Joanna Krupa in Neonet's "Super look na dobre oferty"

[Glizdka]

What do you think about Joanna Krupa's accent in this commercial I saw today? Wikipedia says she moved to Illinois at the age of five, where she grew up.

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WARNING: Contains interspersed Polish.

 

[jutfrank]

Obviously, she speaks with an American accent. Is that what you're wondering? It's a matter of personal taste, but I don't particularly like the Californian accent.

 

[Charlie Bernstein]

I have no idea how good her Polish accent is, but her English accent is pure middle-America.

 

[Charlie Bernstein]

Obviously, she speaks with an American accent. Is that what you're wondering? It's a matter of personal taste, but I don't particularly like the Californian accent.

Here's another opinion:

The classic California accent is influenced by Appalachia (see American Nations: A History of the Eleven Rival Regional Cultures of North America), which doesn't really come through in her accent. Compare her accent to, say, a Beach Boys song: "Uh wish they all could be California grrrrrrrls!"

An Illinois/Great Lakes accent (in which car sounds a bit like care) doesn't show up, either.

Hers is really the middle-America accent used throughout the country — with some regional of variation, of course. That's why some Texans and Vermonters sound almost alike. It's what's usually heard on American TV shows, so it's easy to think of it as a California accent. A good word for describing it: flat.

Goes, Tarheel, Skrej, Yankee, and others, what do you think?

 

[GoesStation]

She doesn't say enough in English to distinguish her accent.

 

[Charlie Bernstein]

She doesn't say enough in English to distinguish her accent.

Yup. The Illinois might come out with few more lines.

 

[Glizdka]

In this video, she speaks much more naturally than in the commercial.

I have no idea how good her Polish accent is, but her English accent is pure middle-America.

It's good but you wouldn't take her for a native speaker. She has a noticeable foreign accent and she often makes minor grammatical mistakes.

I'm interested in her case because she lost her native language after she had moved at the age of five. My friend's daughter's five and they've just moved from London. Do you think she'll lose her natural British accent?

 

[Tdol]

Nice Yorkie dog, though- single-minded enough to ignore the advert and look around.

 

[GoesStation]

I'm interested in her case because she lost her native language after she had moved at the age of five. My friend's daughter's five and they've just moved from London. Do you think she'll lose her natural British accent?

Where has she moved to?

As it happens, I currently have a couple of house guests who immigrated from England to Ohio as children. One was a year and a half old when they arrived, the other about five. They obviously don't speak with English accents today, nor does their older sister who was nine. They do have a few unusual speaking habits that they inherited from their very English parents, but only an expert could possibly identify them as signs of English influence.

People who learn a new language by immersion at around age twelve or less rarely have a noticeable foreign accent.

 

[Glizdka]

Where has she moved to?

Southwest Poland. She lives near me.

 

[probus]

Yup. The Illinois might come out with few more lines.

I did notice the glottal stop when she says "Not fresh". That sound like Chicago to me. I say Chicago rather than Illinois because you only need to go slightly south of Chicago before the heavy drawl kicks in.

 

[GoesStation]

Southwest Poland. She lives near me.

Then she will certainly retain her English accent when speaking English. Why would she lose it? What would replace it?

I knew an Israeli who spoke English with a completely American accent — except for technical words that he learned after he moved to Israel at age thirteen. He pronounced those with a decidedly Israeli accent.

 

[Tdol]

Some keep their accent, while others lose it. You'll find Scots who have lived in London for decades without changing their accent and people whose origins you'd never guess. Normally, a native accents is only replaced with another one - moving from the UK to the US, for instance. I think she should be able to keep hers. She should be encouraged to as it will be a professional asset.

 

[GoesStation]

Normally, a native accents is only replaced with another one - moving from the UK to the US, for instance. I think she should be able to keep hers.

A five-year-old English girl who moves to the States will never keep her accent. She may be able to switch accents more readily than Americans without English parents, though. Gwyneth Paltrow does that.

 

[probus]

After listening carefully again, I think the midwest comes through clearly in the false vowel when she says "model".

 

[jutfrank]

People who learn a new language by immersion at around age twelve or less rarely have a noticeable foreign accent.

A five-year-old English girl who moves to the States will never keep her accent.

This is absolutely true.

If you don't reach a certain level of fluency by the age of 12, it's very unlikely you'll ever lose your native accent. If you get to 18, I'd say it's virtually impossible, at least for anyone who doesn't have a very rare ability. In short, any adult learner who is under the impression they can ever sound like a native speaker should forget about it.

Conversely, if a child is under 7 or so, it will be virtually impossible for that child not to adopt the accent of her new speech community.

 

[probus]

There is some old scholarly work on this from the 1950s or 60s. I've posted a link to it years ago, but can't find it now. The authors claim that the ability to acquire authentic pronunciation disappears by the time the ego is fully formed . (Whatever that may mean. I've never been a fan of Freudianism.)

 

[jutfrank]

There's also a lot of much more recent, in-depth, and relevant study too, which directly addresses the 'critical period' hypothesis.

It's nothing to do with the ego. It depends on a child's neurological development, the most significant stage of which happens during adolescence when the brain is undergoing significant neurological pruning. An obvious example of this relates to specific sounds (phonemes). Take, say, the approximant /r/ phoneme in English: for learners whose L1 doesn't include such a sound, there will be a point in development after which the learner's ear loses the ability to distinguish it from other similar sounds (think: the typical difficulty Japanese speakers have with /r/ and /l/). And if the brain can't perceive the quality of the phoneme, it will never be able to produce it.

 

[Pears In Juice]

I swear I hear something non-native when she says "Come on" -- especially in "on." It's too far in the front of her mouth.

 

[Tdol]

A five-year-old English girl who moves to the States will never keep her accent. She may be able to switch accents more readily than Americans without English parents, though. Gwyneth Paltrow does that.

I was thinking about adults.