Can you acquire a foreign accent in your native language after living abroad for many years and having no or little little contact with compatriots?

[Verbano]

[Fireguy17]

to some degree yes, it will develop slowly.
My ex wife lives in Oklahoma, we had not spoken to each other in years.
out of the blue she called me, and I did not recognize her voice at all.
She had that Oklahoma accent, kind of a western twang.

[Verbano]

That's interesting
What did you first thing when you heard her voice?🤣

[Fireguy17]

I absolutely had no clue who it was.
We hadn't talked or any type of communications for at least 15ish years.
When she said who it was, I just went silent.
I had no clue why she would be calling me, unless she was dying or her mom or something.
I caught her cheating with the landlord.
I did the proverbial come home early and found him backing into the closet trying to pull his pants up.
She asked me what I was doing there, and I said I used to live here, turned and walked away.
Now it is pretty funny, back then it was sad but somewhat of a relief, since I had suspected something for a while.
He was married too.
I just sat back and watched everyone's worlds collapse.
After I helped move her out, I really did not talk to her except for the divorce stuff.
We did it without a lawyer, we didn't own much.
Now we are platonic, wish each other happy birthday, what would have been our anniversary, Christmas.
Once in a while we will text each other, I try not to rub her face in how good I am doing, but she knows.
We are friends on the facebook. She had another crappy marriage and divorce, he was really lazy, had 2 nice kids and kind of had to struggle most of her life. Which is sad, but there was nothing I could do about it.
Me, I moved on and did great, and she regrets what she did, wonders what if, but she has never apologized to me for what she did.
That kind of bugs me to this day.

[jennifer_bloom]

I’ve been told I speak Chinese with a European or American accent but I’ve also had Chinese shop owners yell at me for asking questions that could have been answered by reading labels and signs, not knowing I was a Canadian who was visiting China for a vacation and could not read or write in Chinese beyond a few basic words.

[Potteplante]

Yes, in fact I think it is unavoidable unless you focus on it not happening.

[DryGermanGuy]

Over the decades it will happen. I saw a documentary about old German immigrants in the United States and they definitely had developed an accent.

[Nikki1989]

I wish I could. I hate the accent I have.