# After living around people with another accent, does your own accent begin to sound unfamiliar?

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/after-living-around-people-with-another-accent-does-your-own-accent-begin-to-sound-unfamiliar/531985>\
**Category:** In My Humble Opinion\
**Created:** [March 10, 2010, 4:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/after-living-around-people-with-another-accent-does-your-own-accent-begin-to-sound-unfamiliar/531985 "2010-03-10T16:28:26Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 2\
**Page:** 2

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**Author:** ![sandra\_nz](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/eada6e/32.png) [@sandra\_nz](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/sandra_nz)\
**Post date:** [March 11, 2010, 11:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/after-living-around-people-with-another-accent-does-your-own-accent-begin-to-sound-unfamiliar/531985/21 "2010-03-11T11:20:18Z")

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Kiwi living in the UK for three years now. I’ve started having trouble distinguishing NZ from Australian accents, which is quite funny to me, given that I used to find them so different and easy to tell apart.

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**Author:** ![China\_Guy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/779978/32.png) [@China\_Guy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/China_Guy)\
**Post date:** [March 11, 2010, 11:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/after-living-around-people-with-another-accent-does-your-own-accent-begin-to-sound-unfamiliar/531985/22 "2010-03-11T11:29:39Z")

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I don’t find American accents abnormal and I’ve lived outside of the US for 20+ years.

That said, I know that some of the things I say now like “cheers” or occaisionally “mate” has to sound completely abnormal and contrived to my homies or family.

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