ACCENT..........

It has always amazed me...as to how some people who have been born and raised in a country for more than 20 odd years, adopt the foreign accent(in just one year) when they move to a foreign country 😕.......

I had an acquaintance of mine, who got married and moved to the US......and when she's back after two years, her diction was completely different from what I've been used to hearing from her...She had this abysmal "American"(as she calls it and she swears that there wasnt even an iota of premeditated effort😕 and it was all a natural progression) accent, which didnt sound american at all...neither did it sound indian....it sounded as though i'm hearing a terrible melange of different accents🤢🤢🤢....

What's worse is when people sudenly switch over from their "fake" accent to their "original" accent...All of a sudden I had this acquaintance switched over to the "typical indian " accent which was so farcical🤢🤢..and when commented upon it,she stormed from the room in a fit of pique, shouting that she had been insulted😕🤢

Now my questions are :

• Can someone who has been born and raised in a country for almost 20-25 years,"naturally" change their accent when they move to a foreign country.."naturally" meaning without any deliberate effort from the person's side......

• If its deliberate, then what makes it inexorable for the people to change their enunciation....is it just an attempt not to be the odd one out, or is it utterly needed❓

your views😊..and I'm not talking about those who were born and raised in countries where parentd had immigrated😊

Though i pretty much agree with you. Its strange that people are so quick to pick up and accent but some people really cant help it. well example me! Have pretty much looked down on people who do that so was horrified to discover that i had started to talk to my cousins from the US in an accent!!

Its just that some people cant help pick up an accent. I have a bihari accent when i talk to my friends from there or a tamil accent when i talk to my granny.

Originally posted by: Buffie

Now my questions are :

• Can someone who has been born and raised in a country for almost 20-25 years,"naturally" change their accent when they move to a foreign country.."naturally" meaning without any deliberate effort from the person's side......

Yes, it can happen. It has happened to me and my friends as well. I was raised with an Indian Accent for 15 years, but then once we moved to Canada, eventually I adopted a bit of the Canadian Accent as well.

It was an unconscious change, but the main reason this happens is because people who live here dont really understand you when you pronounce certain words.

For example: the word "tuition"

Indian Accent - You'll pronounce it as "Tyu shun"

Canadian Accent - You'll pronounce it as "Two ish shun"

Or for instance, if you ask for a "rubber" or a "scale", they will get totally confused unless you say "eraser" or "ruler".

Its not something which I chose to do, but I dont have a complete Canadian accent or a complete Indian accent. Its a mix of both. Call me confused or whatever, but it does happen unconsciously.

A friend of mine had a similar incident (like the one you described above) happen to her when she went back to India. When she got a call from a friend in Canada, she immediately switched to a Canadian accent. But, it was completely unconscious.

There are some people who white-wash themselves and adopt the Western accent completely. They don't like their original accent, so they do it. They are different as they do this consciously.

Anyway, I used to have the same attitude about people adopting western accents until I went through the same thing myself.

T. that reminds me never use "rubber" for errasor leart it hard way 😆

now back to buffie's question-

Yes, one can change their accent without trying it to change. Me and my brother came to US around same time. He started out here with high school and I started out with college. If you see him he has total American accent and mine is not american not indian. When i talk on phone people think it's british/london accent so i don't know where i am 😕

I think it has lot to do with age too. Like when you do highschool here and you are young there are more chances to mold your accent and take new accent without trying to take it.

Now second category who tries to change their accent. I do that sometimes too. Like some words when I speak in India accent it is so hard for American to know what i mean so rather than going back and forth I try to speak it their way and its so easy. Like my husband's name if I speak it right they take for ever to transfer a phone call to him. Like Vase, Geography, etc. Other thing is when I was staying home for 2 years when my daughter was born i was not exposed to outside world much. My in-laws were with me for 1 yr so i was talking Gujarati all the time... i really lost touch with my english accent and was back to our Hindustani accent. But then I started working again and am back to my indo/american accent. So i think when you are exposed to hearing, speaking and using that accent all the time for 1 year it is natural to adopt it.

Buffie this is a funny one. 😆 I have been always amused at the change of accents myself. There are 3 aspects here as what i see.

Category 1) When people come to the U.S really young like in school, maybe its easy to slip into an accent after many years and forget the Indian accent.

Category 2) When people come when they are much older and within a few months pick up a strange accent and speak that way with every one including the desis.

Category 3) Another set of people, they too come here when they are much older. But they don't exactly speak in an accent. But when talking to the Americans change their tone. And when talking to any Indian speaking normally with out the accent.

Now i have seen all the 3 sorts here. The funniest are the second kind. I had a friend who came to live in the U.S for 6 months and came back with a permanent accent. That was so pseudo !!! 😆

The first kind are the ones who pick it up naturally as Tanaz may have.

