Why do some people lose their accent and others don't? An expert in linguistics explains it

The way a person speaks is an intrinsic part of their identity.

It constitutes a tribal mark that indicates whether a speaker comes from one social group or another.

Accents are both a sign of belonging and a divider of communities.

However, surely we all can think of examples of people who seem to have lost their regional or national accent, as well as others whose accent remains the same.

Given the personal and social importance of speech, what reasons could there be for someone's accent to change?

You may think that your accent is a physical component of who you are, but a conscious or unconscious desire to fit in can influence the way you speak whether you want it to or not.

Various studies have shown that a person's accent will approximate that of the group of speakers with which they identify at some stage of their life.

Accents are a fluid feature of language.

For example, if someone moves from Australia to the United States for work, they are likely to, at the very least, change their accent, either consciously or unconsciously.

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This could be out of a need or a desire to be better understood and accepted in the new community.

You may also want to avoid embarrassing yourself by the way you speak.

More than a quarter of senior UK professionals from a blue-collar background have been subjected to discriminatory comments at work because of their accent.

a feeling of belonging

In the case of people whose accent changes, it may be because the way they speak is less important to their idea of ​​identity, or because their need to identify with a social or professional group is more pressing.

Even before we are born, we are exposed to the speech patterns of those around us.

Studies of newborns have found that it is possible to detect specific tonal aspects of the babies' speech community from their cries.

In order for our needs to be met, we are more or less programmed to fit in.

We produce vocalizations that sound like they belong to our caregivers' communities.

We go through several phases of speech development that end up adopting linguistic patterns similar to those of the people around us.

As we enter society, we mix with people from outside our limited social group and are exposed to more speech patterns.

This can cause a child's accent to change quickly for her peers to accept.

For example, a colleague from the US who works in the UK told me that his daughter had started speaking with a typical southern English accent since he started school.

Now the boy is teaching his parents to speak “proper” English.

a strong identity

In the case of people whose accent does not seem to change, one possible explanation is that they feel secure in their identity and that their accent is a very important part of it, or that they place value on preserving their difference.

They may not even be aware of how much their accent means to them.

If a speaker has what is widely considered a desirable accent, he may not want to lose that advantage by changing it.

Consciously or not, people have at least some control over their speech when they change their place of residence.

However, in rare cases, brain injuries or strokes can cause foreign accent syndrome (SAE).

This condition is the result of physical changes that the speaker does not control.

Some areas of the brain are associated with the production and perception of language, while others control the motor aspects of speech.

If the latter are damaged, the person may completely lose their ability to speak, or experience changes in the way they articulate sounds because the motor area sends different instructions to the vocal organs.

One extreme example, recently published in

, reported that a Texas woman named Abby French woke up from surgery with foreign accent syndrome.

Sometimes the woman claimed that she looked Russian, sometimes Ukrainian, and sometimes Australian.

Listeners usually agreed on which accent they thought French's new way of speaking was most like.

In some cases it may happen that the interlocutors discriminate against a person with SAE because they believe that he is a foreigner, which shows to what extent our way of speaking can influence how others treat us.

Not surprisingly, many people unconsciously protect themselves by adapting their speech to those around them.

Jane Setter

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