• Hey, guest user. Hope you're enjoying NeoGAF! Have you considered registering for an account? Come join us and add your take to the daily discourse.

Do people lose their accents when they're in a country long enough?

Status
Not open for further replies.

chase

Member
I've been softening my R's and various other small things since I've been here in the UK. Apparently the change is more pronounced around my in-laws. Subconsciously trying to fit in? I guess so.
 
D

Deleted member 1235

Unconfirmed Member
yes,

my kiwi accent has faded. Not entirely gone, but everyone says 'what happened to your accent' if I speak with them.

If it's not your native language you'll probably adapt the accent of the country you're in. I know loads of germans that already spoke that funny german english, then they go abroad and return sounding like and American/Aussie and even an indian once. That was really funny.
 

m3k

Member
i did but some words i say a lil differently and when im around people with a new zealand accent, i start to pick it up quickly

haha i miss my accent
 
I haven't moved to another country , I just went 100 miles away to go to college . That was enough for every single person I met to tell me "wow , what a strong accent , you're not from here ." Two months later , my accent had started to fade away . Now I don't have it anymore , even though I can still talk using my old accent , but I have to concentrate :lol

My sister though , has moved to the same town , and her accent has gotten worse , somehow .
 

HylianTom

Banned
Not the same as moving to another country, but my cajun accent faded pretty well as I got older and moved from Louisiana. It still emerges when I'm excited/agitated/emotional, or when I'm on the phone with older family members. My partner teases me about it all the time.

Going to college in Mississippi put a tiny, tiny bit of twang in my voice. But on the last trip back, there were two separate occasions where girls told me, "You don't sound like yer from 'round here." I'm guessing that it'll get more pronounced when we move back there.
 
My homie was living in the UK for 3 years. And he still was dropping them "Nah mean!" "Wut up dun?" "Yo shun, wat's good!" So yeah, it depends. Look at Peter Moore. His british accent is not noticeable anymore.
 

Puck

Banned
You don't lose your accent, you just adapt to your surroundings subliminally and take on what others say, it's common for it to "evolve" more than "disappear"
 

baultista

Banned
I met an old friend today who has been in Texas for the past two years. She has a very strong Texan accent now, but IDK if she fakes it or not.

She certainly doesn't have the "Canadian" accent anymore.


On a side note, "y'all" is pretty infectious.
 
I know a lot of people who spent their childhood in Hong Kong, moved elsewhere at the age of, say, 8, and as 30 year-olds stilll have a thick Chonger accent.
 

Staccat0

Fail out bailed
baultista said:
I met an old friend today who has been in Texas for the past two years. She has a very strong Texan accent now, but IDK if she fakes it or not.

She certainly doesn't have the "Canadian" accent anymore.


On a side note, "y'all" is pretty infectious.[/QUOTE]
Everyone I know who has moved to texas (including me) picks up "y'all":lol
It used to bug me, but now I just think it sounds friendly :)

Also, my mom who is Canadian, no longer has much of an accent, but my grandmother who is a Brit by birth but has lived in the US forever DOES.
 

Tamanon

Banned
Depends on the person. My accent changes depending on how many other southerners I'm interacting with regularly. I go from Yankee to Good ol' boy.
 

cvxfreak

Member
I was in Singapore for a week and some of their English pronunciation was rubbing off on me by the fourth day. Lah~
 

3dmodeler

Member
In school I met a Vietnamese guy that was born and raised in America and has the sterotypical asian accent. It's weird cause his buddies can speak fluent English and they were raised overseas. I also know a Cantonese guy from Hong Kong that has settled in America and forgot most of his native langauge but still speaks English with a thick Chinese accent.
 

methane47

Member
Its strange for me... Because I never really had an accent..

I'm from the caribbean but I speak very properly so much so that when I went to the states for school people always questioned where in the US i was from...

but also sucked because that means i didn't get any girls with my accent :(

And also sucks because now that i'm back in the caribbean People think i'm a sellout because I lost my accent.. and they dont believe that i always spoke like this.

:\
 

justjohn

Member
yep. i was born in ghana and moved to UK 8ys ago and my accent is now fully british. no trace of african or ghanaian.
 
My mom has no trace of latin american accent in the U.S. I do and all my aunts do too. It depends on the person, I think. My grandmother lived in Venezuela for forty years and still sounded like a joke character.
 

EvilMario

Will QA for food.
Amusingly, many people can tell I'm from the States with my accent here in Toronto. Good ol' west coast accent, I didn't even know there was one!
 

Gyrian

Member
It can happen.
My spanish accent, even vocabulary, has changed a lot since I'm now surrounded with a completely different set of spanish speakers.
 

Outlaw

Banned
It depends, if you keep speaking your native language, you won't. Not only that but if you stop using your native language, then when you try speaking it, you will have an accent when you do.
 
Patriots7 said:
Younger you are the more it's likely.

This.

I lost my Filipino accent while my mom retained hers for the most part.

Then again, I kinda pick up accents if I'm exposed to them frequently. There was this Aussie girl that I used to hang out with every day about 15 years ago and now I catch myself sometimes pronouncing certain words like she does even to this day.
 
I don't know about accents but when I went to Italy for 3 weeks and came back to Canada, I found myself forgetting how to speak english at times. I would just draw a blank. If I moved there I'm sure I'd forget the english language by a good 50%.
 

otake

Doesn't know that "You" is used in both the singular and plural
I don't think you ever truly lose it. It's just harder to notice it. My first language is Spanish but I've been speaking English for so long it takes people more than one conversation to notice I have an accent. What I think is that it comes out less often and on select words. I've noticed this with recordings of myself and multiple conversations with Russians.

Anecdotal, but it is my experience.
 

itsinmyveins

Gets to pilot the crappy patrol labors
I'm very self-conscious about my accent the few times I actually speak english. I'm trying so hard to have a neutral accent or whatever you wanna call it and not sound all like "bork bork bork" or something.
 

genjiZERO

Member
depends on the person. Personally I'm pretty amenable to accents. When I lived in the Caribbean I picked up some of the dialect hard. An ex-girlfriend who is English, but spent nearly half her live in NY has this bizarre English/American hybrid accent. The English all thought she sounded American, and Americans all thought she sounded English.

edit:

ItsInMyVeins said:
I'm very self-conscious about my accent the few times I actually speak english. I'm trying so hard to have a neutral accent or whatever you wanna call it and not sound all like "bork bork bork" or something.

Random question. When people make fun of English, in you native language, as a set of random phonetics what does it sound like? I've always wondered about how people are condescending to English in other languages.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Top Bottom