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Comment by Panjam | Hacker News Reader

As a child I had a strong South African accent, although I could not hear it. I remember visiting some relatives in the north of England and being very surprised by their accents - and saying to my mother, "thank goodness we don't have accents!". I now have an American accent and equally don't hear my accent when I talk, and laughed at a recording I recently heard of my childhood accent.

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I grew up in NZ, lived in Silicon Valley for 20 years starting in my mid 20s, have been back in NZ for 15 years now - I variously have an American/Australian/English/Kiwi accent depending on where I'm being listened to and the general exposure of the person doing the listening to the rest of the world.

In fact there's no where on the planet where I don't have an accent, and I'm old enough that this will always be true. I am well and truly screwed.

I happen to have a slight Scottish accent, despite never having lived there (or in any other country where English is the dominant language, for that matter.)

Reason is simply that when I was a kid, the house next door - the only house next door, this being rural Norway - was purchased by a family from Aberdeen, who'd decided to move to Norway to try something new.

If I wanted to play with their kids, I'd better learn some English fast - and the only speakers around were the Scottish kids next door.

Incidentally, I now go to Aberdeen for work on a regular basis, and the locals never fail to ask how long I've been living there, seeing as I've started to pick up their accent and all...

I'm 40 years old and still have a very strong Afrikaans accent. I've made peace with it and actually embrace my accent. Although my English grammar is good and my vocabulary above average I definitely perceive different reactions when I have a discussion with an English South African vs written communication. It frustrates me, and since I realised it I also picked up on how many white people mock black South Africans' English accents. The prejudice will hopefully stop one day.

Having been in a similar boat, what I find amazing is how there are words I say with an American accent 99% of the time, but in the context of a South African reference, will say it with a South African pronunciation. Tomato is one of these words. I say tomato like any other North American, but when I am referring to a tomato breedie, well suddenly, I say it like a South African. What I find most odd, is that I don't feel weird when I say it in context, but if I try and say it out of context, it seems so forced.

My mother is Australian and my father is American. We (my two sisters and I) had a distinct Australian tinge to our speech which was obvious in elementary school. This caused me to actually miss test questions on syllabification in class, since a more typical US accent would say e.g. i-de-a but our mother broke it into i-dea. Mom actually protested that one to the teacher.

I've lost most of that except for a residual tendency to say eye-ther (either) and tomahto (tomato), which my Strine wife smirks at.

I'm Australian born and bred, lived here my entire life, and I say 'tomahto' and 'eye-ther'. I'm also firmly on the right-hand-side of the trap/bath split.

It's a mistake to think that there is a single Australian accent.

There's definitely a few different Aussie accents.

I live in central Melbourne, and most people I meet have an accent very similar to a Kiwi accent, close enough that after only a year since I came from NZ, most people think I'm an Aussie. The accent has been easy to pick up, just say 'feesh and cheeps' and use a high rising terminal (like you're asking a question), and you're good to go.

However, go to the outer suburbs, or rural Australia, or up the coast to NSW or QLD, and you get a whole array of different accents. You've got the ocker accents, the wog accent, the aboriginals have their own accent.

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