Adopting / Picking Up Accents

[Coal]

I pick up accents and language syntax when I talk to people with accents or with accented English. I have to be very careful around strong accents as it's almost an unconscious thing and I don't wish to appear as if I'm taking the pi$$.

 

[JamesWhitehead]

When I lived in Wales, I met someone who informed me it was easy to tell I had been in the area for quite a while.

I don't think I had picked up a Welsh accent but I had acquired the North Walian habit of appending iai and iawn to certain words.

This was quite unconscious but probably selective: I don't think I used it with fellow-students or tutors. It seems to have popped up only in conversations with locals.

 

[Coal]

When I lived in Wales, I met someone who informed me it was easy to tell I had been in the area for quite a while.

I don't think I had picked up a Welsh accent but I had acquired the North Walian habit of appending iai and iawn to certain words.

This was quite unconscious but probably selective: I don't think I used it with fellow-students or tutors. It seems to have popped up only in conversations with locals.

Spent a year in Anglsey and picked up all those inflections! Two years in Peterhead made me fluent in Doric...went to Aberdeen few years back and the accent came right out of my head and into my speech. Weird.

 

[Ulalume]

]


I had a bit of an epiphany when I discovered there's a TV station out there, broadcasting every episode of M*A*S*H ever on a repeating loop. It was the first time in years I'd seen the show and still a delight, even if Alan Alda alternating between endless wisecracks and pontificating makes you want to punch him.

Major Charles Winchester III, an upper-class American in a nation denying it even has a class system, the Boston Brahmin. Height. Build. Even the way he styles his hair in a proto-mullet. That accent. Has anyone else noticed the similarities to Frasier Crane - a man who was first seen living and working in Boston? Winchester's cultural pretentions and snobbishness and his being appalled at living among plebs - but who has enough humanity and decency at bottom to be quite likeable.

Is this the proto-Frasier some twenty-odd years before the first Cheers?

Romantic fantasy: in 1954, Winchester knocks up a nurse called Hester at the 4077th, a woman with intellect and a desire to pursue a career in psychology.. The armistice happens, everyone returns home. Nurse goes to Seattle, discovers she's pregnant. A no-nonsense Korean vet called Marty Crane, now a policeman, makes a honest woman of her. He uncomplainingly raises the child, Frasier, as his own, allowing Hester to work in her academic field. The child, who by 1998 would be 44 and taking more after his real dad.

OK, this doesn't explain Niles. But otherwise, doesn't it fit....

Heh. There's no telling, in TV land.

You've just jogged my memory about something. Have you ever had one of those experiences where someone's background really surprised you? This happened with my ex's brother-in-law. He was former military and now a total hippie type guy. He did have really proper manners, which struck me as a little unusual, though I just considered him nice.

This little inconsistancy was solved when his parents came to visit, toting a full set of understated Louis Vuitton luggage with a Beacon Hill address. Real Boston Brahmins, with the accents to match. They were very nice, though did seem politely befuddled that their son had elected to live in a suburban tract house in Texas and work as a mechanic, of all things.

Their accents had definately not carried over to their son. He didn't have a Boston accent of any type. He might have even worked to hide it, for all I know. The various Boston accents are pretty unmistakable.

 

[AgProv]

Anyone around UEA Norwich in the middle 1980's would have remembered a guy called StJohn. In appearance a bizarrely dressed punk with the full mohican, he was an erudite and well-spoken guy who'd been a British Army officer; the result of his life's experiences had been to turn him, and make him into somebody utterly opposed to the system of privilege and accident of birth that had given him a gilded life so far. That's probably simplifying and minimalising hopelessly and possibly insultingly so. But he popped up at Student Union debates to rip the hell out of conventional Left and Right from an anarchist perspective and was a delight to listen to. Looking at him from the outside you would not have guessed at all his background was public school, Sandhurst and social privilege. You just wouldn't. But listening to him speak at debates.... I wonder where this great guy went to and what happened to him... nice bloke as I recall, was never impolite or cutting to people and always treated everyone with respect. But a core of steel.

 

[Scribbles]

Heh. There's no telling, in TV land.

You've just jogged my memory about something. Have you ever had one of those experiences where someone's background really surprised you?

Not surprised me but when I found out about the parentage of an ex-boss of mine, I suddenly understood him better. His mum was from Oop North and his dad was from The South, and he'd spent time living in both the north and the south of the UK, so then I realised why his politics and sports teams and so on seemed mismatched!

 

[mariahorsmandan]

I'm always talking like the last person I had a conversation with. I can't help it.
It must be a subconscious need for rapport.
I speak Virginian mostly, but I'm sure there are bits of all the British Isles, Alabama, Quebec.
I sound either well-traveled or like a pompous ass.

