How common is it for immigrants in the USA to have accents that are not from their countries?
Posted by TheShyBuck@reddit | AskAnAmerican | View on Reddit | 71 comments
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.
How common is it for immigrants in the USA to have accents that are not from their countries?
SublimeRapier06@reddit
I’ve been told multiple times that when I speak Japanese, I have a Korean accent. I’m American.
Per_sephone_@reddit
My friend from Hong Kong speaks English with a British Accent. Sort of. Just enough to make things the maximum amount of confusing.
TheVentiLebowski@reddit
Immigrant usually have the accent of the country they grew up in.
MacaroonSad8860@reddit
I knew an Italian with a German accent in English because he learned English in Germany
RhubarbNo1760@reddit
They’re not saying you don’t sound Algerian, they’re saying they don’t know what an Algerian accent sounds like and the most similar sounding thing they know is Russian accented English.
OhThrowed@reddit
It's fairly common for immigrants to pick up the accent their teacher had.
It's also fairly common for us to mistake a less often heard accent for a more commonly heard one.
Illustrious_looser@reddit
I mistakenly thought a European youtuber had a Russian accent. Turned out he was Portuguese. So...
Scrappy_The_Crow@reddit
LOL, I thought the same with him!
MyUsername2459@reddit
Andre, the guy from the European Reacts channel?
Yeah, I was sure he was speaking with a Russian accent too. . .finding out he was Portuguese was a huge surprise. I was sure he was Russian, or at least some kind of Slavic, based on the accent.
latestagepersonhood@reddit
Josef Stalin reportedly spoke English with a thick Irish accent for this reason.
osddelerious@reddit
Was it Lenin, as he had an English tutor who was Irish?
latestagepersonhood@reddit
damn, i think you're right.
osddelerious@reddit
Not being picky, just really wanted to be able to visualize Stalin saying ejit.
lflj91@reddit
Not even just immigrants. I'm from BFE, Alabama, and live in California now. My wife is from California, never lived anywhere else. Our 3 year old has a slight, but noticeable, Southern accent because I've been a SAHD and primary parent for his whole life and he hears me talk more often because of that.
JohnnyC300@reddit
The funniest to me is when immigrants to the US pick up a southern accent then move up north. So you'll be talking to a Korean immigrant or something and they have both a southern AND Korean accent. It's absolutely hilarious.
CobandCoffee@reddit
Once stopped at a gas station somewhere between Corbin, KY and Knoxville, TN. The guy running the place was clearly of Indian decent but dressed like a local (camo hat with a fishhook) and spoke in a mixture of an Indian and Appalachian accent. Ones of those moments that makes me proud to be an American.
MyUsername2459@reddit
Wow, talk about a South Korean accent ;-)
Maxorus73@reddit
Not an immigrant, but it's for this reason I imagine my French accent would sound really weird to a French person, because I learned French from an American
TheLizardKing89@reddit
Nate McClouth, a white American baseball player, speaks Spanish with a Dominican accent for this reason.
BreadUntoast@reddit
Huh, weirdly enough my French probably has a slight Russian accent because my high school French teacher was Russian. Big shoutout to Madame Bolshakova!
thenerdbrarian@reddit
Once met a university student in England who was from Mexico but had a very distinct "Fargo" accent. Turns out she was born and raised in Mexico, but her mother was an ESL teacher from Minnesota.
bitsybear1727@reddit
I had a biology professor who was Pakistani and said she learned english from Irish nuns. So that's why her accent was "interesting" lol.
xx2983xx@reddit
My brother learned Spanish primarily from a teacher from Central America. He then lived in Spain for a few years and got teased for "talking with a Mexican accent"
AdDue7140@reddit
This. For example a lot of Ukrainians have a British english accent because that’s how they learned it in Ukraine.
Araxanna@reddit
I have a friend from The Netherlands and while he does have that accent, the way he pronounces words is sometimes very British sounding.
RenaissanceGuy86@reddit
People in the US have very skewed ideas of what certain accents sound like.
SantaClausDid911@reddit
This is kind of a bold statement to make without any elaboration.
I'll grant that many Americans need to be disabused of the notion that an accent or pronunciation can be objectively correct but that's true of most average people.
RenaissanceGuy86@reddit
An Australian, South African, New Zealander, Brit, white African sound the same to most Americans.
Anyone south asian “sounds indian”
Anyone that looks “latino” sounds Mexican.
I never said most but you asked for ellaboration so I will add Most Americans to my statement.
SantaClausDid911@reddit
I mean I don't disagree it's just odd to frame it as an American thing.
Americans can clock the difference between a more "proper" sounding southern English accent and cockney, as Brits can often distinguish a southern twang from more "neutral" accents. But the average person in either place is not particularly good at picking out even the more common or regionally vast accents.
In other words, Americans won't necessarily hear scouse or mancunian distinctly, but Brits often won't hear the very notable differences between NY, Boston, and Mid Atlantic.
