didn't wear one). He kept up this accent for the rest of the course and as long as I knew him. Yet it would fail at times, with mixed vowels in sentences where words have the same vowel sound: 'I'll have to run for the bus'. One of the 'u' sounds flat the other open. Ridiculous.

If that's not an affectation...

[Cainntear]

If that's not an affectation...

...then it's imperfect acquisition of accent.