On my family’s experience I would say that the 2nd generation almost always speak locally accented language. Kids are much more influenced, in general, by their peers, than their family. I would think there is even survival value in this. The obvious exception is if you stay in a very close-knit community.
Here is my family’s experience. My mother’s father, born around 1885, was one year old when his family emigrated to Philadelphia. His native language would have been Yiddish and he had no accent in English. My mother’s mother was 13 when she came over and had a barely discernible accent. Not surprisingly, they spoke English at home and my mother didn’t even learn Yiddish until she got married and then to speak to her in-laws. My father’s family came over as young marrieds in around 1903, a date I am guessing since all their 7 children were born here (well, born in Philly actually) and the oldest in 1904. He grew up in a neighborhood (South Philly) in which almost all the kids were Yiddish speaking. So he really didn’t start learning English till he went to school. Nonetheless, the only accent he had was a South Philly accent and that fairly strong. My mother grew up in West Philly, as did I, and we both lacked the typical “Philadelphia accent” which is probably associated with South Philly.
Now I am not sure which generation 2nd and 3rd generation refers to but I am guessing that my parents, both born in the US to parents not born there, are 2nd and so I am 3rd. And, as I said, my maternal grandfather, arriving at age 1, already had no accent.
So, even if the second generation grows up with native speakers, they’ll sound accent-less to the natives. Which means ghetto-ize subgroups will take longer to lose the accent, if they ever do.
I was born in Scotland. When I was 3, I moved to Northern Ireland and quickly adopted that accent. When I was 6, I moved to Canada and quickly adopted that accent.
Kids are very, very malleable at that age. You don’t need generations of people to eradicate an accent. Kids who immigrate in their teen years may retain some of their original accent, otherwise it’s gone. No kid wants to be an outlier.
“I work myself to death just to fit in.” Pete Townshend.
I have a few features of a New Jersey accent but never lived there and probably picked them up from my parents. It isn’t a full match to the OP because it’s another English language accent but might be an interesting anecdote.
I thought it was the case that some regional accents preserve features of immigrant languages - e.g. Yiddish in New York City accents, German and/or Scandinavian languages in the Upper Midwest.
There are exceptions. I was in a bar near Oakland (CA) and a dude down the rail was talking about his kids and their school and the like. Looked like any average working dude - clean shaven, short nails and a little dirt here and there on his t-shirt. After a couple minutes I asked him “So what Dutchland did you grow up in?” He froze for a minute and said “Indiana”.
Amish and former Amish are mostly 10th generation or better here and when speaking English they still have a certain accent or cadence you can pick up on if you know it.
The friends I’ve had that were born of immigrants, but grew up entirely in the US have no trace of an accent from their parents. One was from Thailand, and spoke Thai fine, but his English sounded the same as any other person in my class.
I had one friend from India, who came over himself when he was about 13. His sister was 9. He retained his Indian accent, while his sister had no trace of it by the time she was 12.
So, it depends…sometimes it can be a first generation immigrant.
Less than one generation, if they move when they’re young enough.
Husband came over to America with his family when he was 6 months, and his sisters were only slightly older. My parents-in-law have very strong and thick accents, but neither he nor his siblings has even a trace of one.
I think this second post by the OP indicates that what is being asked is a carryover accent in the “original” non-US, non-English “foreign” language, not the English language accent of whatever region they grew up in in the US.
For example, my parents are immigrants from China (by way of Taiwan), and I speak Mandarin natively from having grown up in a Chinese speaking household. But as someone born and raised in the US I’m sure I have no detectable non-native accent when speaking English, other than a New York accent of some kind, and I think that’s what most people would expect (other than from someone who grew up in a “language ghetto”).
What I think the OP is asking is (using myself as an example), as someone who learned Chinese at home and NOT from the community, did I pick up Chinese regional accent(s) from my parents?
The answer is kind of yes and no. My Dad in particular has a noticeable accent (different from my Mom or other adults of his generation that I spoke with growing up) that’s rooted in his hometown of Yangzhou in China. But I don’t think I speak with that accent; I think I talk more like my mother, who did make an effort to make me say things “right”. For example I know there were a few things my Dad says so differently that I thought they were distinct synonyms growing up, and when I asked them what the difference was between X and Y was told that X was just my Dad’s “rural” (literally, earth-language) mispronunciation of Y that I should not repeat :).
