If you live overseas, do your children have different accents to your own?

[booklooker]

We have lived overseas for all of our DD1 and DD2 lives.

I have west London accent, not as pronounced as it used to be, but it is still there. DP has a more neutral accent (to my ear).

DD2 speaks like us, but DD1 (15) has a distinctly American sounding accent, maybe people would describe it as 'mid-Atlantic'

She's had it for years, but has not had a N. American teacher for ages.

I confess I do occasionally tease her about it, but it is of no serious concern of mine.

I just wondered if any other children also have picked up accents

I have a Yorkshire accent and DH has a glaswegian one. dd1 is developing a Canadian one. Anything with an A or an O come out Canadian. She's picking it up from her teachers and friends. If she learns a new word through us the she mimics our accent. She is only 4. Dd2 isn't talking yet.

In the Middle East and althought my children are in a British school their vocabulary is peppered with American terms and speak with very strange to place accents. I attribute the mix to Peppa Pig , Paw Patrol , our SE asian nanny and having parents from opposite ends of the world.

We are Aussie immigrants and DS has a British accent to go with DH and my Australian ones. But as someone else said above he has quite a few American words and sounds from YouTube clips etc. Particularly the hard R sound.

I think my nearly 6 year old has my accent, she certainly drops her Ts in words like butter and water like I do anyway (which caused a bit of confusion when she tried to sound out the word 'button' and insisted it was 'b-uh-oh-nn' and didn't understand when I tried to explain that there's ts in there )

She has a native accent for the local language though.

Mine all have trans Atlantic accents except for one who suddenly decided to regain his English accent, with various amounts of success!

We have lived here in Germany for around 2 and a half years, DD was 3 when we moved here. She speaks English with an English accent and German with a German accent. What is odd though it seems very conscious. At Kindergarten they sing a German happy birthday song and the traditional english happy birthday song too. When she sings the later she sings the English song with a German accent at Kindergarten, but with an English accent at home.

DH and I are Irish. Our English-born four year old sounds very RP.

I'm Australian, but my accent has mostly disappeared in the 9 years I've lived here...so DTDs definitely have an English accent...

I moved to the States when I was five and my geordie accent first morfed into a thick Boston accent (due to best friend having one) but then settled into a neutral American accent. After returning and living in the UK for over ten years I'd say I sound more mid-Atlantic now (when I first moved back I was regularly asked if I was Irish after picking up a Canadian "r" while living in Quebec). DS started nursery saying "wah-derr" instead of water, but now has a very cute English accent that my American friends are very jealous of.

So sweet sugarplumfairy. Mine do the same. But I cringe hearing the sing 'happy birsday'. I thought my kids speak like me and didn't notice that they speak a bit funny and stilted until we were back in the UK for a visit.

Oh it is incredibly adorable Itwas harpy birsday to yoo. We haven't been back to the UK since Christmas 2014 so it will be interesting to see how they sound compared to their cousins. We only speak English at home so I rarely hear them speaking German. Both DS and DD don't like to be made a show out of, they will figure out what a person's first language is and then speak to them in that. They particularly hate it when we skype their cousins and they start the say something German, talk to me in German.

DS had a definite LOL moment, our Nephew was showing off some of the German he is learning at school in the UK. DS who is 7, lent over and said what is he doing, I said he is learning German at school, DS with as straight a face as anything, looked at me and said "No Mummy he really isn't"

DS was born in London and so has an English accent. My accent is Scottish and DH is Irish. DS now attends an international school abroad. There is a strong American/ Canadian twang here, although we are in Asia. DS hasn't picked that up yet.

He did come home recently explaining that we have to pronounce our "T" like a "D"...Budder...not butter... that was swiftly ruled out and has gone no further.

He sounds completely different to his cousins. But being English born, he was always going to. living abroad or not.

I don't think my children have ever really had my accent. I sound very RP, but back when we lived in London they both picked up South London accents from school. We moved to North America when they were 8/9 and dd went native very quickly. ds still sounds fairly English (although not South London anymore) - at least enough to appeal to the girls! They both sound more English when they are excited and when we visit back home.