This also isn't unique to English, particularly the more "foreign" an accent is from your reference point. I speak with a slight mid Atlantic spice over a GenAm accent, but Asians, Arabs, sometimes even Latinos often ask if I'm British or Australian when I travel to those regions because they don't have a strong enough reference point to hear the difference.
I'm usually not in a rush to defend the average American about anything, but this is just an objectively incorrect take on linguistics based on "Americans dumb".
"Americans dumb" is as true as it's ever been but that's not why.
RenaissanceGuy86@reddit
It’s not based on Americans Dumb. It’s based on my experience as an American and having a career where I deal with all kinds of people and having fellow employees day things like “ I talked to the next client on the phone, they sound Russian and then the client comes in and it’s someone from Colombia who sounds line they’re Colombian.
_LoveTheRain@reddit
I’m American and was learning German from a German embassy course (classroom). Germans told me that I speak German with a French accent. My instructor was German. 🤷♀️
rawbface@reddit
Here in Jersey there are a ton of south Asian people, many of whom speak with British accents. That counts.
BlackSwanMarmot@reddit
Hong Kong-born Chinese immigrants too.
PacSan300@reddit
My dad was born in China but grew up mostly in Hong Kong, and he developed that accent too.
MyUsername2459@reddit
That region was heavily colonized by the British for a very long time, and only got independence less than 80 years ago. . .so when English was introduced there, it was British English.
I think that rather shapes how English is used in that part of the world.
osddelerious@reddit
That’s because they learned British English, and for some people that is their first or second language. At this point, I would argue that British English is native to India and the UK.
pushdose@reddit
At this point, no. Indian English is entirely its own thing, accent, slang, cadence and more. In fact it’s a big issue for young Indians, and there’s a lot they try to do to sound “less Indian” professionally when dealing with western clients.
ms_directed@reddit
i learned German in school from teacher with a very pronounced British accent and I often wondered how it sounded to native speakers
Repulsive-Ice8395@reddit
I did a one month exchange trip to Germany in high school. We went to their English class and they were criticizing our accent because they learned British pronunciation. We were all from southern Indiana and have a very slight twang.
One girl said she was going to the Rocky Mountains later in the summer and the teacher called her out for saying "Racky". He said something like "Oh, you mean Roh-cky" (with a long O sound) haha.
ms_directed@reddit
i was learning High German so already my local friends would make fun of me and teach me "street" German, so at least i was learning the local dialect in the correct accent, lol
IP_What@reddit
Every single person of Indian descent has a vaguely British accent
Araxanna@reddit
You mean under the strong Indian one?
moonrockintheocean@reddit
Yes, under the strong Indian accent is a weird collection of words which we pronounce in a very british way, leading to the feeling of vague british accent.
Also many immigrants of indian origin in US, especially younger ones, could have lived years in other countries apart from the US leading to very weird accents
One of my friends lived in dubai, then UK and then germany, causing his accent to switch from UK to german and somewhat american in a single sentence xD
Araxanna@reddit
I suppose I’ve never noticed. I’ll have to listen to my doctor more carefully.
moonrockintheocean@reddit
This is actually interesting
The typical sing songy indian accent which has been portrayed usually in media is from yester years of people getting educated in English in the 70s-90s. Most of them usually learnt English after they were already 10-12, and as their teachers too had learnt english later on in life, everyone developed that thick accent.
With the younger generation however, since the 2000s, much more emphasis is laid in Indian schools in teaching British english pronunciations, (along with consuming a lot of foreign media) leading to a mix of Indian accents with british sounding words ( one eg. i can think of is how we pronounce can’t, as opposed to americans)
PublicMenace95@reddit
Fairly common. They usually tell me that I sound either German or Russian. I’m Hungarian
Araxanna@reddit
My high school chemistry teacher was Hungarian, so I can usually tell Hungarian accents from German ones, but I DO tend to mix up Hungarian and Austrian, which is wild because Arnold Schwarzenegger was so prevalent in the 90s, you’d think that hearing both accents for an entire year at the same time I’d be able to tell them apart. But they are scarily similar.
Not_an_okama@reddit
I mean they were the same empire up until about 100 years ago. Thats pretty recent.
Illustrious_looser@reddit
Yup
sfdsquid@reddit
When I was in France everyone guessed I was from the UK or the Netherlands. "Anglaise? Hollandaise?" They never guessed the US.
SantaClausDid911@reddit
You're asking a complicated linguistics question, not an American one, even if you don't realize it.
Many people don't have as sharp an ear for accents as they believe, and will often make associations based on whatever minimal context they have.
For example, if a Moroccan has largely been exposed to English from Russian speakers, it's their only point of reference. They're trying to connect dots without having enough context to do so.
For some personal context I'm a very well traveled American. I VERY often get asked if I'm British or Australian by English speaking locals, particularly in Asia, the Middle East, etc.
This isn't anything about me, it's just that those people can't actually distinguish British vs Australian vs American accents.
I also speak Spanish at an intermediate level. In the last few years I've gotten sharper with clocking regional accents but it's still not as clear to me as it is to native speakers. I hear very specific cues that might tell me Caribbean, Colombia, etc. But not the finer nuances.
