I think Dropzone is raising an pertinent point. I suspect part of the issue of altering an accent depends on how strongly, and for how long, the accent is imprinted, as well as the degree to which the accent remains intelligible in the mainstream. I propose two thought experiments to illustrate.
Experiment 1: Take a set of twins, let one (John) grow up for 40 years in Michigan’s upper peninsula, and never let them leave. Move the other twin (Joe) around a lot, maybe as an army brat or diplomatic corps. Then settle them in some 3rd site, where neither has ever lived before. I hypothesize that John from the UP’s accent will remain unchanged for a long time, as his accent is deeply ingrained. Joe, the Army Brat’s accent will mutate faster, largely due to the fact that he never had a deeply ingrained accent.
Experiment 2: Take a 40 year old who has lived in, well, lets say outport Newfoundland, or Harker’s island, NC, or some other stronghold of strongly accented English, and move him or her to a place with a very different accent, such as Toronto, or LA. I hypothesize that the accent would mutate surprisingly quickly, (relative to hypothesis 1), simply because they need to alter their accent in order to be understood. It must be a colossal pain to be unable to ask directions or order a specialty coffee in one’s own language and I suspect that the accent would quickly be modified.
(I’m hearing "half-caff, soy milk moccachino in a Harker’s island accent in my head)
One of my mother’s neighbors came to the US from Germany in the 50’s sometime, as an adult. After several years, she claimed to no longer remember how to speak German. My mother, who also came to the US from Germany as an adult in 1954, did not believe that claim for an instant. I have no idea of the neighbor’s accent, but my mother still has a recognizable German accent even after 54 years in the US, though it has faded somewhat.
My mother was raised in Australia until she was an adult, then moved to the US. After 40+ years she made arrangements go visit relatives in Australia, and had a difficult time convincing the Australia embassy staff over the phone that she was a US citizen, and had been for decades, and did, in fact, need paperwork to go to Australia. The embassy staff kept thinking she was an Australian citizen, as her accent was so strong, and so 'fresh off the boat".
I now now propose the Madonna corollary to Godwin’s law: As a discussion about accents or linguistics grows longer, the probability of a discussion of Madonnas’s bizarre accent approaches one."
I thought foreign accent syndrome required a substantial brain injury. Do we think Madonna has a brain injury? I mean, do we know of a brain injury that would be appropriately timed to give her her bizarre accent? Also, to have foreign accent syndrome, wouldn’t there have to be a place where the accent exists in the wild?
There’s no real evidence that Madonna has foreign accent syndrome. I’ve searched a little bit online and I can’t find any definitive study of her accent. Lots of people talk about how strange it is, but nobody has attempted to do a history of when she acquired it. Figuring out what is going on with her accent would make a nice book, I think.
My local music conservatory is run by a pianist-teacher whose late husband was a German professor (not of German, BTW, but of Chinese). Anyway, he had an obvious German accent, and she had sort of a muted one - American consonants but very arched, Germanic vowels. I asked her where she was from originally and she said Texas. :eek: Now either she’d left Texas pretty early, or else his accent had rubbed off on hers after many years together.
I think some people just naturally pick up accents and others don’t. I know Chicagoans who’ve moved down south. One half of the couple picks up the accent and the other doesn’t.
He’s played gay on at least one occasion (the E.R. episode Somebody to Love) but I’d guess it’s a rumour that sooner or later attaches to any unmarried theatre actor.
In many ways the OP is describing me. I have an American dad and a Jamaican mum - they met in England when Mum was in nursing school and Dad was a GI. We moved to England for the first time when I was three and stayed until I was six. We have some tapes of that time and I have an indistinguishable English schoolboy accent… pretty rad.
We moved to Florida when I was six, which is Accent Hell because no one could understand a word I said. This went on for about a year. Anyway, we moved back to Blighty when I was ten and stayed there until I was 14. I think I subconsciously decided I wasn’t going to go through the de-Englishing of my accent again… so I came back, sounding funny, but like a Yank.
However my language tends to be British-tinged. Bollocks! Bugger! Dual carriageway! Aluminium!
When I was last in the UK, about four years ago, I went out with some mates in London and got ratted. At one point my wife asked what the hell happened to my accent… apparently I was out-bloking the blokes. Hasn’t happened since, but I think the accent comes out if I’m around Brits and I’ve been drinking a lot.
It’s certainly authentic, because I think Madonna and her ilk are deserving of a thick ear with their pretentious “transatlantic” accents.
I invariably pick up stuff from people’s accents around me. But the way Brits say “can’t” as “cahnt” is something I’m pretty sure I’d never adopt. Just can’t do it.
Huh. I’m from Johnstown, PA, not too far from Altoona (Hi, jayjay ), and I pronounce “Mary,” “marry,” and “merry” the way you do, with three distinct vowel sounds. And I’ve never been to No. Jersey in my life.
I don’t think Loyd Grossman’s accent is the archetype of anything – I think it’s a freak accident: the result of merging two (fairly) atypical accents.
:dubious: I have the feeling this is meant to be humorous, but I’m having a hard time raising a smile for some reason.
My brother was dating a British woman, who had some British accent or other although she’d been living in the US since her late teens. About a year after I’d met her, she decided that being the British chick was boring, so out of the blue she started speaking with an American accent. Weird.
I understand intellectually that I speak with a particular accent, but it’s hard for me to accept emotionally, since I speak the way everyone on TV speaks. I speak normal english, it’s all the rest of you that have accents.
Oh, I didn’t mean to imply that North Jersey was the only place that had this contrast (indeed, almost everywhere outside of America does). It just happens to be one of several notable such areas within the U.S.
.