American Hebrew
I hear a lot of Vietnamese spoken, having Vietnamese in-laws and there being a big Vietnamese community in the D.C. area. Many born-and-raised Vietnamese now have American accents that even I can pick out. It’s been 30+ years that many have been in the U.S. They also mix in a lot of English words and tend not to know or use the Vietnamese terms for anything invented in the past 30 years.
My wife is Taiwanese, I’m an American and we speak Japanese at home. There are a number of differences in our Japanese, including the accents. She speaks Japanese with a Chinese accent and I speak it with an American accent. Our 2 1/2 year old daughter’s first native language was Japanese, not only from home, but – more importantly – from day care.
We recently took our children to Taiwan where they stayed for six weeks. When we got there, people said my daughter spoke Chinese with an American accent, and not a Japanese accent although English is her third language. More on why below.
One of the differences between Mandarin, English and Japanese is the break between the aspirated and non-aspirated consonants such as “b” and “p.” There is no difference in the position of the mouth or the tongue for these two, it’s only in the degree of aspiration.
Research has been done on how people hear the difference between the two sounds. They digitally mix a “b” and a “p” in 5% intervals, and ask people to report what they hear. Rather than hear a blend, people will hear a distinct “b” sound for a certain period, then it will suddenly change to a “p” sound. Native speakers of various languages will hear this break at different places.
Mandarin’s “b” is more heavily aspirated than the English or Japanese “b.” This means that when my wife says a “b” in Japanese, it can sound closer to a “p” for my American ears.
All babies start off with the ability to develop into any language, but as they grow older, the brain starts to lock in a particular model of sounds. So, a baby growing up hearing Chinese will hear and speak “b’s” with more aspiration than a baby who was raised in the States.
The differences between aspirated and non-aspirated consonants in only one aspect of a person’s accent, but there is a distinct footprint of the native language in how a person hears, and consequently speaks foreign languages.
This is one reason why my daughter was thought to have an American accent rather than a Japanese one, is that although she only speaks English as a third language, at 2 1/2, she isn’t locked into a Japanese language brain.
However, after being there for six weeks, she was able to sound like a native.
Or just watch some British sitcoms, here in the US.
Like Last of the Summer Wine, for example. I can understand only about two-thirds of what the little old guy (Compo) ever says.
Rubbish.
For example, there’s the pet peeve I’ve mentioned a few times in these forums – the sloppy use of the word “sort” in British English.
It might be helpful for contributors to this thread to use two different words for two different things: interference for the “accent” one’s first language imposes upon one’s second; and accent for the regional style of pronunciation of any language.
Since the OP used the words “American” and “second generation”, I took this to mean that he/she was interested first in whether one’s style of interference reflects the accent of the region where one acquired the second language. The answer is, of course, “yes” – for example, my first language is English, and my second language is Spanish – but I learned my Spanish in Yucatan, so the specific way in which I “mispronounce” Spanish includes sounds found in Yucatecan Spanish (“hard” consonants, eroved from Maya glottal stop consonants. e.g.)
The OP’s question is a bit more specific than this: What if you have a small community of people whose first language is that of the surrounding culture, but whose second language is the first language of their immigrant parents? This is just a slightly enlarged version of what happened when I spoke Spanish to the other American students who were with me in the Yucatan. We reinforced each others’ erroneous pronunciations of Spanish (interference), but in a way which also reflected the regional accent of the Spanish we were learning.
If we managed to keep our “community” going for years, our children would learn Yucatecan-accented Spanish as their first language, but speak second-language English to us – English that is even more interfered by Spanish, specifically the Yucatan-accent Spanish of their peers.
Thus we could compare, say, a child raised in Chicago of Polish parents, with a child raised in London of Polish parents. Both children will share some of the same Polish “mistakes” (in grammar as well as pronunciation, and also vocabulary), due to the interference of things which all English speakers share; but each will also make some “mistakes” distinct form the others’ (mainly in pronunciation), due to the different English regional accents spoken where they are raised.
C’mon, ascenray – I’m sure you know well that “lazy” and “sloppy” are not precise or helpful linguistic terms. I’m not trying to be PC – they just don’t help to clarify any issue.
(“Lax” is a precise term for certain states of speech-making muscles – maybe that’s what you meant? No, I think you meant that the semantic space occupied by the word “sort” has grown in British speech as compared to American. In any case, your general point is right on – that we shouldn’t exalt British English (any variety of it) as somehow being “better” than other varieties.)
This is a good point. Unfortunately, I can’t remember any specific examples, but the exact thing has happened to me, where I’ve used certain vocabulary words (often expletives or slang) in Poland that I’ve heard my parents or Chicago Poles use, but have been outmoded by about 20 years or more. It’d be a bit like hearing someone drop words like “mondo,” “gnarly,” and “phat” completely unironincally into English conversation.
I agree with the previous poster – this is a good point. Just enlarge this scenario, and you can see why colonial-settler language varieties are often “conservative” in some ways (including vocabulary). For example, if you are curious about how Spanish was spoken in parts of Spain in the 1500s and 1600s, just listen to how Spanish is spoken today in parts of Latin America, and you can hear a few reflections of this here and there – things which have since disappeared from Iberian Spanish.
Normally, that’s exactly what I would say. But when it comes to “sort,” I will toss away all my intellectual knowledge about language and breath satan’s fire all over the Island of Britain and leave nothing but a smoking, charred, hollow husk, cursing every poxy British soul to eternal torment.
I used to work with a guy who was from Colombia. Spanish had been his first language but his family came to the US when he was fairly young and his English was indistiguishable from a native-born American. He said his mother told him he had a terrible accent in Spanish – she said he sounded like a Puerto Rican. According to the mother this was not a good thing.
What’s the British use of “sort” that we’re talking about here? I’m sure I’ve heard it regularly, but can’t figure out what it is.
I’m running late. Could you get dinner sorted?
I know I’ve been a mess lately, but I’m getting sorted now.
This has gone on for long enough. We need this to be done with, so get it sorted.
In 250 years? Hell yes.
We lived in Lafayette 30 years ago. My wife, who speaks some French, managed a department of Cajuns. They told her that people living in towns 20 miles apart had different accents. Up until just before we got there, when there was a lot of road building due to oil, people were very isolated in SW Louisiana.
I didn’t realize that was a British-ism. I use this form, too, but I have spent a lot of time with British speakers, and sometimes I forget what’s not American English. So Americans don’t say this then?
So, a nice catch-all verb meaning completed, prepared, tidied, organized, assembled, oriented, recombobulated — all depending on context. That’s the nub of your complaint, I’m guessing?
It essentially means anything and nothing, all at the same time.And rarely does it have anything to do with actual sorting.
Nope. The closest we get to it is “sorted out,” as in “We need to get this mess sorted out,” but it isn’t used as habitually or as broadly as the British “sorted” is.
I’m not getting this from the OP. It seems the OP is also interested in the accent of the Amish. It is my understanding that the Amish (at least in Pennsylvania) learn German natively. I’m not sure if they grow up bilingual German/English or whether or not they start learning English later.
Actually, I know no such thing, and sorry but me no comprende english phonics. Villanueva is, in theory, bi-lla-NUE-ba, but I’m told I pronounce bi-ya-NUE-ba. Like I said, I can’t hear the difference myself.
Plus, you do know that there is no such thing as a single dialect spoken by all peninsulares, right? Cos if you don’t I’m telling you…