>>>>well, native readers are probably favored in this inquiry
>>>>;)
>>>
>>>(shrug) was born and educated in the USA -- but when I started school could barely speak English (Japanese was spoken in the home). Not that this was too much of a disadvantage -- most of my classmates could only speak Spanish. Took until around 3rd or 4th grade to stop blurting out in Japanese. Funny thing is the school district didn't realize they could've classified me as bilingual (since the political definition at the time usually meant I had to speak Spanish) until I was in the eighth grade -- and the primary reason they reclassified me as bilingual was to inflate the number of students in that classification to get more federal funding for the school.
>>
>>
>>From what I've noticed here in France where many people experienced a similar situation (parents speaking their mother language at home and school being taught in French), those who have started school no later than 8-year old end up with no accent at all.
>
>Of course I *do* have an accent in my English -- an American accent, and more specifically Californian (and through influence of mass media, worldwide would probably be considered typical American accent for English).

It's a kind of similar here with our local Slovakians, Hungarians, Romanians. If they grew up in their own village, where they are a majority, they would learn Serbian from each other and have their specific accent. If they grew in a more mixed environment (which is more frequently the case now), they have our accent (i.e. regional accent, which changes somewhat every 50km).

OTOH, even in their native languages they seem to have some local dialect/accent in the villages; those who were educated in the city speak the literary version of it. It's noticeable when they visit the countries where their language is native - those from the cities easily pass as natives and aren't standing out at all; those from the villages mostly don't dare speak at all because everyone thinks they are peasants from some vukojebina ("where the wolves fuck").