Some people can “change accents”. When I was studying Russian in HS, I started speaking german with a russian accent!
To some degree, most people’s accents are influenced by those that are around them.
Seems to me that Mel Gibson used to have a fairly distinct Australian accent, but he sounds pretty much “American” to me now.
And I may not be remembering this exactly right, but I seem to recall an interview some years back where he was saying that Americans thought he sounded Australian but Australians thought he sounded American…
Similar things have been said about Alister Cooke and Kelly Osbourne, for example, regarding whether their accents are English or American. To us, they’re English; to them, they’re American.
Mel Gibson is an interesting example. So far as I know, his family moved to the United States when he was 8 or so years old. The first movie I saw him in was the first Lethal Weapon – I knew he was from Australia, but I didn’t detect any accent. But in later movies, he sounded more Australian, as if he was trying to sound more American but not quite making it.
From my own observation, and from my reading in linguistics, I’d say that it’s a matter of familiarity or lack and psychology. People genuinely cannot hear phonemic distinctions that I can pick out. I used to drive a co-worker crazy when I would demonstrate the difference between saying a Thai graduate student’s name correctly and how she said it. The co-worker could not hear any difference although the grad student heard them distinctly. Most of use get brainwashed into only recognizing certain sounds as being part of “language” and live accordingly.
The human vocal tract is capable of making over 100 distinguishable sounds (don’t remember the exact number). But no one language uses more then about twenty or thirty.
When you are learning to speak, the muscles in your vocal tract develop according to which sounds you pick up from your environment and strive to imitate. If sounds originating from a particular point of articulation are not included in the languages you are speaking, the muscles that would have been associated with those sounds fail to develop.
That, for example, is one of the reasons why the United States has such a hard time with intelligence gathering in the Middle East. Arabic languages include sounds that originate further down in the vocal tract than anything in Indo-European languages. Which means that someone who has not spoken Arabic languages from a very young age can not be taught to speak that language without an accent. It’s physiologically impossible. The CIA and military intelligence groups have to recruit either immigrants from the Middle East or the (usually) first generation children of immigrants in order to have agents who can pass for locals in that part of the world.
Now, as far as people such as Arnold who acquire another language in adulthood (one not so far removed from their original language), that’s a different matter. It comes down to one’s ability to perceive subtle differences in tone and to imitate these differences. You will note that people with good musical ability often have an easier time with accents.
Mel Gibson, by the way, is American. He spent some time growing up in Australia, and picked up the accent, but never had any trouble reverting to “American”. Similarly, Alan Young, the human star of Mr. Ed, is from Scotland. When he came to America he worked very hard at losing his accent. But he found that he had no trouble going right back to it, and it is his authentic Scottish voice behind Scrooge McDuck.
Ted Koppel of ABC News grew up in England and has demonstrated on Letterman that he can instantly recall his original accent.
On the other hand, John Mahoney of “Frasier” who is English, joined up with the U.S. military and intentionally changed his accent, says he is unable to go back to his original accent.
To follow up on all the “what you learned as a kid” posts, I heard about a new study in the last couple of weeks (it was on NPR; sorry, no better cite) working with pre-speech children, from IIRC the ages of 8 mos to 16 mos, that demonstrated the acquisition of linguistic sounds and forms begins happening almost immediately, and has a pretty hard cutoff.
The study was summarized like this: Babies were exposed to a variety of languages at an early age, mostly by having speakers in tongues other than that of the babies’ parents simply come in and jabber at them, or among one another in the babies’ presence. For example, American babies would get to hear speakers of Mandarin Chinese, which has a set of vocal forms very different from American English, for some period of time. Then, months later, the babies were tested to see how they responded when they heard the language again, to see if they looked toward the speaker or otherwise responded. This is all pre-speech, remember. When compared to a control group of babies who had not been exposed to the alternative language, it was found that babies who had heard the Chinese or whatever were turning toward the speaker much more frequently than the babies who hadn’t heard it. The implication is that the control-group babies were less aware that the Chinese was a language they could or should understand; they were filtering out what they were paying attention to by what they had gotten used to. And this was before the babies themselves had even begun to speak beyond general babbling.
