I lived in Massachusetts until age 9. Very strong Boston accent.
I acquired a southern accent after my family moved back here. I got some teasing at school until I developed my new accent.
I never got an opportunity to use my original accent again. It’s long gone now.
My ears perk up whenever I hear someone from Boston.
I remember Bob Hawke. After a couple of years in Canberra, somebody interviewed on the ABC said “He’s got an Australian accent now”. Meaning, of course, that he’d dropped his Melbourne accent and acquired a Sydney one. (He came originally from WA by way of Oxford, but when I first heard him he was working at the Trades Hall Council).
I can’t see any definition of a natural accent other than one that is so much of a habit that you use it without even trying. And I don’t see any reason why that wouldn’t happen, and it seems to reflect what happens to a lot of people who set out to change their accent, since have a non-prestige dialect.
I don’t see how it would be any different than when people learn a language so well they start thinking in that language, or automatically respond in the right language when spoken to in either.
For a brief time I worked with a guy who had an Australian accent.
I asked him about his background and when he came to the states and such and was stunned to be told that he was born in the U.S. as were his parents and had no connection to Australia. And that the reason for his accent was that he had a speech impediment when he was young and found it easier to talk by manipulating an accent. When he got older and the impediment was cured the accent stuck.
I never did find out what the impediment was, and to be polite I never pried about it.
I understand, but the thing is, the mechanisms involved with an accent change are the same regardless of the reason.
Just my own experience, but how I speak and pronounce a given word, isn’t through hearing myself moment by moment, and choosing how to say it. It’s more like launching an ap on a computer. I find the place in my mind where the word it stored, and “click on the icon” to launch it. And where I have different accents, I have entire libraries of word pronunciations stored together, so that once I start speaking, I will remain with that accent until I finish the sentence. Shifting from one accent to another mid sentence requires conscious effort.
I suspect that some people retain a memory of how to contort their mouths and throats without changes, more than others do. Hence some people revert more easily than others. But I suspect the most common result, is that even people who dorevert to an older accent, never quite get back entirely to it, because over time, if they remain using a desired accent long enouugh, their memories are replaced word by word.
Plus, any word that we learn anew in an acquired accent, will only be known IN that accent, so even if most of our “foreign” accent disappears when we go back home, any new words we learned will still be spoken with the acquired accent. Here in DC, I deal with people from all over the world on a daily basis, and I’ve long noticed that no matter how strong their home accent is, any words that they did not learn at home in English before they came, will be pronounced with an American accent. It’s really quite funny.
Most amusing of all, are the surprising hybrids: I ran across a guy speaking with a strong Jamaican accent a while back, and since I didn’t think he looked at all Jamaican, I asked where he was from originally. he answered “Russia” with a VERY strong Russian accent. But he had learned all his English from a Jamaican, so that’s how he spoke it, including saying “mon” at the end of every other sentence.
There is a critical difference between accents acquired by immersion and accents deliberately affected. The former is almost automatically reinforced as everyone around you speaks with that accent. Most people pick up the accent without thinking about it. You hear it spoken and you respond in kind. For someone wanting to affect a new accent outside of this immersion it is going to be vastly more difficult. This is why I gave examples of people who had chosen to change their accent to one that they perceived as being socially or politically advantageous to them. (Two who found it valuable to affect accents from a higher social class, two who found it valuable to affect accents of lower classes.) All all these cases they were not immersed in the accent - and indeed, all of their accents became to a greater or lesser extent something of a curious fake.
My old lady is from East L.A. but has lived 30 years in East Texas and sounds like a hick.I was born here and still enjoy it when people tell me they thought I was a dumbass when they heard my accent. Which brings me round to the eternal question, why did G W Bush affect that incredibly ignorant accent? A degree from Yale doesn’t mean you’re smart, most of our Presidents went to Yale or Harvard and they’ve ranged from ignorant to criminal, but saying ‘nucular?’ Damn, I don’t even say that when I’m drunk.
Accents are learned when a child and are in place by the late teens. Bush grew up in Midland Texas and has a slight west Texas accent. His pronunciation is common in the South and was shared by Carter, who studied nuclear physics in the navy, and Bill Clinton.
I speak the accent of “the teeming millions”…and darn proud!!