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Why some people try to lose their accents

A MARTÍNEZ, HOST:

It's one of the most famous lines in movie history.

(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "TERMINATOR 2: JUDGMENT DAY")

ARNOLD SCHWARZENEGGER: (As The Terminator) Hasta la vista, baby.

MARTÍNEZ: That is, of course, the unmistakable voice of Arnold Schwarzenegger in "Terminator 2: Judgment Day." The actor recently told The Associated Press that his accent has benefited him in the melting pot that is America.

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)

SCHWARZENEGGER: Everywhere you turn here, there is an accent - a South African accent, Australian accent, a British accent, whatever. I mean, it's like, there's an accent. So it has always worked to my advantage.

MARTÍNEZ: It got us wondering about the way we speak, so we called up Kari Lim. She's a speech-language pathologist who works with people on their accents. And I asked her if Schwarzenegger's experience is typical of her clients.

KARI LIM: It really varies. You know, an accent really is part of a personal identity, and even part of a culture.

MARTÍNEZ: So why do people come in for accent modification, typically?

LIM: Sometimes, they may feel external reasons. They may feel that they're asked to repeat themselves a lot, or they may have difficulty communicating thoughts and ideas in social or professional settings.

MARTÍNEZ: There's a great scene in the sitcom "Modern Family," where Sofia Vergara's character gets very, very upset because she thinks that because she has a thick Colombian accent that people don't think she's as smart as she really is.

(SOUNDBITE OF TV SHOW, "MODERN FAMILY")

SOFIA VERGARA: (As Gloria Pritchett) You should try talking in my shoes for one mile.

ED O'NEILL: (As Jay Pritchett) I think you meant...

VERGARA: (As Gloria Pritchett) I know what I meant to mean. Do you even know how smart I am in Spanish?

MARTÍNEZ: Do you think that sometimes people believe that because they have an accent that maybe others don't think that they are as smart as they can be?

LIM: Yeah. Unfortunately, there are biases that go along with some accents, and, you know, sometimes stereotypes, as well. Like, I'm from the Deep South. I'm from Alabama. And unfortunately, the Southern dialect can sometimes have that negative stereotype. Everyone has an accent. It just refers to the way that a group of people pronounce words when speaking the same language. So the notion that there's kind of this neutral accent really is a myth. And what people are saying when someone has a neutral accent is that there's just not a lot of distinctive characteristics in their speech to be able to tell where they're from.

MARTÍNEZ: So, Kari, can you think of any famous examples of people changing their accents, and actually changing them to the point where it's almost, like, completely unrecognizable to what their natural accent would be?

LIM: Yeah. The first two that come to mind would be Nicole Kidman. She's Australian. And if you hear her in interviews, she breaks back into that Australian accent.

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)

NICOLE KIDMAN: I sat there with my daughters, my sister, all of her children - she has six children - and my husband.

LIM: But she does a lot of, you know, shows and movies based in the U.S., and you wouldn't really know that she has an Australian accent by listening to her characters.

(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "BABYGIRL")

KIDMAN: (As Romy Mathis) After five years, I started my own company. I wanted to automate repetitive tasks and give people their time back.

LIM: And then another one would be Hugh Laurie, the person who played the doctor on "House." You hear him, he has a complete American accent.

(SOUNDBITE OF TV SHOW, "HOUSE")

HUGH LAURIE: (As Greg House) Fifty dollars to any patient who is willing to leave here right now.

LIM: But when you hear him back in interviews, he reverts back to, you know, his native accent.

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)

LAURIE: 'Cause if you mess something up and it doesn't sound right, you've always got the excuse of saying, well, I'm not really - that's the whole point. I'm not really an American. That was a...

LIM: But, you know, you also have to keep in mind these are actors and actresses who have a communication coach or an accent or dialect coach, and they're doing a lot of repetition. They're memorizing a script. And they have somebody who can really do a deep dive, you know, into even the vowels that would kind of give away someone's identity, you know, if they weren't addressed in the script.

MARTÍNEZ: So is it possible to then truly ever completely get rid of an accent? Just take it to where it's something that no one would ever guess that you're from a particular region or place.

LIM: That is a great question and the most common one I get. You're not really losing an accent or even reducing an accent, like some people will say - you're actually learning another one. There is research that tells us if you learn a language after a certain age, the magic number kind of being 12, but in general, late childhood or early adolescence, your first language or your dominant language is going to impact how you produce and pronounce that second language. Can you really lose an accent or, you know, learn another one? It's really, really hard after a set age. It takes a lot of time. To, you know, change that habit in what we call spontaneous speech or conversation, when you may not even know what you're about to say till you say it, is very challenging.

MARTÍNEZ: Kari Lim is a speech-language pathologist. Kari, thanks.

LIM: Thank you so much. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.

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A Martínez
A Martínez is one of the hosts of Morning Edition and Up First. He came to NPR in 2021 and is based out of NPR West.