Superfact 18: Accents are very difficult to lose. People may speak and understand a second language perfectly and still have a strong accent in that language assuming they did not learn the second language in childhood. This is a fact that is well known to the 20.6% of people in the US who are bilingual and to the 43% of people in the world who are bilingual. Yet many monolingual people are unaware of and surprised by this basic and important language fact.
I can’t lose my accent
On one occasion when I took my oldest son to the playground a guy doing the same started talking to me. Hearing my accent, he asked me where I was from (Sweden) and how long I had been here (10 years). Then the guy said, “I am surprised that after all these years you still have an accent”.
This is a sentiment I’ve come across many times here in the US, but not as often in Europe. Monolingual people are surprised to hear bilingual people’s accent. When I tell people about the reality of accents and that it is difficult to lose one without major speech therapy, they act very surprised. It is a basic and important language fact that is surprising to those who don’t know it. That’s why I think this counts as a super fact.
I have difficulty hearing my own accent, which is to be expected according to this article . However, my accent becomes obvious to me when I hear myself speaking on a recording such as when I was interviewed by NBC about the tornado that ravaged our neighborhood five years ago. At first, I was thinking “oh shoot my accent is so obvious and now the whole world knows”, then I was thinking it is no big deal. If you want to hear my accent, click on this link. It is NBC news and my interview is located at : 1 minute and 11 seconds.
Accents are very difficult to lose
What monolingual people typically do not know but practically all bilingual people do know, is that it’s difficult to lose an accent as an adult learning a new language. Children can do it but not adults, not without major speech therapy. This article states that the cut off age is around 12 years old.
According to a test I took, my vocabulary and understanding of English grammar at the time of the incident above was above the average for native English speakers, and it was just as easy for me to understand, speak, read and write English, as Swedish. Yet my accent was obvious.
It should not really come as a surprise to monolingual people, but it does. After all, if you think about it, famous foreign actors such as Arnold Schwarzenegger, Werner Herzog, Marion Cotillard, Stellan Skarsgård. etc., speak with an accent even after living in the US and/or working for Hollywood, several decades, and they are not faking it. I have several friends and relatives who speak with a strong foreign accent after living in the United States for 30, 40, 50, and 60 years. If they came as adults, they still have their accent.
As this article states, “accents are extremely difficult to lose because our infant brains codify a lifetime’s worth of sounds before we’ve spoken our first word”. As this article explains as we age our brains become more specialized in our native language sounds, making it harder to accurately perceive and produce new sounds from another language, a phenomenon often referred to as the “critical period hypothesis” in language acquisition; essentially, the window for easily acquiring perfect pronunciation closes during childhood.
A few second language facts
The most popular second language in the world with respect to the number of non-native speakers (data taken from this site).
- (1) English – 1,140 million non-native speakers
- (2) Hindi – 264 million non-native speakers
- (3) Chinese (Mandarin) – 199 million non-native speakers
- (4) Urdu – 162 million non-native speakers
- (5) French – 132 million non-native speakers
- (6) Arabic – 109 million non-native speakers
- (7) Russian – 107 million non-native speakers
- (8) Spanish – 74 million non-native speakers
- (9) Bengali – 43 million non-native speakers
- (10) Portuguese – 28 million non-native speakers
The most popular second language in the world with respect to number of countries.
- (1) English – 55 countries
- (2) French – 14 countries
- (3) Russian – 13 countries
- (4) Spanish – 8 countries
- (5) Creole – 8 countries
- 6) Arabic – 6 countries
- (7) Kurdish – 4 countries
- (8) Portuguese – 4 countries
- (9) Italian – 3 countries
- (10) Quechua – 3 countries
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