It surprised me when at some point in my life I heard her talking on the phone to her father and she shifted into another accent completely. I forget what part of China her father was from but the tonal patterns were different. I could follow her conversation mostly fine because the words were the same, just the tones were changed. I should ask her what region that was. She never talked like that with her sisters or brothers or mother.
I did get sent to a few years of Saturday Morning Chinese School though, so I also had more formal training or drilling in standard pronunciations. Nowadays, in casual conversation with strangers in Mandarin, they usually realize I’m an ABC by my limited vocabulary - accentwise, I can apparently pass for someone from Taiwan, though I do sometimes slip up and pronounce some very common phrases the way my Dad does (e.g., “bu”, which is “not”, pronounced like 'bah" in “bu hao”).
Good catch. We’re all answering the wrong question.
This really depends on how much the child is surrounded by native speakers, how much the parent teach the children to speak, etc.
If the parents don’t speak to the child in the parents’ native language and there aren’t enough other native speakers around then the child will be no better than any of the surrounding children who do not have parents from a foreign country.
I see you are an ABC, (American born Chinese) as my Taiwanese wife says. I know Japanese who were born in the US and when they come back to Japan, there are noticeable differences in their Japanese.
Yes by the 2nd or 3rd generation do to TV , media and school they have no accents .I do find a lot of 1nd generation have little to no accents if they are kid or teen or older but just work really hard to have no accents .
It hard to have no accents . Look native born citizens have hard time to spell ,write and grammar never mind immigrants.
Depends on the age they were when they arrived in the US. Children younger than about 13 won’t have a noticeable accent when they speak English, and they’ll have a good accent in their parents’ language, too, if they learn to speak it.
Don’t make me look this up, but it’s related to neurochemical changes that occur during puberty. I am not making this up.
I don’t remember where I read this but a linguist postulated that a child who can pronounce a language by age 3 can always sound like a native speaker. They may not have the vocabulary or may not have the actual language ability, but they will *sound *native.
My personal experience is that kids in the US for high school, *usually *sound culturally and linguistically like native speakers. It is rare, by contrast, for someone that came to the US for university to sound like a native US speaker.
From personal experience. My kids were born and raised in China, and the eldest went to local school through grade 4. The twins were in pre-school and came to the US for kindergarten. My eldest, at 12, sounds very American and it’s rare when I catch something non-native. My eldest twin at 7, still has a lot of Chinglish. Much more than I ever expected. My youngest twin, also age 7 is autistic with severe speech issues. Her English has a very American pronunciation although her limited Chinese sounds quite good.
We live in a very affluent neighborhood although there are 50 languages spoken at home by students at the local elementary school. So, you get a weird dynamic of non-native American English speaking kids as the majority student population.
My youngest’s special needs class is within a different elementary school in the same district. Much fewer languages, with Spanish as the dominant language and a much lower socio-economic level.
All of my grandparents came here from Eastern Europe, met each other, and had kids (my parents + siblings). Though my grandparents had quite thick accents, none of their kids did.
Well, definitely better than James Doohan or the Irish Springs commercials, but not 100%. I can very easily tell the difference between various UK and Irish dialects though, whereas most North Americans have a hard time discerning Irish, from English, from Welsh, from Northern Irish, from Scottish, etc.
I went to high school with a brother and sister (I briefly dated the sister) of Ashkenaz Jewish ethnicity. Both of them spoke with a distinct accent that I was pretty sure is not of American origin. Which I found curious, because they’d been born and raised in America. The brother (2 years older) had a pronounced accent while his younger sister had it only very slightly. I never found out if their parents were immigrants, or if there is some Ashkenazic enclave in America somewhere with its own Yiddish-based accent. By this, I do not mean New York Jewish accent, because that is very American. These kids’ accent had nothing of New York in it and sounded vaguely European. Apart from that family, I’ve never known American-born and raised people to speak with (an apparently) non-American accent.
is autistic with severe speech issues. Her English has a very American pronunciation although her limited Chinese sounds quite good.