How common is it for immigrants in the USA to have accents that are not from other countries?

Posted by TheShyBuck@reddit | AskAnAmerican | View on Reddit | 33 comments

I am Algerian and when I talk in voice chats on discord 65% of people tell me are you Russian? I tell him no I am Algerian.

Someone asked how are you Algerian if your accent is Russian? even some people from neighboring countries like Morocco, Egypt and Middle East tell me I sounds like Russian more than Algerian and Eastern Europeans tell me too I sound Russian.

Maybe it is the way I pronounce vowels and r or maybe I have slight form of speech sound disorder.

I hope Slavic Americans will not be offended I am not imitating Russian accent to make fun of your accent.

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TheHopefulUnicorn33@reddit

I'm a former ESL teacher in the US. Even with significant experience working with internationals, I can't identify many accents because there are so many languages. Additionally, accents can be nfluenced by previous training, current exposure to speakers, learner's age, peer groups, etc. I noticed that some students undergoing language training in the U.S. had been previously taught British pronunciation (e.g. water, been) yet they had never lived in the U.K. I noticed young adults from other countries had picked up accents and vocabulary more common to their age/peer group either from close proximity to Americans their age or media/movies.

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Pinwurm@reddit

In Darja, your mouth & tongue are acclimated to moving in specific ways. There may be some overlap with Russian sounds when speaking English and it may confuse some listeners who are not familiar with Algerian accents.

This is perfectly normal. Russian is my first language, I assure you: no one is offended.

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A-Giant-Blue-Moose@reddit

In my experience, it's rare. The only person I can think of who was born outside the US but has an American accent was my uncle. He came over with my grandmother in the 50s. My grandfather was an airman and yes it was extremely controversial.

His first language was German, but refused to speak it since he met a lot of violence for it. There was a year or two where he didn't speak at all outside the home and even then refused to speak German. Pretty common for immigrants at that time to experience violence, especially Germans. Since he was still a young kid, his accent was able to change.

I know people who've been here for decades, but still have an accent, but they immigrated as adults. Even children of immigrants sometimes have slight accents they picked up from their parents.

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No-Mouse4800@reddit

Many Canadian immigrants are typically very difficult to detect based on their accents alone.

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axiom60@reddit

You can tell when they say “washroom”, “zed”, “Grade 12”, etc etc

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Grungemaster@reddit

The way they say “Sorry” (and the frequency too)

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No-Mouse4800@reddit

But not all of them.

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Quiet_Staff@reddit

I can always tell that they’re Canadian . LOL

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Cheeko914@reddit

Especially when compared to people from northern areas like Chicago

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ArcadeToken95@reddit

That sounds annoying to encounter frequently, but what's the question you're asking here?

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TheShyBuck@reddit (OP)

it is in the title

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ArcadeToken95@reddit

Ah okay, couple of ways that could be taken:

Immigrants with an American accent: kind of a rare thing outside of Canadians (who can have a similar-to-identical dialect), usually if someone is actually using an American accent, they've typically been here a long time at some point in their lives

Immigrants with an accent that doesn't seem to match their actual home country (which I think is what you were getting at?): happens on very rare occasion, I don't have specific examples but I've heard it from a few folks before. Usually the result of being in a different country for a while and not just because of a general speech difference

That said your situation doesn't seem super unusual to me, and if you were here people would get confused over your accent anyways, people mostly live in their own little world and don't interact with foreigners very well, hold racial/ethnic biases, etc.

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rawbface@reddit

But you're asking how common it is for immigrants to have accents that are NOT from other countries - so do you mean they speak with an American accent? Or do you mean their accent is from a country that is not their own?

Zero "slavic-Americans" are going to be protective about native Slavic accents... It really doesn't work that way.

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WarrenMulaney@reddit

It isn't very clear.

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freecain@reddit

Despite spending over a decade in Boston - which has a fair number of immigrants thanks the concentration of colleges - and now outside DC in a suburb with a lot of immigrants from all over the world - I've never met an Algerian.

A lot of people immigrated out of the USSR, and many of them speak Russian - so a lot of Americans are familiar with the Russian accent, and not just from film. A quick google, and a few videos - Algerian is VERY consonant heavy, and the cadence does sound distinctly Russian.

I'm sure people from Russia would disagree.

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Level-Brain-4786@reddit

I'm Russian and my accent was called British, French, Portuguese and I don't even remember what else. Only after 35 years here in the US people started to place it as Russian more often recently. Go figure.

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RevolutionaryWind249@reddit

I think almost everyone who is an immigrant has an accent. It probably goes away in 20 or 30 years in some cases. But my cousin married someone from Germany and she's been here for 40 years and still has her accent.

To me it's hard to differentiate African accents the central and southern areas if I'm honest. I would probably be hard pressed to differentiate between a lot of European accents from people in the Germanic family group as well.

I usually don't ask people where they're originally from. Once in awhile, but it seems kind of nosy. I'm not sure if that's a me thing or an American thing.

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explodingbunny@reddit

We are probably just bad at knowing an Algerian accent, and we're far more familiar with a Russian accent so anything that sounds similar, we may have immigrants from everywhere but some are far more familiar to us tbh

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HotCommission7325@reddit

Whenever I speak Russian, I’m told I speak with a Dutch accent.

I think it mostly depends on how you learn the other language and that a person might learn pronunciations a bit differently than expected.

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DOMSdeluise@reddit

lol people told me I had kind of a Polish style accent. No idea how that happened as I do not speak a single word of Polish but hey, at least it sounds slavic lol

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New_Entertainer_4895@reddit

I met a mexican who moved to the US illegally and learned english from chinese and indian coworkers who were also there illegally (they moved to Canada to the US).

So when he spoke english it was this weird chinese/indian/mexican accent combo.

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njmiller_89@reddit

Just because someone asked you if you’re Russian, doesn’t mean that you have a Russian accent. I don’t know about where the discord crowd is from, but many people in the US are bad at identifying accents due to lack of exposure to people from different countries.

By definition, you have an accent associated with the language you speak and the country and locality you’re from. I’d have to hear your accent to think otherwise (am Russian).

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bonzai113@reddit

I don't how common this is. my wife is German and when she speaks English, it's the British style that she was taught as a school girl. her English is excellent and most people take her as being British.

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RawbM07@reddit

The accents within our (American) country are sometimes significantly different such that we have a hard time understanding people from different regions.

Im originally from the Pittsburgh area and I get a kick out of people struggling to understand Dana in The Pitt, for example.

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PinchedTazerZ0@reddit

Very common. You can have a good 4 or 5 accents common in an area even. There are pockets of immigrant populations of all sorts in the US

People assume I'm Mexican or Middle Eastern on first glance but if I'm talking to a hawaiian or some other polynesian they pick up on my accent even if they can't determine where it's specifically from "what island you from brudda? I know youre not hawaiian"

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etchedchampion@reddit

This is more likely just people not being familiar with an Algerian accent. Like my husband is Australian but people always think he's British because that's what they're familiar with.

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Sabertooth767@reddit

That would be the answer.

There are actually certain entire sounds that a typical monolingual English speaker just straight-up won't be able to perceive a difference between, because our brains aren't used to thinking about things like "breathy h vs. non-breathy h." So, even objectively very different accents can sound similar to an untrained ear.

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