By [this lady](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=wDeJpLqjt0o&t=06m30s) I mean former top 10 retired chess player Judith Polgar. From what I understand, she also speaks English, Russian and Spanish and has travelled to several different countries. Sometimes (regarding English speakers) when a person lives in other countries, speaks different languages and doesn’t speak their mother tongue often, they develop an accent.
If you didn’t know who Mrs. Polgar was and you were speaking with her over the phone, would you assume that you were speaking to a native Hungarian speaker, or does she have an accent to native Hungarians?
6 comments
She speaks Hungarian like a Hungarian does, shocking right?
She doesn’t have an accent. What prompted the question?
She speaks like a native no accent. Watched another video she speaks English very well she doesn’t have that thick eastern European accent in English either
People don’t normally develop an accent for their mothertonge when they live abroad or use another language much more instead. It is much more common to forget words, “translate” from their primary language and borrow structures and words from that language into their mothertonge.
If someone who grew up in speaking one language without an accent (their mothertonge) starts having an accent in it, it’s most probably fake, that is, learnt and practiced.
>doesn’t speak their mother tongue often, they develop an accent.
I don’t think this is true. They may speak a little slower or not as eloquently as they did before (as she is apparently suffer from this) but no accent at all.
It’s fluent Hungarian. I can’t speak for Russian and Spanish, but if you ever heard her speak in English, she has a very pronounced Hungarian accent too.