Is Meghan Markle already acquiring a British accent?
A video of the duchess speaking to well-wishers is evidence that her accent is evolving, but how long does it normally take for you to lose your accent?
When a video of the Duchess of Sussex greeting the public surfaced last week, America’s greatest fear was confirmed: the duchess has gained a British accent.
It’s a subtle difference, but one can detect a hint of the queen’s English in the duchess’s intonation.
“You can hear some sounds changing, yes,” confirmed speech and dialect coach John Fleming.
“Some examples can be heard in her R sounds at the end of syllables. In recent clips, those Rs are lighter than the typical general American accent. She is also using the British English vowel normally heard in the word ‘thought’ in the phrase ‘We all had a nice day’, in the word ‘all.’”
People changing accents is often criticised as a sign of inauthenticity. Madonna, for example, was ridiculed when she started talking like her former husband Guy Ritchie.