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I know a guy whose mother came from italy to the US when she was young. He went back some Family over there. He was told “you speak Italian well, but you sound like my grandmother”

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Same thing happens in the US too —- at least in the north east. If you go to New York, northern New Jersey, Boston or even Chicago, people in their 40s and younger don’t often sound like their parents; there’s little to no accent.

I work with a younger guy from the south and he definitely has an accent but that could be an anomaly.

This is from 90s. Tamilians in Sri Lanka were fighting the government. This is well known. Many of them escaped and came to India.

One of my Tamilian friends who lived in Delhi all his life went to visit Chennai. He was asked more than once if "he was from Sri Lanka" due to his accent - which was probably not Sri Lankan Tamil accent, but unfamiliar enough to get them thinking.

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