My English/Australian nieces went very Aussie when they spent five years living there, but went back to their previous posh English accents within a few months of returning to the UK.

One of the main reasons I want to move home by the time DC1 is 11 is so they have British accents, is that ridiculous?! DC1 (currently 8, was 3.5 when we moved) has a weird mix of British and American, DC2 (currently 5, was 2 months when we moved) is very American with the odd smattering of British words said with a British accent

Sorry but American sounding children just don't sound as good as British ones. I have a very neutral British accent with southern drawl/lilt/whatever. DH is fairly neutral but a northern edge. I don't like sounding like I'm from a different country to my children

I'm not overseas. We live in Cambridgeshire and both our kids have local accents. In fact my youngest (7) takes great pleasure in taking the piss mimicking my northern accent

We live in the Caribbean, both boys were born here. I have a pretty neutral home counties accent but pick up accents randomly. Never American but used to have a Welsh lilt when speaking to Welsh friends, South African when in South African and Australian twang with Aussie mates, which there are many of here. Neither of my parents are English originally.
DH is from Edinburgh so broad accent.

So far DS1 (5) has quite a plummy English accent with random American words - trash, garbage, wadder (water) etc. and has a lot of friends with English accents who all sound the same.
DS2 is nearly 3 and is more unidentifiable - many more Americanisms but he still has quite a baby voice so can't really tell what it'll be longer term.

We have no plans to move back to the UK so I assume they'll have mid-Atlantic accent as they grow up, unless they go to the US for university in which case I'm sure their accents will develop.

my kids had American accents when they went to American schools but once they changed to British schools it changed and they both now just sound 'English' with no accent as such. My DH and I are not English.

My kids have an English father but (born & raised abroad) of course have the local accent. Oddly, their dad mused before the eldest was born "I wonder if the baby will have an English or Canadian accent?" Er, no, it's not genetic!

I knew a man once, though, who was English & lived in Canada. He said he'd never thought about his kids' accents until he was driving one of his sons & the son's mates around in his car. Suddenly a Canadian voice he doesn't recognize pipes up from the back & after a moment it dawns on him that his kid speaks full on rp English @ home, but Vancouver Canadian w friends.

My kids probably know a bit more British-specific English than kids w/o British parents, but I wouldn't say they're bi-dialectical like I am. Discovered the other day that my teenager did not know what the word "punter" meant, for example.

As a foreigner, I find it intriguing that many posters say their kids sound English, with "no accent". I know what you mean, but it's (to a non-Brit) an interesting way to put it. Middle-class English is an accent, it's just more geographically widely spread. It's not the default and the rest of us are an aberration.

I'm sure the posters who mention that don't mean to suggest the rest of us have strayed from the path, but as a Canadian w quite a soft accent I took a lot of stick when living in England for "speaking wrong", so am ever-alert for signs of that from others!

We are Irish, children born and raised in the US. They all had US accents from day 1. Like the story Lizzioak told, I don't really notice but sometimes if I speak to them on the phone I'll think "who is this american child!".

They do use some words and phrases that are Irish rather than american but pronounce all of the usual words in a US way, even though we have never lost our accents or ways of saying tomato etc.

I don't notice it so much when we are in Ireland but on a couple of holidays in UK I did feel a bit odd ordering food with us ordering in one foreign accent and the kids ordering in a completely different foreign accent.

We're both English, DH is a Scouser so has a strongish accent. I have a weird midlands-but-trying-not-to-be thing going on that started when I went to uni. We live in Australia and the DSs are pure Aussie but come out with various Scouse slang words, like "butty" and "parking spec"

My nephew has lived all over the world, but wanted to be an actor. He is employable in the US, where he has no employment possibility, but not in the UK where a slight regional accent is preferred, as normal/ordinary. He sounds international and it has worked against him. He doesn't quite fit in any category. Not a problem in his work, but it has been a barrier professionally to pursuing his ambitions.

Not overseas but DH and I are southerners but live oop north, our DCs have proper northern accents which is the source of great hilarity when visiting family down south!