Inside Science – Yuen Yiu
“According to Thorin, when we try to learn a new language as adults, we tend to map new sounds to sounds we already know in our native language. Although we can still learn to hear and produce entirely new sounds with enough training, we may develop bad pronunciation habits early on that are difficult to fix later. This may explain why people can have nonnative accents even after learning to speak a new language fluently and being immersed in it for decades, said Melissa Baese-Berk, a linguist from the University of Oregon in Eugene not involved in the study.” (more)