Do The Children Of Migrants Have Different Accents?
While they may be “Anglo-Saxon passing”, they’ll likely carry traces of the “old country” in their accent
People have moved from far and wide in pursuit of the proverbial “American” Dream.
Countries like Australia, Canada, and New Zealand have been founded on immigration. Still others — like the UK and France also have large migrant populations owing, in part, to their colonial pasts.
The natural consequence of this is that these are highly multicultural societies.
Someone born in Australia may be of Anglo-Celtic, Asian or Lebanese ancestry. Similarly, a Canadian may trace their roots to France, West Africa, or India.
While on the face of it — we all grew up in the same schooling system and cultural context as our neighbours; it makes you wonder:
Do the children of immigrants have slightly different accents to the broader populace?
It may be an odd thing to consider — after all; most of your friends from different ethnic backgrounds sound, to your ear anyway, the same as you.
However, the reality is that they probably don’t. Not in the first generation anyway.
This is because there are subtle ways in which they would pronounce specific vowel combinations that differ from the broader population — typically coming from further in front or backward in the vocal tract; betraying the background of their parents.
I notice this myself when I drop my kids off at daycare or primary school. There are many Australian-born children there, and at four or five years of age — have Indian or Chinese accents.
How can this be?
Well, until the age of five — the majority of people a child associates with (and thus learns to speak from) are their parents and their parents’ friends.
If your parents and broader community are new migrants with Chinese or Indian accents — you will invariably pick this up.
Over time — these children will shed their accent (just as I shed my Malaysian one), to become “Anglo-Saxon-passing” over the phone.
However— vestigial traces of their native tongues will persist given that a disproportionately large part of their social group (cousins, family events, etc), cultural activities (foreign films and religious activities) will still be anchored to their ethnic community. These ties would reinforce their original accent.
This is all in line with social network theory.
Over time — in places with a “critical mass” of a particular group of people; an ethnolect will develop. Notable examples include that of Lebanese-Australians, and African-American Vernacular.
For the most part, though, my view is that second-generation children from smaller minorities will have a stronger local accent than first-generation ones.
This is because, of the relative lack of “anchoring” to the ancestral communities— meaning their ears were never “trained” to pick up the sounds from their mother tongues.
This is not always a good thing — I grimace every time I hear my kids pronounce an Indian person’s name (or food) like an ocker.
What do you think? Do first-generation migrants sound different to the broader population?
Let me know in the comments below!
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