And i fall in the 3rd category. Me and my friends have been living here for the last 3-7 years. None of us has an accent. But yes we do use a different tone when communicating with an American. But when we talk amongst ourselves there is no accent. The reason we speak to the Americans with an accent is so that we our understood more easily.

hey i love the topic..ive wondered about this a lot myself especially coz my dad is in a business where u have to constantly be in touch with ppl from different backgrounds...so i noticed my dad get this heavy punjabi accent when he spoke to this sardarji and immediately when he was talking to me he shifted bak...i think that basically happens becoz they want to put the other person at ease..in my dads case at least..but i have a lot of friends in the us and there is this one girl who like u said puts on the american accent just to "fit in"...she felt that if she retained her indian accent ppl would treat her differently but in most cases it comes out of listening to other ppl talk in that particular accent..and u cant really help it coz u tend to talk tat way out of sheer habit..but u kno its reeealy easy to pick out the naturally accented ppl from the ones that are faking it... 😉

fun Topic! loved reading all posts.
I can identify with most of the things. I am so so susceptible to accents around me. I picked up a Tamil accent, a UP accent and now a singaporean intonation - and all hit me unawares.
I do agree in foreign countries , you end up talking like them so that you are better understood.

Infact I end up talking wrong english!

things like 'should be can' for 'it might be possible ' , 'can can' for ' it is possible' 😆

I sure pray it doesn't stick on 😃

Ok ... Now im not directly linked to this topic... but My Father is very particular abt different accents of diff languages, so he makes me too.. It is his philosophy that Urdu should b spoken with its original accent, Punjabi its original and English its original.. I have my parents speaking Urdu and Punjabi all the time and i do the same... but when i switch b/w languages my father wants perfection e.g. for english he wants a british accent and i have made an effort on that.. for Urdu he wants perfect word pronunciations and i make effort on that too... In Punjabi which is my mother-tongue .. and im not too exposed to it as i don't live in my country so im not too good at it(V bad.. my papa always teaches me abt it).. but papa wants perfect words to be spoken wht ever language i speak... He is a perfectionist so it is a part of my home-training ... like when i talk to my cousins on phone in UK they speak perfect Urdu (whtever words they know.. they pronounce very well) and at times when they speak English i switch to british accent and it is unconsciously done then. So i think that i fall into a totally different new category from those listed in this post 😕😉😆

Jav, you count, whatever you, you defnitely count !!!! 😆 You don't qualifyfor this category is how I would put it.... 😉

Well, as unbelievable as it sounds, picking up an accent can really happen unconciously. Of course some people do it conciously, like one of my neighbour had a cousin in US, and whenever the cousin visited, my neighbour started having an accent !!! 😆 😆 😆

My son picked up the accent first and the language later.....weird isn't it? The Indians didn't understand him because his accent was so americanised, and Americans didn't understand him because they thought he was speaking a different language, and no one understood that he wasn't really speaking the language at all, he was simply speaking garbled words in an American accent coz he didn't know the language 😆 😆 !!!!! Later on we figured that as a three something year old, he was simply trying to fit in, without even comprehending the language.

So if a 3 yr old does this, grown ups have lot more issues of fitting in. American English is as different from the Indo British we speak as chalk is from cheese.In fact Americans appreciate the accent we Indians have. But it's not really British. There are many things which we pronounce in an Indian style. However, due to this Indian style mixed up with Queen's english, many a times it's difficult for the Americans to understand our language. Interestingly, it is very difficult to understand what an American is saying when you are exposed to their accent in their early days. They have some typical phrases too, which we have never ever used in India. For eg: "you are all set"...or ' My bad'.....Americans never say 'fine' when asked how are you.... Their reply is 'good'.....and as Tanaz said, you better say 'eraser' or else they are going to slap a huge slab of synthetic rubber into your hands... 😆

These are few typical things that one gradually picks up, without even realising when. In order to understand their accent, we often try to sound the way they do so that interaction is easy, and many of that accent stays back.

Some people never ever pick an accent,no matter what. For eg my hubby, he has not picked a single cent of accent. I have conciously tried not to pick, but I sometimes feel that some of it has crept in inspite of me trying not to do so. Young group picks it more quickly because they have to fit in. Moreover, many people who didn't know the language before they moved in pick up the accent automatically as they really don't how to speak it in any other way.For eg I know a girl here who was a brilliant student, was comfortable in written English, but was miserable in spoken English. Three years down the line,she speaks like a complete American, so much so that it's hard to believe that she wasn't born or raised here..........

minnie di...let me tell u that u were successful in ur mission of not taking on an american accent...listening to you every week i can assure you that you dont have a strong american accent...its more indian than american and no doubt about it

and yea even though i dont qualify ive seen..or should i say "heard" it a lot...ive heard all three types aparna di mentioned

as for accents...4get country accents are specific to regions within the country or even state...and ive seen this a lot. where i live, there are ppl from all over the world....and ive heard all sorts of accents (as evee said...diversity rules nyc 😃)...and wats weirder is tht i have a strong NYer accent...i didnt really realize it cuz most other ppl and me talk tht way too..not even tha accent...many of the phrases and slang i find very common is unknown outside of ny...even ppl upstate are clueless to it...only us nyc ppl are accustomed to it 😳