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Losing an accent and native language

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11 messages over 2 pages: 1 2  Next >>
sushi13
Diglot
Groupie
Canada
Joined 4447 days ago

49 posts - 64 votes 
Speaks: French*, English
Studies: Spanish

 
 Message 1 of 11
04 January 2014 at 7:03am | IP Logged 
I was born in Quebec, Canada and lived there for most of my life. About 2 years ago, I moved to New-
Brunswick. My English improved but my native language isn't going so well. My accent is slowly becoming
more like the Francophones from New-Brunswick (an accent that I find highly unnatractive). I communicate
mostly in English and I cannot find a great French book that I haven't read yet in my city. I spend most of my
days surrounded by English. Even at home, we have an exchange student that came here to learn English,
so we mostly talk that language. I talk and sometimes they don't understand some of the words I say (for
example, extraordinaire) so I use simple vocabulary all the time. I'm not saying that people from New-
Brunswick are stupid, I'm trying to say that I live in a mostly English region that affects the French language.

I feel like I'm losing my native language. I'm trying to read more often in French (though the only interesting
books I can find are true crimes book and criminal profilers. There is only one French library and the choices
aren't very big. Even at school, I don't remember learning grammar. Or at least, grammar that I haven't been
seeing for 4 years.

Did something like that ever happened to some of you? How can I manage to improve my French and make
sure not to lose it too much?
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MixedUpCody
Senior Member
United States
Joined 5015 days ago

144 posts - 280 votes 
Speaks: English*
Studies: Spanish, Mandarin

 
 Message 2 of 11
04 January 2014 at 7:37am | IP Logged 
Hey sushi13, this post from Fluent in 3 Months talks about this issue a little and gives ways to avoid it. My wife is in the same situation, as she has lived in the US for about a decade and has forgotten much of her Chinese and Indonesian, so I can speak from her experience even though I have not experienced this myself. She spends a lot of time, nowadays, watching television in her native languages and communicating via Facebook with friends from those regions. She also reads online news in those languages.

Although I've never been on a position of having to recover a language, I think that the things I and many others do to improve our L2s would work for someone in your situation as well. In order to improve my Spanish, I talk to educated people (an Economics grad student in Spain and a Medical student in the Dominican republic), which forces me to use more advanced language and get away from the simplified sentences that I might otherwise use. So I suggest contacting sophisticated francophones on iTalki or somewhere else.

Lastly, linguistics research does show us that people's accents change as they move around. I, for one, am very prone to this and if I watch a lot of TV shows set in a different part of the country I start to pick up regionalisms. I really don't have any good advice to avoid that. Sorry. Best of luck to you.

Cody
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culebrilla
Senior Member
United States
Joined 3756 days ago

246 posts - 436 votes 
Speaks: Spanish

 
 Message 3 of 11
04 January 2014 at 7:44am | IP Logged 
How old were you when you moved? 18? 25? I really doubt that you would ever "lose your native language." Your accent might change a bit though.

I lost my native language but I was only five when I stopped speaking it. Naturally, I don't have any active skills and my passive skills are so bad that you could probably learn what I know in two hours.

A lot of people that I meet that are from other areas of the US with very different accents from us in the Midwest still have their "heavy" accents even though they've lived in our state for 30 years. I doubt your accent will change much; it is your native language after all!

Edit: typo

Edited by culebrilla on 04 January 2014 at 7:44am

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sushi13
Diglot
Groupie
Canada
Joined 4447 days ago

49 posts - 64 votes 
Speaks: French*, English
Studies: Spanish

 
 Message 4 of 11
04 January 2014 at 7:59am | IP Logged 
I moved there at 13 years old. (I am quite young-15 years old)
I don't think I will completely lose it, but I'd like to be able to speak it well. I've heard from my psychologist
who is also from Quebec but went to graduate school in New -Brunswick that even in University, they do very
basic French grammar. I don't think my acent is changing that much, people told me it did. But I think it's
more because I use different expressions and use a mix of Frenh and English words while speaking.
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culebrilla
Senior Member
United States
Joined 3756 days ago

246 posts - 436 votes 
Speaks: Spanish

 
 Message 5 of 11
04 January 2014 at 8:36am | IP Logged 
In that case you are still pretty young. I thought you meant that you were 25+ when you moved. In that case I don't know how you would lose a native language unless you never spoke it. But 13 is pretty young. At least you still speak French; you'll be fine. :)
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Solfrid Cristin
Heptaglot
Winner TAC 2011 & 2012
Senior Member
Norway
Joined 5093 days ago

4143 posts - 8864 votes 
Speaks: Norwegian*, Spanish, Swedish, French, English, German, Italian
Studies: Russian

 
 Message 6 of 11
04 January 2014 at 9:14am | IP Logged 
Well @sushi13, the good news is that you are aware of this and still have the time for counter measures. I
agree with @MixedUpCody that you should seek out educated speakers, and also try to branch out to more
literature. I love crime novels myself, but you may need different genres of literature in order to keep your
vocabulary at a high level.

And it is most certainly possible to lose your mother tongue and your accent, but since you intend to work on
this, I doubt that you will. I have however seen Swedes who went to the US and who after a few years
refused to communicate in Swedish, because they had lost so much of the language.

I have spoken English with a Spanish accent, and was recently told by a Frenchman that he felt that I spoke
Italian with a French accent. Part of having a linguistic talent can be to pick up accents easily, the down side
of course being that you lose them easily as well. But hey, having a linguistic talent is a good thing! Just focus
on speaking and reading high level French, and do not worry about grammar. As a native speaker, you do
not need grammar rules, you just need to keep practicing :-)
5 persons have voted this message useful



Hungringo
Triglot
Senior Member
United Kingdom
Joined 3747 days ago

168 posts - 329 votes 
Speaks: Hungarian*, English, Spanish
Studies: French

 
 Message 7 of 11
04 January 2014 at 10:14am | IP Logged 
I have lived for many years abroad where I basically can't use my native language. I speak to family and friends once in a month for a few minutes over the phone or Skype and I have a quick look at Hungarian news sites every morning. I don't really read in Hungarian, neither watch television. I couldn't say I am forgetting the language but perhaps my skills are becoming a bit rusty and I have been told by Hungarian friends that I speak my native language with a foreign accent, something I don't really notice. Occassionally, I can't remember the name of a few things in my mother tongue, or their English equivalent comes up first in my mind even when I am speaking Hungarian.

However, when I visit my home country my native fluency comes back very quickly. After a week in Hungary I speak like any other native, although some still complain about my odd accent.

Edited by Hungringo on 04 January 2014 at 10:19am

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montmorency
Diglot
Senior Member
United Kingdom
Joined 4587 days ago

2371 posts - 3676 votes 
Speaks: English*, German
Studies: Danish, Welsh

 
 Message 8 of 11
04 January 2014 at 4:15pm | IP Logged 
I have a theory (not mine alone) that some people are simply better listeners than
others, and automatically tend to adapt and adopt the accent of those they hear around
them. Others don't, or do it much less well, and those are the types who still speak
with a thick "foreign" accent even after living in the same (orignally "foreign" to
them) place for decades.


As for the language itself, Solfrid Cristina's advice seems pretty sound.
Even in New Brunswick, don't you still have access to French Canadian TV and Radio,
for example?

If access to real books is a problem, I wonder if e-books might offer at least a
partial solution.

I notice from Wikipedia that New Brunswick is the only officially bilingual province in
the Canadian federation. I realise that there is often a difference between the
"official" situation and real life.


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