I'm a Briton who spent 32 years in the United States, fleeing only in late December 2016 with Trump nipping at our heels.

My accent slowly faded over the years, but it comes back if I'm soppy drunk - which is too hard to really accomplish now I'm older.

There are many words I will never say a l'américain - I say vase, not "vace", mirror, not "mere", that's a fucking bog!

And there are a lot of trace words that lingered on after my accent had mostly gone, particularly "ta".

I would say that without my English accent, I would not have dated half the women I did, whether that's good or bad.

Now I live in Amsterdam, everyone identifies me as American, which actually pisses me off. I'm contemplating affecting more of an English accent just to avoid being identified as a seppo.

(Interestingly, I switched my spelling to American Standard almost instantly upon moving to the US, and have never switched back - no more labour (but yes Labour), colour (that was hard!) or tyre. Again, I still have some regressions, and for a long time, one of them was gouvernement, because I had taken most of my history classes in French...)