Obviously, this is a generalization; some people have more of a facility for this later in life. I myself have found I’m pretty good at hearing and replicating new sounds (an Australian co-worker tells me I have the best Australian accent of any American she’s ever heard), and in my experience people with a good ear for dialects and language sounds also tend to be pretty good musicians and/or singers. (Again, that’s a generalization, with exceptions, of course.) For what it’s worth, my brother shares my ability; back in high school, when we were both in language classes, we amused each other by speaking German with a British (generic BBC) accent. Since it’s my brother, it’s impossible to say whether this talent is something we were born with or the result of something in our upbringing. (Data points: My paternal grandmother is Mexican; my maternal uncle’s wife is Vietnamese. Quite a soup of languages floating around.)
Anyway, the point is, that study certainly indicates that recognition and reproducibility of sounds is a function the brain gets down to right away, and that once it’s been solidly learned, it’s difficult for many if not most people to transcend.
There are posts above yours which clearly demonstrate this is not the case.
Much of what we consider to be an accent is tonal. For Americans, just listen to British singers such as The Beatles or Sting or Irish singers such as Bono. You will hear only the slightest bit of accent, if any, in their songs. Then listen to them speak.
I am quite sure that the idea that the vocal chords or any other part of our physiology are adapted to any language is complete nonsense and no support for that can be found in reputable science.
There was a time when most people thought the Chinese or Africans could not speak “proper English” because their vocal chords were different which does not take much to see is nonsense.
There are plenty of people who can speak two or more languages without trace of a foreign accent and I count myself among them. If vocal chords are adapted to speak a certain language this would be impossible. There is no incompatibility between speaking different languages. This idea is such nonsense that I do not know how anyone can seriously propose it.
Language is all in the brain. As has been said, the brain can learn languages easier at a younger age and some people are more gifted than others but it is not impossible for everybody to learn a new accent as an adult. I know people who have done it and maybe they were gifted but also they dedicated a lot of effort and consinuous attention. It is this constant effort to shape what you do which will allow you to succeed.
Take anything you do reflexively. Do you cross or not cross your sevens? Do you write the date American style (month first) or European style (day first)? Beginning today, try to reverse that. It is not easy. At first you will instinctively go back to what you did. For many months it will take a very deliberate effort but after some months it gets easier and after a couple of years you will still have to think about it. Multiply this effort by 10,000 and you get the idea of how much effort it takes to shape your new accent. It is a constant effort butif you do it you can succeed. I know people who have done it.
So by that reasoning any foreigner who has an accent simply isn’t trying hard enough? That is not true.
I myself speak French and English fluently, but I learned both of those at a young age. Then I learned Spanish and can handle it fairly well, but I have a noticeable accent. I tried learning Vietnamese though and that is an entirely different story.
I am not arguing that there are anatomical differences. The vocal tract starts at the lungs and ends at the lips, and there many muscles in between that need to be trained to produce certain sounds. It may be more of a “coordination” issue, which still doesn’t mean it can be learned as an adult.
I’ve been reading up on this topic to see if there are studies on the matter. There are in fact plenty of studies but apparently no consensus. Most believe there is a “critical stage” because it is borne out by facts: nearly every adult learning a second language will have an accent. The question is whether that is entirely due to mental processes or whether there is a physical limitation. Even if it is primarily due to mental processes, that does not mean a person can eliminate an accent by being “conscientious”. It is much more fundamental than that. It is generally believed though that with exposure, practice and a consicentious effort, you can improve.
Here’s an article from the Linguistic Society of America that attempts to answer this question. IMHO, they don’t really provide much of an answer :
http://www.lsadc.org/faq/index.php?aaa=faqacc.htm
Here’s a quote that shows there is a lack of consensus on the issue (from a second-language learning site):
http://www.developingteachers.com/articles_tchtraining/pronpf_dimitrios.htm
I have a feeling this is evolving into a “great debate”…
Yes, this may be turning into a GD, but:
You are wrong, period. How has this been overlooked so consistently?
Cardinal, I hardly think someone’s perception of their own fluency is enough to prove anything. Heck, my own father (whose native tongue is French) thinks he speaks perfect English, but you should hear him…most people are too polite to point it out.
In any event, I provided links above that discuss the issue (both sides) and show there is no definative answer. I will continue to believe there is a physiological maturation, psychomotor and/or neuromuscular basis to foreign accents.
I’m no expert phycho/developmental linguist, but more anecdotes:
I really bellieve that people who are exposed to multiple languages at an early age, whether they ever end up becoming fluent in those other languages or not, will have an easier time learning additional languages, but people are all over the spectrum. My own case:
Native English speaker. Never studied another language formally until age 13, when I took a ridiculously slow Spanish class. I did grow up hearing bits of Hebrew and Yiddish in certain chunks of my environment, but never studied either in any concerted, methodical way.
