I was listening to an interview with Jacques Pepin (who has a new book out) on NPR today, and was struck by how strong his accent is - given that, AFAIK, he’s basically lived, worked, and even been a TV personality in the US for something like 50 years now.
Does anyone else feel the same way? Do you think it’s because he (probably) didn’t study English formally at a young age, or make a conscious effort to get rid of his accent (which, after all, might be something of a selling point for a French chef) as an adult? Or do you think the way he speaks is more or less typical for someone speaking a second language, even given the fact he’s (I believe more or less) been immersed in it for many decades?
Wolfgang Puck and Arnold are two other conspicuous accents from the Germanic Branch.
Probably a combination of factors. But I tend to think it has more to do with a person’s inherent neurological wiring and their speech centers. Probably some kind of “resistance” in certain individuals, not necessarily external factors, something ingrained.
I think it might also be that they all sort of learned English “on the job”, or organically, without proper formal study or instruction.
My father has been in America since he was 18. He is 63 now. Still clearly sounds like a Polish immigrant. The same with mom, except she has been here 38 years. For that matter, pretty much all my mom and dad’s friends, who have been here for 30-40 years, are unmistakably Polish in their accents.
Losing your accent is quite difficult to do for most people, from my observation.
My Spanish teacher in college, and head of the Spanish department, was Greek. He spoke Greek-accented English, but his Spanish was largely unaccented. His story was that he didn’t put in the effort to parrot an American accent, but he regretted his decision and so basically tried harder with Spanish.
My gf’s parents came from France in their mid 20’s and they have very pronounced French accents. Her mom speaks Polish as well with a strong French accent.
Which kind of leads to The Question. Is there a language gene? Could we simply manipulate an amino acid in sequence with today’s genetic engineering and/or selective breeding and create a fluent polyglot… or even a polymath? Can we do this interspecially?
My father moved to the US and began to learn English when he was 23. He’s now 68 and speaks English fluently, but he still has a thick accent. He speaks very clearly and is perfectly intelligible, but you can tell right away he’s not from around here.
It’s hard to lose an accent if you learn a new language in adulthood, even early adulthood. That’s just the way our brain works. We start to hardwire our connections during puberty, and lose a lot of flexibility that the younger brain had.
If he came over hear at age 25, I would be surprised if he was able to lose his accent.
As for pulykamell’s parents, they probably have their native accents reinforced by hanging around with a lot of Polish immigrants, speaking Polish much of the time.
I can attest that it’s difficult to lose an accent even as a native English speaker. I grew up with a heavy Boston accent. I started working on losing it in my 20s (I’m 43 now), but I still have difficulty pronouncing words that end in ‘r’ and ‘g’. I learned the words in a Boston accent and I still have to “fix” them as I say them. I don’t think I will ever reach a point where they come out naturally.
I learned Spanish fluently as a young adult (it was my major in college and I went to grad school for Spanish linguistics).
I always made a very conscious effort not only to learn and imitate all the lexical, grammatical, and idiomatic/pragmatic stuff, but also the accent (I happened to learn the European/Castilian dialect, so yeah, I “lisp” :D).
As a result, over the years countless native Spanish-speakers have expressed surprise to me that I’m actually neither from Spain nor even a native speaker. The seeming natural authenticity of my accent had them fooled.
I say this not to brag, or anything, but to suggest that in many cases, as with so much else in life, it’s a matter of the effort that’s put into it. Consequently, when I meet someone foreign-born who’s lived in the US for 40+ years and still has such a thick accent that they’re scarcely intelligible, I get a little annoyed. It’s like I think to myself, “Look, no one’s making you learn English, and I don’t care if you don’t. But if you do, goddamnit! Learn to at least imitate what you hear!” That’s probably not a politically correct attitude, but there you are.
On the other side of the coin, my s-i-l emigrated to New Zealand about 10 years ago. She’s all but lost her American accent and sounds (at least to her family here) like a born Kiwi.
Is this a “hard-wiring” issue as well? Granted it’s not exactly a new language, but her adaptation to the NZ dialect was striking.
It seems that, as children, we are openly attuned to every sound the human voice box can make. As we get older, we start to re-inforce the connections in the brain that pick up the sounds we commonly hear and lose the ability to easily tune into the multitude of sounds would were able to as a child.
Here’s a question: When you learn a foreign language, do you *gain *the accent of that language, or *lose *your native accent? I knew an Israeli who said he was confused every time someone said he spoke with an accent until he found out they meant “foreign accent” and not “American accent.”