I was talking lately with another mother in our schoolground. She's German married to a Canadian, very nice and very quick. She'd been watching a program where german immigrants to Canada who had lost most of their accent in their middle years slowly regained it as they hit their older years. Also on the radio a while ago there was discussion about the difficulties faced by nurses and volunteers in nursing homes when dealing with patients who used outrageously rascist language. The language we learn as children stays with us all our lives and when we get older and slip backward into memory its harder to remember the intervening language even if there has been a sincere desire to change it. We need to be careful of what we say to our kids and what messages they are picking up.