How do you develop an accent?

metalangel said:
That's not what you said in the post I quoted, and then you said how it was weird that kids with very Irish parents didn't sound Irish. Then you countered your comment about losing your Southern accent in your next post by saying kids learn to talk before they go to school, implying that your initial comment was in fact what was correct (you can see why I'm confused!)

Shimo is right, though a specific word (lorry vs truck) is not a question of accent so much as vocabulary choice. Lorry is slowly dying out as a term used in the UK in my experience.
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I have no idea why you're so confused. Kids learn to talk, listening to the people they're around the most, pick up their accent, then when they go to school and are around more people they'll lose it, most likely. I didn't say that it was weird that they don't sound Irish NOW, that's you're interpretation of what I'm saying. Angel wondered why they didn't ever pick it up.
 
ambrosia said:
They'll end up with British accents, but probably not as strong as the rest of the family. You get an accent by repeating the sounds you hear while you're learning to talk. Who is this child going to be hearing? The family, who have British accents.

One of my son's friends parents are British, he was born in the US, he has a British accent. If a hearing child has 2 deaf parents, they can end up with a deaf accent.
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kids can't end up with deaf accent if their deaf parents don't talk :giggle:

a simple speech therapy can easily remedify this issue. I know a lot of CODAs and they definitely do not have deaf accent.
 
:) I went from sounding like I was from England or New York with prim and proper speech due to years of speech therapy to sounding like a hillbilly hick after being around my husband all these years....

No joke. It's rather embarrassing. :) southern belle here-no offense intended to others who live in the south, ha!
 
This maybe because I am deaf but both my parents are from Bell in Texas, moved to the UK and then had me but I have a British accent even tho my parents accents are American. I had speech therapy from 3 to 23 years old tho and the therapist had a British accent :)
 
ambrosia said:
That is weird!! My parents are both Southern, I had a Southern accent for most of my childhood. My dad was in the Air Force though and we moved around a lot, I lost it along the way, although it does sneak back in if I'm really tired or drunk I'm told.
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My moms dad was in the Air Force and my mom moved all over the US and also South Africa but ended back up in Texas eventually. :)
 
Accent isn't something one gets from birth, but from what he/she hears or is raised.

Different countries have different accents based on how they speak their languages. Some languages require different accents for it to be properly pronounced. Some people spent years in one language that when they try to learn another language, they have trouble changing their accent when speaking a different language. That's what they mean when a person is speaking English with a "Spanish accent" or a "German accent".

In your friend's situation, it varies. Does the family have a strong British accent? Is it noticeably different from English? Will the child be raised in a school that is mostly English? Is the child deaf or hearing? A lot of things have an effect on accents.
 
NaidaUP said:
This maybe because I am deaf but both my parents are from Bell in Texas, moved to the UK and then had me but I have a British accent even tho my parents accents are American. I had speech therapy from 3 to 23 years old tho and the therapist had a British accent :)
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My grandfather's parents were born in England, spent many years in US, their daughters were born in the states. Then they all went back to England, and they had several sons. My grandfather was youngest, at the age of 18, he went to the States to a town where his father's brother lived.

Although I believe he once spoke British, it was easy for him to switch to American because of the mixed background. I knew a Scotswoman who had a major accent, despite having lived many years in the States. It seemed sort of funny that g'pa didn't have an accent, but then I discovered that his family had traveled the Atlantic many times.

Some of his ancestors fought on the American side in the Revolution, others were Brits.
 
It is kind of strange to me that everyone else has some kind of accent and I don't. :hmm:
 
my half brother went to states when he was about 12 he had strong london accent within the year he had american accent i am told
 
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