Wha?

Tuesday night was a special treat for the girls. We took them to see the movie Speed Racer (yeah, yeah...) which is due to open here in New Zealand tomorrow (Friday the 27th.) My company had a private screening (and nearly filled the auditorium) a few days early since we developed the Speed Racer videogame for Warner Brothers.

So it was a highly exclusive affair filled with my coworkers and their friends and partners (the general term used here for wives/girlfriends/mistresses/gimp-slaves/whatever) where we got to "break the street date" and have a little weeknight fun. Families were in attendance, and Zoe and Haley got to see some of the girls they hadn't seen since our second day in the country.

If you remember, Brett and his family invited us to a big family barbeque in Petone where we met his brother and sister-in-law and friends and their families. We sat on the back deck and watched the sun go down and drank wine and ate sausages and talked about how we'd only been in New Zealand for a couple days. Once we'd all eaten, Mike (Brett's brother) stood up and gave a long blessing in Maori followed by an english translation and ending with "Kia ora!" Our girls were playing with their girls and running this way and that, climbing trees, and playing the sorts of games kids play in the waning days of summer.

Tuesday this week, they saw some of those kids for the first time since that day. Haley immediately went over there and started talking to Brett's daughter and his brother's daughter to say hello and how-you-do. When she came back over, she stunned both Joanne and me by telling us, "Deonte said that I'm losing my American accent."

Wow!

If that's true, it's happening without any of us noticing and right under our noses. We've noticed a few new affectations that the girls have adopted. Mainly a little end-of-sentence lilt where the tone of voice rises sharply, falls sharply, and then rises just a bit at the end of the word. It's usually most obvious when they're being emphatic with the last word of a sentence. We've also noticed a few turns of phrase such as "but dad, it's meant to be for kids" instead of "supposed to be."

What's even more interesting than Haley losing the old accent or aquiring the new accent is that Joanne and I aren't really noticing it happening.