5 ms·
Two years as a child could be plenty to develop a local accent. I know people who lived in Germany for less than that time (usually because of US military paren
by taejo 7y ago
Two years as a child could be plenty to develop a local accent. I know people who lived in Germany for less than that time (usually because of US military parents) and return to Germany after decades of not speaking the language at all with near perfect accents. The combination of excellent accent with barely-existent grammar and vocabulary can be quite funny.
- dominotw 7y agogerman has very similar sounds to english though. The sounds of English and German are similar, as are stress and intonation patterns.Also, accent is not just sounds its also culture. germany and us have similar cultures. What exactly is neutral accent, I don't know what that even means.
- objectivetruth 7y agoI presumed it meant roughly halfway between "indistinguishable from native-born American speaking General American" and "Typical ESL accent for people who were born in India." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_American https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_American