HoratiusHawkins@reddit
Born to Austrian parents i the US. I have a noticable accent in both languages. No one considers me a native speaker in either language.
FreeStateOfPortland@reddit
The level of granularity of the questions in this sub is getting more and more specific.
“How common is it for an immigrant from the southern hemisphere that moved to the northern hemisphere and then back to the southern hemisphere then to Asia and back to Brazil to have an eastern Welsh accent?”
AndrasKrigare@reddit
Eh, I don't hate it. It's better than the "why don't you guys do X" without any explanation for why they do X in the first place.
FreeStateOfPortland@reddit
Your next question to this sub needs to be: “why is it I don’t understand jokes written in English?“
beenoc@reddit
Or my personal favorite, "why do you X? We don't X in my country," and every other comment is someone from their country saying "dude what are you talking about we X all the time."
anneofgraygardens@reddit
People don't know what an Algerian accent sounds like is all, so they're guessing. Although I would have expected it to sound like a typical Arabic accent? I wonder if you're having trouble with articles, which is often a clue that someone is a native Russian speaker. Russian doesn't have definite articles so native Russian speakers often have trouble using them correctly in languages that do. But Arabic does, so idk.
My second language is one that doesn't have a lot of non-native speakers and while people could tell I wasn't a native speaker, they could not place my accent at all. Sometimes when they'd ask where I was from, I'd tell them to guess and the answers were alllllll over the place. It didn't really mean anything.
molotovzav@reddit
When I took drivers lessons my instructor was French. I speak French but he is a long time American so we spoke in English. My mother in law set up the lessons (I got my license later in life and she gifted the lessons) and she told me my driving instructor was Indian, so when I met him and saw he was French I was shocked. The thing is she pick up it was a French accent and thought it was an Indian one because she's southern American and her exposure to Europeans is low, while I'm born and bred west coast/Pacific and I've heard tons of euro accents in English. My point is people often don't have a perfect ear for accents and just tend to lump some of them into whatever is familiar.
21schmoe@reddit
I can't speak for Eastern Europeans, but if you sound Russian to Americans, there's two possibilities:
willtag70@reddit
It's common for those who learned English via British speakers to have that accent and vocabulary. I don't doubt that learning English from someone with another native accent would get passed on as well. On a sort of similar note, when I was in Portugal their accent in English sounded very Slavic to me. I even asked an AirBnB host if she was from Portugal because her English sounded so Eastern European. Yes, she was native Portuguese. So perhaps some other accents get mistaken the way you describe, but other than Portuguese I don't know of any.
river-running@reddit
A lot of people just aren't good at placing accents. I once had some Eastern European folks who heard my Southeastern accent, asked where I was from, and seemed surprised when I said "here" (Virginia).
Repulsive_Fact_4558@reddit
Not in my experience but I have talked to people from other countries online that will have British accents because they learned to speak English from British sources.
Many Americans have a hard time decerning accents.
rileyoneill@reddit
I once had a teacher who was an immigrant from China. She had a very thick Chinese accent. I ran into her 20 years later and she had an overly put on British accent. I remember people saying that she spent some time in England before she came to America (which she came here in like, the 1970s). I just figured she figured that the British accent was posh and refined and didn't want to learn english to be associated with a bunch of mouth breathers.
Ok-Energy-9785@reddit
No idea
Gilthwixt@reddit
Idk about "common" but you get some pretty interesting mixes. Met a 2nd generation Japanese kid who grew up in the Miami area and spoke English with a Spanish accent. Same deal with 2nd gen Chinese who grew up in Jamaica.
CockroachNo2540@reddit
I have found the most common situation is when people have learned English from a British English speaker, they speak with an English accent rather than American.
MrLongWalk@reddit
It’s not that you have a Russian accent it’s that they are mistaking an unfamiliar accent (Algerian) for a more common one (Russian).
kmoonster@reddit
It's more likely that your accent is similar to Russian in some superficial way, and that people are more familiar with the stereotypical Russian accent than your Algerian one.
Valcyor@reddit
Had a coworker that everyone on staff thought was British due to a perfect London accent; not posh, but definitely proper. Then someone used the word "murky" and she had no clue what it meant.
Come to find out she was German, and had learned English from a Londoner. Kind of broke everyone's minds but we all laughed it off. Customers didn't get it though, so she had to pretend she was American born but got her accent from her parents. Because hey, customers are stupid.
Also, historical fun fact, Vladimir Lenin spoke English with an Irish accent for the much the same reason.
Agreeable-Sun368@reddit
Are the people you're talking to actually familiar with Russian accented English?
People tell my family members they have "Mexican" accents ALL the time. They don't. They're Greek; they have Greek accents. But Mexican people are more common in the US so they slot the accent into that bucket. Russian accents are widely portrayed (often badly) in American media. Algerian/North African accents are not.
Electrical-Speed-836@reddit
I guess not really that common I know Bangladeshi people in Detroit with a British accent but most them actually immigrated from England.