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I just heard part of an interview with Madonna -- yes, the former pop star-turned-children's-book author. Now, I try to keep my finger on the pulse of pop culture as much as the next uninterested guy, but it couldn't escape me: she's got an inkling of a Brit accent and more so of Brit intonation. I understand she's been living in England for a while. That's really all I need to know about her, but I'm wondering: Do any of y'all have stories about people who have moved from one region (country) to another with an obvious influence on their accents? And how long did it take to set in?
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No stories, AnnaS, but I know that I tend to pick up accents rather quickly - I love distinctive accents and when I'm around people who speak "funny," I find myself unconsciously imitating their speech. That being said, I would still probably find Madonna's newfound speech pattern affected - totally illogical and based primarily on my not-so-high opinion of her. 
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I think that Madonna's accent is probably a little affected rather than effected. I know several people who can "swap" their accents at will to impress the people they talk to. Most are women who want to dispose of their regional accents to attract a better class of person or to be accepted in social circles.
Kids tend to pick up accents quicker as they learn new words and pronounce them in the regional dialect.
However, watching a recent programme called "NYPD Green" about Irish emigrants who work for the NY Police department it's interesting to hear their Irish accents interpersed with Americanisms that they could only have picked up from work parlance. Words like "suspect", "vehicle", "side-arm", "perpetrator" and "weapon" (which sounds like weppin' when said with a Noo Yawk accent). Clearly the damage has been done at a young age and only new, unfamiliar words will carry a new accent.
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...and "weapon" (which sounds like weppin' when said with a Noo Yawk accent...
I think this is a US north/south distinction not NY specific cuz that's how it is here in the "upper midwest". In southern pronunciation the "wea...." part becomes a bit diphthongized... which makes *sense to me based on other lingering crosspondian influences.
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I gather that people here in the US particularly tend to move their accents toward the prevailing vernacular of a new region. Denver is fairly cosmopolitan and the accent there is best described as TV English. No drawls, no clips, sort of middle of the road English. When Peggy came to Denver from NC she brought a lovely (though minimal) Southern drawl with her and employed it to her advantage in getting a couple of customer service jobs. The interviewers and the customers all liked her voice and the drawl. But she began to lose it after a while. And then I noticed something funny. After talking with her mother on the phone the Southern accent would return just enough to be noticeable. I'd come in from wherever I was and Peggy would say about two sentences and I'd be able to ask her how her mother was that day. Now that we've moved to the South I find that the kids' accents seem to be getting just a little Southern. NOT to the extent of some of the locals, whom I actually have a hard time understanding. What IS disconcerting is the terrible English they pick up (including from their teachers  .) One teacher told me recently in reference to a school supply, "We haven't got none." And another one sent a note home, "This is not exceptable behavier." I repllied to the first one, "If you haven't got ANY, I will donate some." The second one got a note back saying that I didn't consider it acceptable behavior and I'm glad she took exception to it. Don't know if it did any good, but I am certainly keeping a close eye on what the kids learn!
TEd
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I worked in the south of England a while. The first couple of weeks people asked if I was from Canada or the US. The next few weeks they asked if I was from Australia. By the end of the second month they thought I was Irish. I didn't deliberately change I just have an ear for languages and accents and pick them up relatively quickly. My dad was the same. When I got home It took several months to switch back and I would revert when speaking to someone with a British accent or even occasionally when telling travell stories.
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Ted, I would have expected you to reply to the first, "If you DON'T HAVE any---" But of course you wanted to be understood. That's where it's AT, right?
When I and my Kentuckian husband moved to south Georgia, one of the little girls in the neighborhood told one of mine,"I want to take after you when I grow up. You talk so nice!" And my at-the-time preschooler insisted that another neighbor called her son Daniel "Dan-yoo". Sounded to me like "Da-yan-yul".
And yes, usually the poorer language habits prevail. I've had to become much less a purist, to retain a remnant of my remnant of my sanity!
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Every time I go back to the UK for a holiday, when I get back to Jakarta people comment on how much my accent has changed.
Bingley
Bingley
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my Kentuckian husband My, what good taste you have, Jo!  Anna, I didn't move to a different region, but where I went to college there were so many people down from Pennsylvania and Ohio that by the time I was through I was talking like a Yankee. Took me about two years of living back at home to return to "normal". Which, by the way, reminded me that according to my daughter, her college friends think Kentucky is the Deep South--one even asked her if she'd ever seen snow!
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Carpal Tunnel
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Kentucky is the Deep Southit's not? 
formerly known as etaoin...
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eta, come here a minute...
