If you moved abroad, has your accent changed?

[FortunesFave]

I'm asking because I moved to Australia almost 5 years ago and mine has not changed.

I know it hasn't because I went home before all the Coronavirus thing and everyone commented "Oh you haven't lost your accent!"

As an adult, I can't see how one WOULD lose ones accent!

Children sure...but my older child has not lost hers...she was 11 when we arrived. My younger now sounds Aussie because she was only 7 when we came.

I was listening to an interview with the woman who plays Serena Joy in The Handmaid's Tale and she sounds distinctly American but she can't have been in the USA THAT long? Lots of actors seem to pick up an American accent easily.

What about you?

I grew up in Ireland. I moved to the uk when I was 25 and have been here 5 years. My parents say my accent has tinges of English, but I teach teenagers who found it hard to understand me if I didnt 'englishify' my accent a little (I dont even have a strong irish accent). When I go home for a bit the irish comes back. My students can tell when I have spent Christmas at home.

I’ve often wondered if accent uptake is a conscious/subconscious decision.

My oldest school friend had a broad Aussie accent within 12 months of moving out there: interspersed with the odd Lancastrian twang.

But he is a TV presenter and I think he changed it to fit in initially 😬

We have Welsh friends that have lived in Spain for 40 years and their children were born there so are basically Spanish and this is their first language. However, they speak English without a Spanish accent but with a strong welsh one.

I’ve definitely lost my very strong Scottish accent but that’s because I’ve lived as long out of Scotland as I lived there. Even when I go back people wouldn’t know where in Scotland I’m from but I’m definitely still Scottish.

I find that I could fall into some accents easier than others - can’t do a scouse accent but if I lived in Newcastle I’d have a Geordie accent way too quickly. It’s not a conscious thing to fall into other accents but but as I don’t love my original accent it was a conscious thing to flatten and soften it when I moved away.

Nope! I've lived in another English speaking country for 16 years and my accent hasn't changed.

I've always picked up accents without realizing. My accent is now a mixture of Yorkshire, Glaswegian, and Canadian. I live in Canada now.

DH's Dundee accent switch to a Glaswegian one when he worked there because it was easier for work. He's not picked up a Canadian one.

DDs both have mostly Canadian accents but the odd word has a Yorkshire or Glaswegian twang because they're only British words used in the house. Their Canadian accents aren't as strong as their friends' accents though, possible because they hear the British accent at home.

My accent hasn’t changed, men love it

Yes, I have lost mine. And also, my sentence structure has changed as I live in a very mixed part of the world, with many different languages and accents around me.

But when I go back, it doesn't take long for my Geordie accent to come back.

Which makes me giggle as my kids can't understand me, as they don't hear me talk this way very often!

The UK is abroad for me, and my accent has definitely softened. I've reached the annoying point where people from home think I'm English, but people in England still think I have a "strong" foreign accent (I really don't!). I find my accent reverts very quickly though when I'm home or talking to people from home.

So my mum has been living in the UK for nearly 50 years and most certainly still has an accent. However, it’s stronger when she’s on the phone to relatives and when she visits it’s stronger still.

I find it fascinating. I lived in a different part of the UK until I was 4 and had a strong regional accent. To my parents and relatives I sound like I’ve been living here all my life. To those who have only lived round here, I apparently sound posh!

I know of a young family who all but one emigrated about 50 years ago, & they all have the accent. Yet the one who emigrated 30 years later has no accent at all.

Some people put it on I think, & can go to the next town & come back a few months later with a posh voice 🙄.

Or they just suddenly turn posh for no apparent reason, my sis did this, yet never left the town she was born in 😆

I’ve moved around a fair bit & never happened to me, but I can do a bloody good accent.

I pick up accents really easily, to the extent I worry that the person I'm speaking to thinks I'm taking the piss. When I moved from Scotland to England in my late 20s I wasn't aware of having "lost" my accent until I heard a message I'd left on the answerphone at work. To my ear I sounded less "Mary Doll" and more Joanna Lumley 😁.

When we moved back to Scotland my DS (7) quickly developed a Scots accent but still pronounces night and nine as "noyt" and "noyn".

I moved to usa from uk when 6 but developed an American accent. Moved back to Europe at 22 and now 35 years later sound like I just got off the airplane from the US.
I did meet a bloke on a blind date and he had a strong Australian accent I asked when did he move over and he looked at me funny - he was English but has gone over there for a few months the year before. He had totally got the accent and kept it for some reason though didnt seem to notice.

@AmICrazyorWhat2 I have found the same. Perhaps because I live in the south where being an immigrant of any kind is pretty stigmatising, but I’ve definitely had people get irritated saying they couldn’t understand me. Or alternatively mock my accent by over pronouncing Ts or under pronouncing their Rs. Does get tiresome.

DH had a serious southern drawl when we met (that still comes out when he’s had a few ales!) but his has softened too, and he does enjoy a British swear word! 😂

I'm British. I lived in France for a few years and bizarrely ended up with a Liverpudlian accent. It was because I was flat sharing with a girl from Liverpool and I do tend to pick up accents I hear a lot. The Liverpudlian accent was only when I was speaking English, I hasten to add. My accent when speaking French remained French!

Lived in Canada 10 years, still broad Lancashire

Scot here. 19 years in the US. Met DH (also a Scot) over here. I have a classic mid-Atlantic accent. My middle child can do a hilarious Scottish accent but he picks it up mostly from watching the hobbits in Lord of the Rings. DH works for a UK company and and literally deals with people "straight off the plane" from the UK everyday. I think that has helped us keep our Scottish accent.

8yrs in the USA, sometimes my cadences are a little different but I’ve dropped my london twang and sound much more “proper british”

Been in the US for over a decade and my accent has not changed at all. I think it is weird when adults get a new accent. Although I loved Bjork with her sarf London/Icelandic mash up. But the best has to be Lindsey Lohan who spent a month in Italy and started talking like an ELL.

I know someone who went to live in America to pursue acting. They did ok but I saw an interview she did and she’d developed a full blown American accent overnight. It was truly bizarre. She continued with this for a few years then she got a part which required an English accent. After that she was a born again cockney! It’s so wanky! Catherine Zeta Jones did this too. She moved to America,married Michael Douglas and suddenly sounded more “California” than he did but yet,if she was interviewed and someone brought up Wales she morphed into Tom Jones!

Depends who I’m talking to.

I had to soften my broad Manc accent at work, as people couldn’t understand me. Many didn’t believe I was English, and I’ve been told numerous times that ‘your English very bad, madam’.

If I’m talking to fellow northerners, my accent returns. If I go back to the UK, my accent reverts back and it takes a few days of being back here for my generic expat accent to return.

You dont really notice your own accent. I'm from west Yorkshire and moved all of 30 miles to south Yorkshire. Everyone said 'you're not from round here, are you love' I now live in Spain and my dh is from west Yorkshire. We speak to each other in our usual accent, but change a lot for locals and other uk immigrants.

MrsT I do! I'm acutely aware of accents...and the small regional changes you hear.

Not abroad but a friend loved to wales and now has a full welsh accent despite never living there growing up!

I have moved all over as adult and my accent changes a lot.
it also depends on the main language of the country I'm in.