Took Spanish, and later French, in high school. Got pretty fluent in Spanish by the end of high school, and majored in it in college. By the end of college, people frequently mistook me for a native or quasi-native speaker, but could never quite figure out where I was from. I also minored in Russian, but didn’t function well in it until spending time in the USSR after graduation. At the end of 1 semester, I was also mistaken for a native or quasi-native speaker. I’m a bit rusty in all my languages right now - the vocab isn’t what it once was - but am still mistaken for a native speaker. All my foreign language knowledge, unless you count a handful of songs and prayers in Hebrew learned completely by rote, was post-puberty, the point at which most experts believe the accent of the original language will never be lost entirely.
My college roomate: native Spanish speaker, started learning English uppon immigrating to the U.S. at age 12. Became fluent in English in midle school/ high school; majored in French & Italian in college. Is also taken for a native speaker of every language she knows, although she’s a bit rusty right now. What’s even more hilarious is that she married an English guy and moved to England, so now she speaks English with the barest perceptible hint of a Long Island/Salvadoran/British accent. She is such a mimic; she will speak in one kind of intonation to me, a different one to her husband, a third one to her kids, and yet another to her mom and siblings. It’s bizarre to hear!
I really think some people don’t try very hard, and some may try but don’t have the aptitude for some reason. But physiological differences that are set in stone at puberty? I don’t buy it.
Respectfully, that’s not true at all. When I moved to New York at seventeen, I spoke with a Spanish accent and got sick of people talking veeeerrryy slooooowly to me as if I couldn’t understand them. (Here’s a tip: just because someone speaks English with a foreign accent doesn’t mean they hear English with one as well.) Anyway, I was tired of being embarrassed to speak, so I made a strong effort to lose my accent.
Basically, I practiced a fake American accent, like English actors do, except unlike an actor, I was always “on”. Eventually I got so used to speaking with the fake accent that it became the way I speak naturally.
You can argue that I never lost the accent, I merely hid it, but that’s nitpicking. Bottom line, I don’t speak with an accent anymore and people have mistaken me on the phone for a white person, although sometimes if I get really upset I revert to a milder version of my old accent, except I notice it very clearly and adjust my speech accordingly.
What’s kind of funny is that the most useful people I learned from when I was trying to sound “American” were news anchors and sports announcers because they enunciate everything clearly and use little or no slang. It’s amazing that I don’t sound like Bob Costas. 
I think the point is made. There is no physiological development that definately prohibits an adult from learning a perfect accent in a new language. Period.
I think it’s mostly psychological: if you’re old when you start on a new accent it can be difficult to get it right because there are just some sounds you don’t notice. Like the difference between my friend’s Chinese name and the word (I think it was Cantonese) for “stupid”. It took me several days of him telling me off before I saw the difference.
Another: my Hungarian friend has a cool language (I think so anyway) and I can say some words in Hungarian, but one sound I’m having trouble making. It’s found in the word for the number one (egy). The “gy” is pronounced like a combination of a hard and soft g and a y. Whenever I try to say it it ends up as one of those sounds rather than the proper sound, leading me to belive that it’s psychological rather than physical. I feel like I could make the sound, but my brain doesn’t know how to tell my voice to. YMMV.
One of the most interesting things to me is that it appears that about fifteen years ago that acting schools and acting coaches got a lot better at teaching (English-language) accents. As recently as the 1980’s, it was still surprising to me when a movie or TV actor (who was a native English speaker) would do an accent from another country, or even another region of the same country, and consistently get it right. Sometime in the mid-1990’s, this quit seeming surprising. Suddenly there were a lot of British actors doing American roles, Americans doing British roles, and Australians doing everything, and the accents generally sounded right.
I presume that this was because acting courses in accents got a lot more rigorous. Actors were told that if they wanted to be eligible for a wider range of roles, they would have to be good at doing other accents in English. Not every actor is good at this, of course. Some weren’t able to learn how to do accents in those courses. Those actors are the ones who aren’t getting roles where they are expected to do accents. But a lot of actors have learned how to do accents. So it is possible to teach most people how to do another accent within the context of acting. Sticking to an accent while acting isn’t as difficult to sticking to it in your everyday life, of course. When you’re acting, you’re concentrating on what the way that you’re speaking. But it is a skill that can be taught to most people.