London Banter - View Single Post

Roland Perry · January 11th 17, 02:55 PM posted to uk.transport.london

In message , at 15:19:19 on Wed, 11 Jan
2017, d remarked:

You would clearly be surprised how many naturalised foreigners there are
in the country.

Unless people start speaking a language as a child then they always retain
at least some of the accent of their mother tonque so are fairly easy to spot.

Some are much better than that. I knew what we might call a barrister in
Germany who was German but had spent some time in the USA. His accent
was indistinguishable from a mother tongue USA-ian.

The reverse is sometimes true - if someone has been born and brought up
in the USA from german parents, speaking bilingually in the home,
there's every possibility of being able to detect a residual German
accent.
--
Roland Perry