Actors in movies show that it’s possible to work with a dialect coach to produce an accent that’s convincing even to native speakers. Think Christian Bale in Batman or Hugh Laurie in House.
If someone were to continue performing in that same accent for an extended period time with no reversion back to their previous accent, does that eventually just become the natural way they speak or is “putting on an accent” always occupying a different part of your brain from “speaking normally”?
I lived in London for a couple of years and I while I never picked up the accent, I did pick up the forms of speech and the local slang. I do, however, know some expats that have lost their American accents for the most part. I think it depends on the person and their situation.
But acting and performing is a different deal. It all takes thought, practice, and planning and I can’t believe anyone who is crafting an accent as part of a role would ever just slip into that accent unconsciously. The fact that it’s a “performance” means it’s done consciously.
Accents definitely do drift over time. I had a strong southern accent as a child, then lost it when I went to a more urban high school and remained in that community. My friend from that same school, who I remember having a neutral accent, retreated into the countryside and now has a very Mayberry way of speaking.
A neutral observer might say that we were both speaking in an affected manner either before or after, but I’d disagree.
Of course. It happens to actors and other people who speak for a living all the time. Pierce Brosnan, Portia de Rossi, and John Mahoney, for example, have completely lost their childhood accents to the point that they can’t do them any more.
If they lost their accents, it’s not because of being actors. It’s because of living away from “home”. But I’d like to see a cite that they can no longer speak in the native accents.
Also, the other posts so far are not addressing the actual question of the OP-- about changing an accent because you’ve affected one for a very long period of time to the point where it becomes your natural way of speaking. Not because you gradually lost your accent do to exposure to other accents.
Technically, the only correct answer is, no. Your “natural accent” is defined as the one that you came by “naturally.” So one you worked on having instead, would have to be called your “acquired accent.” Or something like that.
Anyway, there are two main things that cause an accent: social surroundings, and neurobiology. The first changes all the time, for people living in high transient societal areas. The latter usually only changes with accidents or disease (look up Foreign Accent Syndrome).
I have no idea what I sounded like when I was very young. I’ve been told I developed a British element to my accent while I was in school there as a child, and then developed a more Southern American accent upon returning and growing up in Virginia. I have no idea, because there are no recordings of me.
I suspect that some actors who practice another accent will have it “stick,” and some wont, depending on their neurobiology. Some of us are more malleable than others in this.
And I suspect that since accents depend on the musculature in your face and throat, that just as lifting weights or whatever can permanently alter your physique, practicing an accent again and again, will alter the musculature structure of your face, such that you’ll never really speak exactly as you did before, because of the physical changes, as much as because of the neuro-pathway habits.
I’ve heard or read interviews with all three of them in which they said that they intentionally changed their accents—De Rossi for her acting roles as American characters, Mahoney so he would fit in to the U.S. military and hide his English background, and Brosnan so he wouldn’t get beaten up at school for being Irish in England. Only De Rossi did it after she became a professional actor, but all three were affecting accents that weren’t their own to play some kind of role.
I’m not going to go looking for cites to prove such a trivial point. You’re welcome to do it yourself.
I speak in American Cowboy Drawl. Chuck Yeager style. Pretty sure it didn’t come natural. I was taught to say things the way they were pronounced in Webster’s. Us white folk in Albuquerque didn’t think we had a accent at all. Used to mimic my southrun relatives and all, and it more or less coalesced in the years I thought I was a cowboy in Montana. It’s the only way I can talk. A gal at work said I was obviously from the south. I said, nope, totally affected.
There are examples of people who deliberately changed their accents. I know on person who is quite proud of how she affected and then came to use normally a higher class British accent instead of her lower class one, with the specific desire of improving her lot in life - as she perceived that in the UK her accent branded her.
Three politicians come to mind as well. Maggie Thatcher, and here in Oz, Bob Hawke and Julia Gillard. All three of them deliberately affected accents that they perceived improve their standings in politics. Thatcher worked hard on her upper class tones, and curiously both Hawke and Gillard worked hard to affect a rasping accent that hid the rounded tones of their original accents, with both Hawke and Gillard ending up with similar accents.
There is some suggestion that when people get drunk their accent may tend to revert, but YMMV.
My brother spent two years stationed in SW Louisiana and came back with a southern accent. He lost it, but it came back when he spoke with a southerner.
I once met a man who had spent his career at Cambridge U. and sounded just like any other Oxbridge person. But I knew that he was originally from Philadelphia like me.
Then there was Richard Feynman who spent much of his career in southern California. But when I went to a talk he gave he spoke in pure Brooklynese. But then in the question period, he reverted to standard California. Presumably the latter was his unrehearsed accent by then.
I grew up on Long Island, and when I went to college I was told that I had a thick accent. Between my time at college and the Navy, I consciously tried to affect a more neutral accent. There are still some words that are a dead giveaway, like walk and talk (wawk and tawk), but mostly my accent is gone, and I have trouble using it when I go “home”. Most of the people I grew up with say I sound like I come from somewhere else, but they are not sure where.
So if I travel and live abroad, I can get rid of my wiseguy nasal Chicago accent? Nice.
What of those people who force it so badly it becomes an awful merging hybrid of the two accents… example: Madonna.
I moved to Florida from the UK when I was 14. After about two weeks of “OMG THE BRITISH KID!” at school, I got tired of the attention and started affecting an accent that sounded (to me) like the locals. After a couple of weeks a friend asked if I could “talk normally” and as it turned out, no, I couldn’t. Still can’t, but if I’m around British people, I revert to something between my old and new accents (even though the switch happened 20 years ago).
I had done plenty of moving around before (military family) so picking up local pronunciations was something I’d already learned. In particular, I had worked hard to drop the “upper-class West Country” accent of my birth when I moved to Birmingham at 10.
I know a couple people from here on the SDMB who grew up in Burnley in Northern England. They completely dropped their Northern accents when they moved south. The reason was the same - a Northern accent isn’t seen to be as educated or cultured as a Southern one.
As a Maryland youngster, we’d visit family in Alabama for two weeks every other year. It was very easy to slip into that accent and very tough to shake it off once home.
It used to be the case, and maybe still is, that people from the Southeastern U.S, would try to lose their Southern accents if they moved north to New York or Philadelphia, for just the same reason; which shows how silly the whole thing is.
My (Alabama) mother lost hers when she moved north with her new husband and, get this, it never re-occurred during subsequent visits.
There’s a difference between loosing an accent naturally and deliberately seeking to change an accent. Many people have stories of the former but I’m only really interested in the latter.
John Barrowman (of Doctor Who/Torchwood/Arrow fame) was born in Scotland and lived there until he was 8, when his family moved to Illinois. He now has the most generic-sounding midwestern accent you can imagine but when he visits family in Scotland he slips naturally into a thick Scottish brogue.
I think in his case he deliberately adopted a native accent to blend in and it became natural over time.
In fact, Barrowman has stated at Conventions that even just talking on the phone to his parents triggers him to switch into the Scottish brogue.