It really depends on the person. The classic example of someone who never changed is Henry Kissinger, who came to America when he was 15, but still sounds as German as ever.
OTOH, I have a Japanese friend which such a gift for accents that when she says the only sentence she knows in French “I don’t speak French,” people don’t believe her.
So would would Madonna’s likelehood of acquiring a legitimate English accent be accelerated or hindered by the one she deliberately affected the day she got off the plane?
I used to know a Frenchman whose English accent was so good that English people refused to believe he was French. His German was equally good, according to some Germans I knew at the time. He never lived in either England or Germany, but both his parents were professional interpreters.
You might take as an example Bill Bryson, an American who lived in England for decades. He sounds like he’s trying very hard to put on an English accent and failing miserably. I wonder what it would be like to be the person whose accent made people think “Jeez, what a horrible fake accent.”
The Wikipedia article on John Mahoney (who played the Dad on Frasier) says he lost all traces of his English accent. What I wonder is, did he consciously try to speak with an American accent or did it just slowly happen as he spent more time in America and less in the UK?
Whichever would be the answer, it’s nothing compared to the hindrance which would be caused by not having any real day-to-day connection to local people.
Good question. Frankly, I’m amazed this thread got to the 22nd post before someone brought up Madonna.
I would guess 95%+ of all Americans who move to the UK as adults will retain their original accents, unless they’re poseurs or have no sense of personal identity.
Did he command a starship?
He came here as a child and has lived here for 40+ years; I presume it was gradual and subconsciously.
BTW, I thought I’d read awhile back that he was gay, but the Wiki article (uncharacteristically) says nothing about that.
Or for that matter Tina Turner’s Caribbean accent that magically appeared sometime in the early 80s. She sure did talk funny for a girl from Nutbush, Tennessee…
I think the base accent would still be American, but I’d be surprised if a good amount of British didn’t creep into that 95%. I spent only two months in Scotland when I was 20 and I was told that a Scottish accent was creeping into my speech by some of my coworkers. I was shocked to hear it, because I certainly wasn’t trying to speak any differently, and I couldn’t tell I was speaking any differently. In fact, I thought they were just taking the piss at first, but it became evident that they were serious.
It happens within a country, too. My yankee-bred and born brother moved to Alabama around age 35. It’s only been about 8 years, but when we talk now the first few minutes I can barely understand him – my brain has to acclimate and switch on the ‘adjust for southern drawl’ filter.
I read or saw an interview with him in which he said that he made a deliberate effort at losing his British accent. Partly to fit in, partly because he was making a clean break/fresh start in America.
That’s a really good question, and I’d love to see a study about it.
My gut instinct (we can call it a “hypothesis” if we want to sound scientific-like) is that yes, they probably do. According to my college linguistics prof (sorry, no internet cite), women tend, more than men, to adopt the speech rhythms and tone of the people they’re speaking to, possibly in an attempt to build social bonds. Men, on the other hand, tend to stick to their own way of speaking, and respond more positively to those who switch to their style. I don’t see it being a great leap to women unconsciously picking up accents more readily than men. It’s a way to build social identity and fit into the new tribe.
Me, I pick up accents in a matter of days, not years. It’s rather embarrassing, as I always fear I’ll be viewed as mocking the people I’m visiting. While I return to my native accent once home, there’s a bit of a holdover for a few days or weeks. I remember one summer when I went to Ireland, then Georgia (USA) then New Jersey, before coming home to Chicago. My accent was all kinds of weird for about 2 weeks.
I’ve been told that it depends a lot on how apt you are to mirroring the accents. Apparently, according to several people I’ve met, I mirror very quickly, and even after a week in someplace like France I apparently start to pronounce a lot of English words with the accent of a French person trying to speak English. Also, living with Fierra here in America for 6 years, I’ve changed pronunciation of many words, as well as voice inflection, to the point where sometimes people now ask me if I am from Canada or England. It’s not something that I consciously do, despite assholes claiming that I’m trying to “fake” something.
On the flip-side, I’ve also met Americans who spent 20+ years in the UK and never picked up a single solitary bit of accent - or even culture (for example, how could a man live and work in London for 21 years and not know where Devon is, that Guy Fawkes day is often called “bonfire night”, that Ty-Phoo is a type of tea and no most in the UK do not in fact drink Lipton’s, and that Harrod’s is a big overpriced store in Knightsbridge? Good grief! And yet, it’s true!)
supervenusfreak does this, too. We went to Minnesota for a gathering last year, and went to a Weight Watchers meeting in Minneapolis. The lecturer was a Californian who’d moved to Minnesota a few years before, but had developed the Full Minnewegian accent…there was no whitespace between Frances McDormand in Fargo and this woman. Well, by the time we got out of that 45-minute meeting, supervenusfreak was fit to eat hotdish…he sounded like a walking Ole & Lena joke the rest of the weekend.
I saw an American soldier who had defected to East Germany on TV several years ago. He had crashed his jeep and didn’t want to get in trouble for it so he hit upon defection as the solution to his problem. He had a German accent so thick he was almost unintelligible. Additionally, he seemed to barely remember how to speak English. I found that rather remarkable. I would imagine that would not be the case for most people.
I knew 2 brothers, one in Ohio, one who lived in the South. The warmer brother picked up a southern drawl and expressions.
Living in Europe, I’ve known several American expats. None had a trace of an accent.
I saw an interview in which Mahoney said he consciously got rid of his accent after joining the U.S. Army.
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My mother and five younger siblings moved to your city a few years ago and it was fun to watch who picked up the terrible accent and who didn’t.
Terrible accent?..cheeky bugger
I assume you’ve never been to Newcastle if you think the dulcet tones of a Mancunian are terrible