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Question: My family lives in Manchester. My husband has a distinctive southern (North London) accent. I assumed our children (now 6 and 8) who have always lived here, would pick up the local accent, but they've held on to a few key words of their Dad, e.g. 'bath' pronounced 'barth', 'grass' as 'grarse'! (Now they are becoming more socially aware they interchange the words more recently!). What determines accent choice?
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Joe commented on :
I’m in the same boat — I still speak with an American accent and my daughter definitely picked up quite a bit of it as an infant. But as Anna says, when she went to nursery that mostly changed although she still throws some American accent in occasionally. She’s now 13 and has a clear local accent although she can put on an American accent really well. And when we are in the US and she spends time with her cousins, she immediately starts shifting in a more US register even though I’m not sure she’s aware of doing it.
I think this is a good example of the importance that accent plays in social interactions. Accent is part of a person’s social identity and it plays an important role in determining in-group and out-group relations. So your kids will probably keep some of their Dad’s accent in tacit recognition of the important social role he plays. They’ll probably be able to put it on intentionally throughout their lives and to them it’ll be because they are North Londoners (at least half) as well as being Mancunian.