************************************************************
Anna, 'scuse my putting this here, but I thought it was a funny story, though not worth starting a new thread for:
I'd had some library books that were way overdue. One of those things that the longer you put it off, the harder it gets to go ahead and do what you're supposed to, you know? Well, yesterday morning our dog sounded off with her big deep "something's here that doesn't belong" barks. I looked out front, and there in the driveway was this huge orange truck: the size of those big utility company trucks with the ladders on the sides. Well, this truck had 'Library' on it, and my first thought was, "My God, they've come after the books"! It turned out to be somebody taking a minute to drop off something for my husband, but--in the afternoon, I returned those books.
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Carpal Tunnel
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"My God, they've come after the books"!book'em, Dano.
formerly known as etaoin...
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Jackie, why do I get the *feeling that there isn't a long waiting list for the books you have out on loan... unless, of course, you're spreading thier reputation around? 
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I hate to admit it, but I happened to see a few minutes of Madonna’s Truth or Dare movie, video – whatever it was – the other day. During part of the song she was singing, she began to speak. Someone told me she was tying to affect a British accent now, but I was unprepared for the horrible sounds that were coming out of her mouth. I couldn’t get to the mute button fast enough.
British accents are not something on which I am an expert (or even remotely and expert), but I have watched a lot of British comedies over the years, and many other TV programs and movies made in Britain, and I’m fairly familiar with many of the British accents represented in such media, such as the Queen’s English, rural accents, Cockney rhyming slang, Northern, Southern, etc. Madonna’s affectation, however, seemed to me to smack entirely too much of effort. Her over dramatization of the diphthongs, especially, did not sound like a true accent, but lacked the subtleties, and overemphasized the obvious: an accent that when compared with a true accent, would sound harsh and tawdry. (Tawdry? Madonna? That’s so unlike her.)
Also, when she sang, her accent disappeared. Granted, it’s harder to hear an accent when a person is singing, but one can hear it if one listens closely. Her singing voice/accent sounded like it always has in the past.
I got the feeling that her “accent” was not really the result of spending time surrounded by people who spoke with an accent, but, once again, just something to try to draw attention to herself.
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Pooh-Bah
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surrounded by people who spoke with an accent???!!! Whaddaya mean?? *We don't speak with an accent!  She's obviously trying to *lose her accent! It just hasn't quite slipped off the tip of her tongue yet.
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That was an inaccurate choice of words on my part, dxb: my apologies to our brethren and sistren across the pond, and to all the ships at sea.
By the way, the general public here in the U.S. took a vote and decided they’d be glad to sell Madonna to the lowest bidding country “as is”, no warranty expressed or implied, or to make an even trade for her for a worn-out, old –
No, I’d better not.
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Pooh-Bah
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I can forgive you for anything, absolutely anything!
Anyway, you *were accurate, we all speak with an accent of some kind.
M-W, she say:
Accent: noun: a way of speaking typical of a particular group of people and especially of the natives or residents of a region.
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journeyman
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I remembered hearing a story like this once (I'm not sure if this is the exact same one, but same concept anyway) - a different way of acquiring an accent...but a bit extreme, no? http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/3235934.stm8-)
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I meant 'inaccurate' in that I failed to acknowledge that more than one accent was involved: Madonna’s accent, and the accents by which she was/is surrounded. I made it seem like Madonna’s accent was not an accent, which could then be construed that it was my intention to imply that Madonna’s manner of speaking was the standard manner of speaking in the English speaking world, and any other accents were non-standard – not at all what I had intended, of course!
I kind of feel like I faux pas-ed in crowded elevator –
or lift.
Bad, bad me!
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Pooh-Bah
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I had a patient who was born in France, moved to England at age 5 and 68 years later had the local English accent and spoke very little French. After her stroke she spoke fluent French and no English. At age 73 she started English lessons and her husband of 50+ years started taking French lessons. The strong French accent never went away.
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Carpal Tunnel
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faux pas-ed in crowded elevator Gas(p)! Speaking of the mind playing language tricks: mine seems determined to change gonoldothrond into something I'm already familiar with: golden, gone old, even golden pond! Sorry about that. But anyway, that's a fascinating story; I've never heard of foreign accent syndrome. Zed's lady doesn't sound like the same thing, though. (She said with terrible grammar.)
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It's fairly typical of aphasia in multilingual stroke victims that they will lose the last language learned first.* A friend's father in Brazil, who immigrated there in the late 30s, had a stroke and lost all his Portuguese and most of his Russian but retained the Yiddish he had grown up speaking in "the old country." --- *she said with terrible grammar
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