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Prince Harry accused of adopting American accent

Prince Harry accused of adopting American accent
© Cover Media / © Cover Media

Born in London and educated at Eton, Prince Harry, Duke of Sussex, is being accused of letting his accent slide into California slang.

Fans and social media commentators have been been noticing Prince Harry's Americanised way of speaking for a while now, and observations came thick and fast last week after the airing of a promo video for the Invictus Games, which featured Jelly Roll 'tattooing' the Prince's neck.

At one point the Duke of Sussex refers to the possibility of getting inked on his "ass" - said the American way.

"It sounds like Prince Harry is losing his British accent," one comment read, while another penned, "Born and brought up in the most British-speaking family in England and it took him four years to speak in an American accent."

And now the heavyweights have weighed in, with the Daily Telegraph declaring that "just four years after moving to California in self-imposed exile, the Duke of Sussex appears to have lost his British accent and adopted an American twang". (Harry lives in Montecito, California with wife Meghan and their two children.)

Anthony Shuster, a communication coach and accent specialist, told The Telegraph he first noticed a change in Harry's speaking habits back in 2019 - the year after he married.

"Something that's quite distinctly American is to let your final 't' sort of soften to a 'd'," Shuster explained. "Writer and rider sound the same."

Another linguistics expert, Jennifer Dorman, spoke to Cosmopolitan.

"It could be that Prince Harry has started to borrow American phrases and words in order to fit in and be understood better by the American press," she said.

"Or he may just be mimicking his wife. Interacting at a close level with someone all the time can cause us to pick up their speaking habits."

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