But it turns out that a wandering accent isn't a flaw, or some bizarre act of mockery; it's part of normal human social behavior, and it seems to have some pretty amazing psychological reasons behind it.
Research has shown that accents become permanent around the age of 12 years old. That being said, it is possible for accents to change over time or for adults to develop a subtle accent after living in a foreign country for an extended period of time.
Though it can be embarrassing, this tendency is not inherently a bad thing. In fact, psychologists believe it signals high levels of empathy, and a 2013 study found that this kind of unconscious imitation actually tends to make conversational partners feel more positively about the speaker.
From the moment they're born, babies are, in their own way, communicating in the language of their families: Even before they have words, they have accents.
So a family that has moved from one part of the world to another may seem to have a family-specific accent, but that trait is a result of the family's shared environment—not their shared genetics.
Accents develop and change over time as people tend to live and communicate in specific and delineated communities. Accent is the social marker that signals either affiliation with a group or distance from a group.
Australian English can be described as a new dialect that developed as a result of contact between people who spoke different, mutually intelligible, varieties of English. The very early form of Australian English would have been first spoken by the children of the colonists born into the early colony in Sydney.
Australian English is most similar to British English in spelling and sentence construction, although its accent and vocabulary are very distinct from the UK.
This practice is known as ADHD masking and is especially common in women with ADHD. One type of ADHD masking — known as mirroring — involves intentionally or unintentionally mimicking the speech, movements, or behaviors of someone else.
According to a 2010 study by a research group at the University of California, Riverside, people subconsciously mimic other accents due to a phenomenon called "the chameleon effect". The chameleon effect describes our human instinct to “empathise and affiliate” with other people.
Human beings are constantly imitating each other, copying everything from each other's facial expressions, mannerisms, even our postures. Researchers at The University of California, Riverside, found we also imitate speech patters and inflections. That is we have the capacity to imitate accents.
Option 1: the American accent
The most popular English accent of them all. Spread around the world by American cinema, music, television and more than 350 million North Americans (including Canadians, eh), this is the easiest accent for most people to understand, whether native speakers or non-native speakers.
Comparing the two results, it is estimated that children start to recognize different accents at the age of 5 and start to develop their own accents. For that reason, it is recommended to increase children's exposure to different accents between age 5 to 7 for them to develop an unique accent that fits themselves.
Yes, even your accent can and often does change when you move location or start spending a lot of time in a new environment. This can also be true for people starting university or work for the first time, where they interact and are influenced by new circumstances and peer groups.
Strine, also spelled Stryne /ˈstraɪn/, describes a broad accent of Australian English.
In Australia, this dialect is sometimes called Strine /ˈstɹɑɪn/ (or "Strayan" /ˈstɹæɪən/, a shortening of the word Australian), and a speaker of the dialect may be referred to as an Ocker.
There are different variations of the Australian accent. Dr Gawne describes one variation as the "broad accent... [which is] your good, Aussie, ocker accents." Another variation is the "general accent, which is actually the majority of Australian English speakers."
Australian English often contains higher levels of nasal resonance to oral resonance. Resonance refers to voice acoustics and is determined by where the bulk of sound vibration from the voice is reinforced in the your face.
Early European settlers to Australia — many of whom were convicts — were from all over Great Britain and Ireland, and their speech patterns blended to form the new Australian accent.
According to Richards, the beginning of our Australian accent emerged following the arrival of European settlers in 1788. "It emerged from a process called levelling down because you had all these people who came here on 11 ships from different dialect areas, regional dialect areas across England," he said.
An article in Mental Floss cites linguist David Crystal's explanation, which is that, “a song's melody cancels out the intonations of speech, followed by the beat of the music canceling out the rhythm of speech.” Thus, many of the features that give away your speaking accent are not possible to reproduce when you're ...
Sure, you'll notice changes to your own accent after moving to Australia. Sometimes these changes are subtle, but it's generally best to start learning the Aussie twang early on. This will help you embrace it before the accent is too far ingrained in your everyday speech.