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Parents of kindergarten students should expect their child's accent to radically change from an echo of their immediate family to sounding more like their classmates during their first year of school.
Macquarie University Linguistics Professor Felicity Cox said a child's pronunciation would shift as they made new friends and would unconsciously mimic how they spoke.
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"In diverse populations like Sydney today, kids are going to preschool or school with a whole range of different kinds of accents based on their formative upbringing," she said.
"Once they get to school it is in their peer groups that they really develop those Âaccents.