Society Debate: Is it possible for one’s accent to change after a mere trip abroad?

Accent is not a constant I love listening to people when they have arrive back home after a long study trip abroad, because I’m quite sure, one or two words they will speak will be so different from the way they have always pronounced it. However, that is not funny, it is understandable. What may not be understandable is the accent of a young girl who after a two weeks trip to Scotland, jets off a plane speaking everything through the nose like a pure Briton. Is that funny? Of course! Is it possible? Of course! Whenever people go abroad, they try to adapt to the culture, norms and the way of life of the people they are visiting. Sometimes, it becomes almost natural that they force an accent to sound just like the people, to avoid ridicule or being laughed at. When you force yourself to sound like Will Smith, it may stay without your notice… the accent will stick on you. People will think that you are forcing it and rather sounding ridiculous, but the gist of the matter is that you are not forcing it; it has become part of you, and it’s fine. Besides that people’s accents change even when they don’t travel abroad. There are lots of people who have never even travelled beyond Bugesera but sound like American actors. Now imagine they were granted an opportunity to stay in Las Vegas for just one week… they would come back completely changed and their accents unrecognizable. This only serves to imply that anything is possible; the power that a society has in changing people is immense and should not be taken for granted. Seriously, do you think that anyone of those people wants to sound like a wannabe when they return back home? Definitely not. They just find themselves speaking like the society they have been in. if you take time to trail them, the accent will again die and they will get their pronunciation back on track. More to that, there is always room for learning; instead of assuming that somebody is faking an accent, why don’t we take it that they are trying to learn something else, something that will be useful for their career or something? For example, when some boss wants to employ a radio DJ, he will look for someone fun, someone with a unique accent. If you are to apply for that job… you with your weird Kinyarwanda-ish English, alongside someone with a two-weeks-learned British accent, trust me he will beat you to the job. Personally, I always find it very cute and interesting, listening to a white person who speaks Kinyarwanda almost as perfectly as I do. It is such a thriller for sure.I believe any society would want to hear someone from another area speak their language exactly the way they speak it. Since English is not an African language, I’m almost certain we don’t speak it the right way, so someone with the slightest accent resembling that of an American or a Briton speaks far much better than us. mugishaivan@yahoo.com