Accent acquisition in young children

[argyllherewecome]

I'm a teacher but have been off work sick so I've had loads of time to think (for a change!). Anyway, this is something that has fascinated me for ages and I'm sure there are posters here who know about this.
My school is fairly diverse. Most children with ESL parents come into school either with no English or basic words that have a distinct mother tongue accent. They lose this within several years usually, and by then they have a local accent.

I've noticed though some children do not adopt a local accent.
Irish Travellers: despite being born and raised here they nearly exclusively all have a very thick Irish accent, and this doesn't change over time. There are a few other children that have parents or a mother at least from different parts of the country, and they keep a very strong regional accent from them, which doesn't change much over time. This is an exception rather than a rule though.

Any language experts that can explain how this happens? I'm the embarrassing sort of person that goes somewhere for a few days and I pick up accents!

I was a military child from age 3 to 15 where we finally settled.

I have only recently, in the last 10 years or so started talking in the local accent. 50 years after settling. Until then I had no accent, and never really stayed long enough in one place to pick one up, however in a lot of cases others picked them up quickly, possibly to 'fit in' with peers?

We are having a similar situation with our DC ... and they are goign to same schools. Both DH and I have South African accents. Both DC have English accents. But DS is definitely developing a much more pronounced local accent, less clearly enunciated, while DD's accent is more sort of generic English accent with clear enunciation. But it's to do with friendhsip groups, what they're doing etc. And as DS has expanded his social circle, his accent, while still quite "local" is becoming less so. Probably because some of his basketabll buddies can barely understand him when he's doing the local "cor guv" type accent!

Neither of them have a south african accent, but both do have the odd word that definitely has a south african twang which has been commented on and is notable.

On the other hand, DS' BF grew up speaking English at home but both of his parents are not English first speakers. He has a slightly odd mix of accents - you'd struggle to identify a specific different accent but he does not sound English at all. But his brother sounds English but with a small something tha tmakes you listen twice. It's strange.

See my above message
whats going to be very interesting is whether their accent begins to slide to local accent as they get older, and their awareness of “fitting in” socially with their school mates (local friends) begins to hold way more significance than it does now?

My exH and I both grew up down south and have fairly neutral southern accents - would probably be described as RP but not as pronounced. We have retained this way of speaking despite both having lived in Yorkshire since our late teens. Our teen son speaks like us with no hint of a northern accent. He was born in Yorkshire and have never lived anywhere else. His mates think he is hilarious for saying “graarrs” rather than “grass”, but he has never picked up their accent.

Humans have a need to fit in. When we lived overseas our DC had 3 accents depending on who they were talking to. We are both London born and raised. We lived in Latin America and the school was conducted in English to make sure the children had a second language.

So, at school my DC sounded like a person speaking English as a second language with an accent. At home they sounded like us and with friends they spoke like the locals.

God has somebody been offered by the use of 'thick' to describe accents!
That really is scraping the bottom of the professionally offered barrel.

I'm Irish and a few years ago we had someone phone our business wanting some services provided out on the Aran islands. The man wasn't too comfortable speaking English so we got our resident Gaeilgeoir/irish speaking staff member to speak to him in Irish.

The staff member got off the phone shaking his head & said the customer "spoke such thick island Irish he could barely understand" despite him being educated entirely in Irish for all his schooling & uni.

He was just describing how local and specific his dialect was, it wasn't any kind of insult. Personally I think thick is subjective, but it's ok to relay that subjectivity.

And OP, Travellers here also have a distinctive accent, most people would be able to hear a Traveller accent just like they would a Cork or a north Dublin accent etc. I would guess it's because they move in their own circles for so much of their social life.

Very interesting! I change my Spanish accent depending if I'm speaking to people from Spain or South America, but interestingly I don't do this in English. I think it's because Spanish is not my native accent so I'm conscious about fitting in more.

Whereas my children have been the other way.

My 11 year old sounds vastly different from the accent where we are now. She doesn’t care. She doesn’t want to speak in the local accent. She’s very self assured though. She’s only said once that a child commented on her accent and she said she laughed at them. She likes her west London accent and doesn’t want to sound Black Country. She doesn’t like it (and as I’ve said upthread, my husband had a Black Country accent which he’s vastly tamed down as he felt it was holding him back in his profession). She doesn’t feel the need to fit in, and luckily, she’s extremely popular and well liked.

I was the same. I didn’t feel the pressure to conform at all. I remember living in Cornwall as a child, with my London accent when Eastenders first started. Some children tried to bully me for my accent, Iaughed in their face and told them to fuck off.

I find this fascinating. I can pick up accents very quickly - to the extent that when I lived with a girl from Northern Ireland when I was abroad, I started to sound like her without trying- she was the only person I was speaking English to at the time and when I came home my parents couldn’t understand why I sounded totally different.

My husband has a regional accent which has mellowed since moving away but is still pretty distinctive. My children have picked up no hint whatsoever of his accent other than learning spellings- it’s all ‘let’s say grass like Daddy as it’s easier to spell’. What I find quite weird though is while both his and his brother’s accent has softened, his mum’s hasn’t at all.

I’ve already noticed that my primary age children have different skills in this area re foreign languages. My 8yo sounds like an English person speaking French but my 5yo seems to have nailed the accent despite only being taught a few words. Not sure if they’ve just been taught differently or one is naturally better at it.

My parents moved from Edinburgh to Southern England when I was five and my sister three. Mum and Dad kept their accents all their lives but my sister and I have no trace whatsoever.
I have no recall of ever having a lovely Edinburgh accent and must have lost it fairly quickly to fit in with my peers at school.

I’m always fascinated by what I call the YouTube Accent. Lots of words with an American twang or an American accent altogether.

