But, in general, accents are easier if you grow up with a wide array of them to learn from. You then get used to processing them and it stays as an ability, up to a point.
The comment got me thinking that I have no problem understanding the more common British accents and wondering why, then realizing that living in Germany for 10 years watching Sky Channel probably has something to do with it.
I looked it up and realized that calling it Sky Channel really dates me, since it stopped being called that after 1989.
Growing up in Portugal were TV has subtitles rather than dubbing I ended up picking a sort of generic American (TV series) accent in my English because that’s the most spoken English I was exposed to, though it was mixed with a Portuguese accent.
Mind you, as I later emigrated and lived for long periods in a couple other countries, I added more accents on top of it (first a Dutch Amsterdam accent, later an English RP accent - also known as the BBC accent) and eventually decided to make an effort and nowadays mostly speak English with an RP accent unless I’m feeling lazy and not even try, making it shifts partially back to the original American+Portuguese+Dutch+RP accent.
The comment got me thinking that I have no problem understanding the more common British accents and wondering why, then realizing that living in Germany for 10 years watching Sky Channel probably has something to do with it.
I looked it up and realized that calling it Sky Channel really dates me, since it stopped being called that after 1989.
Growing up in Portugal were TV has subtitles rather than dubbing I ended up picking a sort of generic American (TV series) accent in my English because that’s the most spoken English I was exposed to, though it was mixed with a Portuguese accent.
Mind you, as I later emigrated and lived for long periods in a couple other countries, I added more accents on top of it (first a Dutch Amsterdam accent, later an English RP accent - also known as the BBC accent) and eventually decided to make an effort and nowadays mostly speak English with an RP accent unless I’m feeling lazy and not even try, making it shifts partially back to the original American+Portuguese+Dutch+RP accent.