How can the wife have a British accent after living in the US long enough to have two teenaged children? The casting is terrible.
I'm sorry the Coen brothers don't direct the porn I watch. They're hard to get ahold of, okay?
Human beings develop their accents when they are children and first learning to speak. Past a certain age (I believe it's around 9), accents are basically set. Now, that doesn't mean that some people are not influenced by their surroundings. I've noticed, in particular, that people who move to the south will often pick up a "twang," but that's not true of everyone.
Nicole Kidman and her husband Keith Urban have been living in America full-time for several decades, and they both still have their Australian accents. Christian Bale, who has been living here since he was a child, still has a British accent. Those are just some examples.
My grandmother was 84 when she died and she came to America when she was a young teenager. She had a Dutch accent her entire life, it never went away.
There are several things wrong with this movie, but the mom having an accent isn't one of them. I know a lot of British people who have been living in America for many, many years, and their accents never change.
If you watch the documentary "The Imposter," they explore this issue.
I also met three drunks in Cambridge, so it must be in a state of constant inebriation. But neuropsychologists have actually shown with lip-reading experiments, that the brain subconciously tries to imitate the speech patterns of total strangers, which shows that it is natural to empathize and affiliate with others. And in fact, when test subjects were shown 80 words silently spoken on screen including such words as cabbage and tennis, people who had never lip-read before repeated the words silently spoken on screen in the same random accents as the silent speakers on screen.
I'm sorry the Coen brothers don't direct the porn I watch. They're hard to get ahold of, okay?
Do people repeat them in the accent only when the original "speaker" is silent, or do they also do it when the original audio is present as well? Seems weird, I don't know why someone would do that.
Retaining or losing an accent probably isn't 100% either way, even if most people lose them there will still be some who retain them. My dad has lived in the US for 20 years and doesn't have a US accent. If he lived there for 500 years who knows if it might start to develop but it doesn't seem like his speech is changing at all. The only thing I notice that does change is some of the word choice and he'll use "slang" terms/expressions that they use in America and things like that.
I met a drunk in Cambridge. If you search that city for 500 years, you might find someone sober there.
I'm sorry the Coen brothers don't direct the porn I watch. They're hard to get ahold of, okay?
Some British people living in America modify their accent - intentionally or otherwise. Others retain their British accent for their entire lives. Your accent is not entirely involuntary. If you want to retain your accent - and, frankly, having a British accent in America is a net positive - you will tend to do so. Might your friends back home notice a bit of "American" in your accent? Sure. But Americans will still hear a British accent when you speak.
You can sneer at anecdotal evidence, but, like the other poster, I know several Brits who've lived here for years and still have their natural (or a polished-up version of their) British accent. If it can happen IRL, and it does, then there's nothing odd about this character still sounding English.
Perhaps your Neuropsychologists were drunk. In Cambridge.
shareActually I agree with the OP. After that many years living in America, surrounded by Americans, it wouldn't be unexpected that she could at least have a somewhat mixed accent.
Even though it's claimed that an accent is "fixed" in childhood, heavily changed accents due to emigration are borne out all the time. For every person who doggedly holds onto their native accent, there is another person whose accent modified and not even always intentionally.
That's what happened to me. It's not that I ended up sounding completely American, but I kind of no longer sounded 100% British either. I had exchanged many sounds for American ones, and not entirely deliberately either. Most of it just happens by osmosis. When it's all you hear around you every day of your life for years, it just happens, even to a small extent.
It has been noticeable in reverse too -- Linda McCartney, an American, lived so long in Britain that her US accent was a pale wraith later one, in fact she even sounded a bit like Paul, very mildly, for a huge chunk of their life together eventually.
60s pop singer Lulu is a born Scot, from Glasgow, but found fame as a young woman and lived in England the rest of her life. She sounds COMPLETELY English, she sounds like a Londoner, except when she talks about something to do with Scotland, then it comes back. She recently did "Who Do You Think You Are," and it was only when talking to her relatives that she had the Scots accent again. But talking to other Scots, she sounded posh London. She has been in London more of her life than Scotland.
Accent DO change in adulthood.
Realistically the British wife in this film would have probably had some changes in her accent while still sounding not entirely US. Many Brits who live a long time in the US wind up sounding Australian! I got that from some people, and I ran into other Brits who had been told their mix of an English accent and a US influence made them sound Australian.
But I think, for the purpose of this film, since they had a British character, they probably decided not to confuse the audience by helping her have an influence in her accent. That's a fine detail that just isn't necessary in a movie like this. And would probably just make viewers wonder why he's married to . . . an Aussie.