What’s your accent?
Now that I’m working in two languages (French and English), I’m starting to see the differences in the way people pronounce words in French and even in English, I can immediately pick out the accent and the general region where its from as English is my mother tongue.
I mentioned this to my partner the other day and he says: You know, as multi-lingual speakers, we never have a native accent; even in the language we are most fluent in, it has an accent that is not native or as clear as someone who is uni-lingual…
Interesting. I definitely have an English accent when I speak French, but I don’t think my English has an accent.. yet.
What’s your accent?
4 Comments
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Taylor Lee @ Yuppie Millennial
I have a very strong US English accent. My closest bilingual friend always jokes she has too much of an accent to sound American but people from her native country always make fun of her “too white” accent speaking her native tongue.
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Sarah
I believe what your partner said is pretty true. I remember learning about this in an undergraduate psych class. Bi-linguals/multi-linguals have physical differences in their brains compared to uni-lingual people. Also, the way bi-linguals pronounce different phonemes fall somewhere between the two languages. Therefore, the accent.
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Sylvie
I’m a Canadian now living in the US. Despite only speaking English in both countries, I feel my accent has becomes less Canadian in certain vowels and consonants. CBC English and my Ontario home cities now sound very Canadian to me, even though I do not speak American English. I’m not sure if your partner’s observation should exclude monolingual speakers, particularly those who have lived in regions with different accents.