Re: Over 40's Moving Back and Catching Up
 

When my husband met me 26 years ago I had a strong English accent, even after having been here in the US for 11 years. Even our daughter had my accent, despite being born here. At some point, though, I lost it. Not sure when or why. But I hate it. So first on the agenda when I get back will be to recover it :nod:

Re: Over 40's Moving Back and Catching Up
 

Ahhhhhhhhhh I like that... good for you...

Re: Over 40's Moving Back and Catching Up
 

Funny you should mention your daughter's accent. My Canadian-born youngest sister was a proper little Geordie until she started school. She still understands the lingo of course but is now well and truly Canadian.

Re: Over 40's Moving Back and Catching Up
 

Me too John, its been 6 years now back home for me and I have worked quite hard trying to loose any trace of American accent I had, and I really think I sound pretty universally British, no particular region, but I still have moments when people I have never met ask me if I'm American, I think when we speak that we hear with our ears something completely different then other people hear, what do you think?

Re: Over 40's Moving Back and Catching Up
 

Love it!!! thanks for sharing :goodpost:

Re: Over 40's Moving Back and Catching Up
 

Hi cheers,
Thanks for asking, Mum has a lot of health problems going on, but to look at her you would not think so, she looks quite good for a 97 year old, I'm really lucky to still have my Mum with me, in the 6 years I have been home looking after her I have grown closer to her then I have ever been, its really strange you know, all the decades I was living in the U.S. I used to phone her once a week, (at least the last 20 years) and we would talk for an hour and that was my total contact with her,
I of course have always loved her, but now we have lived together for a number of years now its so much different, does that make any sense? like we had to get to know each other all over again,


but all the years before phoning like in the 70,s & 80's it would just be letters back and forth, but it took over a week to get a letter home and another week to receive a reply :eek: if only we had skype in those days,
I used to come home and visit every 4 or 5 years and stay 3 weeks.

Re: Over 40's Moving Back and Catching Up
 

Not sure if you are celebrating this year, but Happy 🙏 Thanksgiving, Rodney! :cool:

Re: Over 40's Moving Back and Catching Up
 

Hi Rodney, good to hear from you as always.
Gosh, we often don't come across in speech to others as we hear ourselves, or even with the intent of what we say. Listeners and readers apply their own filters, as we so often see even in this site.
More than once in US, speaking with US strangers I had been asked if I was South African, on the premise that I sounded like neither The Queen nor Crocodile Dundee so I couldn't be Brit or Aussie, lol.

Re: Over 40's Moving Back and Catching Up
 

YOU NO WHAT I THINK IS WEIRD?
Well if you have been away from the UK for a very long time like me and many of us on here, you are separated from everything at home completely, so I left to go to the states in the mid 70,s and returned 2010 so a long time away!!! missing all the British telly through the decades, so in coming back home you gradually get to know and like TV stars and personalities that you never seen before, people that started to build there careers long after I left like Bradley Walsh from the Chase for instance,

And now Iv'e been home for 6 years already and starting to think that I have seen all the famous people on TV now so I know as much about British TV as the rest of the population!!!
But no not at all, it seems to be a never ending learning escalator that we are on, ----- now lets take a show called Pointless!!! I love the show and have been watching it for 6 years now hosted by Alexander Armstrong who I never heard of until I came home,
now just yesterday I was watching with great interest an interview with Alexander televised at his large country home, and they went back to his early life and how he started off in TV, and I learned that way before pointless he had a TV sit com for 15 years with a man called Ben Miller who I have only known before from his recent TV commercials for Tesco, NOW I learn that Ben Miller himself goes back a couple of decades in TV, the sit com was called simply ------- Armstrong and Miller,

So the point I'm making is if you Immigrated to your adopted country 30 or 40 years or more ago, and you haven't been able to come home for visits to often, like me every 5 years for 3 weeks stay for example, most personalities you see on TV today were not even born when we left in the 1970's so when we come back the only people on TV that we may know is people that go way back, people who were famous before we left like Bruce Fosyth. and the man that plays Ken Barlow in Coronation street, but people at there ages are mostly retired now ---- like Bruce himself just this year!!!!

Re: Over 40's Moving Back and Catching Up
 

I had a weird Thanksgiving.
I went to Salt Lake City and stayed overnight in Midway, Utah.
Midway is close to where the Winter Olympics were and it is like I imagine Switzerland would look like. It has lots of Swiss like chalets on the mountains surrounding it. It is next to Park City which is a big ski area. Very pretty
Our dinner was petite. French chef and all that so we don't have to eat turkey left overs for ten days.
OK what stood out in my mind is the ride up there which took 4 hours The speed limit has been raised to 80 MPH which is too fast for me. So I drove for over 4 hours at 80 miles per hour.
Fortunately I didn't have to put snow chains on my car.
It is so nice to be home. No place like home!
Cheers

Re: Over 40's Moving Back and Catching Up
 

Likewise with music and sport celebrities. I've had too many sideways looks when asking "who is that then?" that I keep quiet now. Then since I don't want to be thought of as always going on about the US I generally don't have much to say in conversations except to chat about current and future, and of course, the weather.

Re: Over 40's Moving Back and Catching Up
 

As far as I can tell my accent hasn't changed since I was eight years old when I left Sheffield. My accent was never strong, but I don't sound anything like the natives of Glawster, where I completed school, nor Landan where I lived until I left for the US. Fifteen years in the US doesn't seem to have changed anything either - people still ask about my accent almost every week, often two or three times, and many people think I must have arrived recently! :lol:

Re: Over 40's Moving Back and Catching Up
 

Cheers, see attached pics for what Switzerland looked like to us this past September. I was charmed by it.

Re: Over 40's Moving Back and Catching Up
 

OH YEAH!!! Thanks for sharing John :thumbsup:

Re: Over 40's Moving Back and Catching Up
 

https://www.google.com/search?q=Midw...KNBN5zQMfDM%3A

Switzerland in the US