Although I have lived in Lincolnshire my whole life, I have my mums Essex accent

It's interesting how set an accent is from a fairly young age though. I grew up in the East Midlands, and my Mum hated that my brother and I spoke with the local accent. I moved away at 18, and have lived in the south east for nearly 50 years. But though I've slightly lengthened my medial short 'a', and feel that my accent has changed a lot, apparently I still have an EM accent, to the point that an autistic child in my class a few years ago, found it hard because as his mum told me at parent's evening, to him I 'don't talk properly'.

My relatives emigrated to Australia in their very early 20s almost 50 years ago. To listen to them you'd think they'd never left Yorkshire!

It's interesting isn't it? I spent my formative years living not far from Liverpool and was bullied for having a "posh" accent. I don't. I had (and still have) the same, very ordinary South Manchester accent that the rest of my family have, even though at the time I'd never lived there. Later in life, I found my "common" accent being a source of great amusement for some of my colleagues. A lot of it is just perception.
I think early influences do play a role but there's something more to it. We lived in Manchester til my DD was 2 and she went to nursery from 10 months. She had a really strong Mancunian accent, far stronger than mine - think Liam Gallagher- which I attributed to what she heard at nursery. Sure enough, within 6 months of moving to where we live now and attending a local nursery she sounded like she was born here. My youngest also has an easily recognisable local accent but the middle one sounds exactly like me! They all went to the same nursery and schools.
My DH was born and bred in Liverpool but his parents aren't English. He doesn't sound like his parents or someone from Liverpool. I hear just the odd word that sounds Scouse but it's barely noticeable. Most people can't place him, or most of his siblings at all - not beyond "somewhere in the north of England" anyway. But his youngest sibling sounds like an extra from Brookside! Again, same family, same education. Why??
I think some people do just pick up accents more easily than others. We have friends who emigrated to Australia as adults. She had a noticeable Australian accent in less than a year - to my ear anyway, maybe Australians would still think she sounds English - but her husband sounds exactly the same as he did when he left Surrey 20 odd years ago. It's very intriguing.

Nobody has "no accent".

I’m not an ‘expert’ but did read English Language at uni, with modules on language acquisition and sociolinguistics.

There’s a few reasons:

• There’s a critical period to become a native sounding speaker in a new language. It’s around pubery. So if someone’s 10 and had early puberty they’ll never pick up all the nuances, but someone who’s 12 and hasn’t - might
• Some languages have features that we don’t (and vice versa) e.g Germans’ pronounce words like wine as vine. This is because their language doesn’t permit the ‘w’ sound either in word initial position or at all - I can’t remember which. Thai means some languages restrict perfect acquisition of English features and some support it
• some Grammatical constructs are difficult to learn for some primary languages where they don’t exist and therefore get forgotten in the second language. This could be the tenses or with English articles etc
• some countries prioritise English as a second language at school or as a language for social modality. Hence exposure already existed.
• language is influenced most by family up until school age, then your peers’ throughout school followed by your work choices. Often meaning retirees will revert to a more colloquial form of speech. I haven’t studied this specifically, but in communities within communities (e.g Chinese in china town areas/travellers etc) it would make sense that the exposure to the mother tongue would hold more influence as the communities are so tight knit

HTH.

I apologise for my terrible grammar but it’s a quick brain dump on my lunch break, and I hope still reads okay.

I think it has something to do with their original accent still actually being tied to the English language as opposed to learning a completely new language and picking it up in the accent it's taught to you in

Thick means a lot/strong!! It doesn’t mean stupid. Good grief. Like “a thick layer of jam” or “a thick Irish accent” or “a thick covering of snow in the field”

sadly and ironically your comment comes across as a bit thick 😂

Who knew a thread by a person genuinely interested in accent acquisition could be so fraught with individuals desperate to find offence. A delightful dinner party indeed.

I read an article by an anthropologist once in New Scientist (I believe) on this and they hypothesised that accent (as much a language acquisition) played a role in our forebears being able to be accepted into new communities. Those who were able to mimic most closely were the ones who were more successful and therefore had greater reproductive opportunities. Some people just cannot mimic accents and no matter what language they are speaking (even when they speak the language well) will maintain an accent from their mother tongue. It’s fascinating stuff (my kids are bilingual and I am a language chameleon myself so it’s often in my mind).

DH and his siblings were born and brought up in Wales. All 4 DC went to Uni and now live and work in England, but only DH has lost has his welsh accent (except for a few words like tooth and here).

In the case of Irish Traveller children specifically, their cultural and social framework often creates a sort of ‘linguistic bubble.’ Even if they attend school with children who have different accents, their social networks outside school — family gatherings, community events, etc. — heavily reinforce the Traveller accent, outweighing the influence of local peers.

We definitely see this in schools. Children use US pronunciations or terminologies. I hear of lots of children asking for 'pastelles' (pastel colours in art) or describing people as y'all'. Years ago my dd8 started a youtube channel doing a craft thing and she sounded completely American.

Oh chill out @StillLifeWithEggs - the OP is describing the fullness of the accent - they could have said broad, distinctive etc but chose ‘thick’ - which is fine, it’s not a comment on the intelligence or perceived intelligence of the speaker.

I never thought I had an accent until I went to the SW and someone commented that I sound like I’m from the East Midlands, which absolutely floored me as I am and it was very accurate! I worked in the NW and was asked what part of London I come from - which was weird as I say bath etc, not barth. Accents are indeed weird. My kids have picked up the local dialect as they hear it at school and within our extended family.

A ‘thick’ accent simply means a very deep, strong accent. Not that the speaker is stupid!
Why do people try to make everything offensive nowadays.