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As a student of linguistics (albeit a mostly self-taught one, until I get to college), I must say that this strongly smells of pseudoscience.
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G: While I respect what linguistics training you may have availed yourself of -- I have almost no formal training -- I have enough experience as both a language learner and teacher of all ages to last a lifetime. I would say the following article accords with what I see in the world and while it isn't exactly the same idea as I mentioned, it is quite close. Peeudoscience? I am not so sure. Remember, it is common knowledge that in late childhood a lot or neuronal pruning goes on in a human's brain.
Accents Are Forever
This article is from the Smithsonian Magazine by the way.
ADDITION: As I have gone back to read my original post, I didn't put in a critical piece of what my understanding was -- i.e. that this phenomenon of people "locked" into a perception and basic ability to speak different sounds has its root not in the physical voice box per se, but in the brain (which I consider part of the voice box apparatus broadly speaking). As I wrote it, I can see you suggesting it would be pseudoscience, but again, remember that the brain of a maturing child/adolescent culls out nearly half of the neurons it was born with, if not more. The presumption is that the "excess" neurons are needed for the learning-heavy first years. And with that pruning seemingly go abilities to form new sounds naturally, at least in some people, in my experience. It does vary though -- I guess some people have more neural plasticity than others. I have a friend who when he speaks Mandarin sounds like a native in all respects. Even Chinese can't tell him apart, if they don't see he is a "whitey."