If you had native-level fluency in a language, and don't talk in that language for a while, can you develop an accent later-on when trying to talk in that language again?

Comments

• ExLisper@lemmy.curiana.net ⁨24⁩ ⁨minutes⁩ ago

  Accents just kind of stick to you. If you hear specific accent long enough you will start imitating it without even knowing.

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• Nibodhika@lemmy.world ⁨24⁩ ⁨minutes⁩ ago

  Yes, I speak 3 languages fluently and have accents in all of them.

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• jjpamsterdam@feddit.org ⁨44⁩ ⁨minutes⁩ ago

  Yes, I can attest to this from my own experience. I speak so much German all day every day that, when speaking to my Dutch friends and family, I sometimes start using false friends or even awkward sentence structure.

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• phr@discuss.tchncs.de ⁨10⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

  yup. got a friend who visited recently after 7(?) years abroad. her phonetics and prosody are now anglicised.

  also, my grandma once made fun of my german accent. (thats a more complicated story but yeah potato kartoffel.)

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• Thorry@feddit.org ⁨8⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

  You can actually change accents when you move to a different area, even though you are speaking the same language. I’ve even heard peoples accent change because they got a new work from home job, where they talk to people with another accent each day all day.

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• JetpackJackson@feddit.org ⁨5⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

  This reminds me that I need to start trying to learn German again, I suck at it

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• notsosure@sh.itjust.works ⁨10⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

  Definitely; I knew a Frenchman living in Australia who spoke French with an Australian accent.

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  • DrFistington@lemmy.world ⁨10⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    Voulez-vous coucher avec moi, ce soir, mate!

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• Yaky@slrpnk.net ⁨10⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

  Not sure about an accent, but it will be noticeable.

  From personal experience: I am aware that I often use structures specific to my current English-speaking region while speaking one of my native languages. Also, my slang and cultural references are really outdated. So I do not have an accent exactly, but it would be possible to tell something is off.

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