 

[gattino]

I'm one of those many annoying people who can't help adopting the accent of people I'm talking to...and am generally pretty good at "doing" an accent, unless obliged to do so when self awareness makes it all fall to pieces.

What always intrigues me about it is not being able to intellectually comprehend what an accent IS..I mean what's going on to produce a particular one. If I have a liverpool accent, its no less a British accent..so its essentially two accents at once. You can hear the country I'm from and hear the city I'm from, and they're clearly not hte same thing. So what are the qualities of one that distinguish it from the other without either being in any way obscured? Also an accent can't just be about local pronunciation and inflection, because there are different liverpool accents...even people with the same one still "sound" different from each other. So even defining "accent" isn't easy...though we all know what one is.

What really intrigues and confuses me though is when imitating some other accent, there is no conscious decision making going on about where to place the tongue or how to shape the lips etc. It's all decided completely unconsciously..you hear and you replicate and I don't know how that can be when no conscious effort is being employed to create the new sound.

 

[Coal]

I'm one of those many annoying people who can't help adopting the accent of people I'm talking to...and am generally pretty good at "doing" an accent, unless obliged to do so when self awareness makes it all fall to pieces.

I do that as well. I have to stop myself usually. Echolalia I think it's called.

 

[Rerenny]

I do that as well. I have to stop myself usually. Echolalia I think it's called.

I also do this and it's really hard to not do it. Whomever I speak to, if they have a noticeable accent, I'll copy them and then speak in it for a fair while afterwards.

I remember that my mum, face to face, had a, um, "normal" or neutral accent, so mostly like mine, but on the telephone she was clearly from Yorkshire. Me on tape sounds terrifyingly like Celia Johnson but face to face it's lower and slightly less strangulated. I never heard my dad speak on the telephone but he had much the same accent as me (I think!)

 

[Mythopoeika]

My Mum's a terror for doing this. She grew up in a suburb of Middlesex and should have had a London accent. But...because she had Geordie parents, she sounds slightly 'Northern'.
It gets more pronounced when she's talking to people who are from Newcastle - suddenly she's a Geordie!

 

[RyoHazuki]

My Mum's accent used to be similarly elastic - she'd speak with a fairly bland Home Counties accent nearly all the time, unless she was talking to her parents, when she'd start lapsing into rural Essex. If we actually visited the area, she'd completely embrace the heavily twanged 'r's and twisted vowels. Now nearly all of her relatives have died, I never get to hear it at all.

 

[Andy X]

I'm one of those many annoying people who can't help adopting the accent of people I'm talking to...and am generally pretty good at "doing" an accent, unless obliged to do so when self awareness makes it all fall to pieces.

What always intrigues me about it is not being able to intellectually comprehend what an accent IS..I mean what's going on to produce a particular one. If I have a liverpool accent, its no less a British accent..so its essentially two accents at once. You can hear the country I'm from and hear the city I'm from, and they're clearly not hte same thing. So what are the qualities of one that distinguish it from the other without either being in any way obscured? Also an accent can't just be about local pronunciation and inflection, because there are different liverpool accents...even people with the same one still "sound" different from each other. So even defining "accent" isn't easy...though we all know what one is.

What really intrigues and confuses me though is when imitating some other accent, there is no conscious decision making going on about where to place the tongue or how to shape the lips etc. It's all decided completely unconsciously..you hear and you replicate and I don't know how that can be when no conscious effort is being employed to create the new sound.

I tend to do this (slightly) with strangers with Yorkshire accents - if asked for directions out of the blue for example. Everyone but me in my family is from S.Yorks and the accent (Rotherham / Sheffield area, roughly) is a beloved part of my upbringing. I think I'm subconsciously trying to be exotic and ethnic and showing myself a cut above the mass of ignorant southerners More seriously, I think when one meets a person halfway accent-wise it's in a genuine attempt to be friendly.

Perhaps some of you have seen this documentary on the Shag Harbour (it's just up the coast from Nookie Cove) UFO case...the local accent is wonderful and sort of East Anglian - similar to Suffolk? I'm not very strong on accents from that area; could be Norfolk-influenced: "we seen this broight loight", etc.

 

[Schrodinger's Zebra]

I've seen mention on this thread of people who adopt the accent of people they are talking to... but not people who adopt the accent of the singer of a song they are singing along to.

Am I the only one who does this? I love singing along to music, but I'll always sing it in the same voice as the singer. Doesn't matter what the band, whether the singer is male or female.

A singing impersonator, if you will.

To the extent that, I don't know what my own singing voice is. (Or if I even have one at all).

 

[EnolaGaia]

I've seen mention on this thread of people who adopt the accent of people they are talking to... but not people who adopt the accent of the singer of a song they are singing along to.
Am I the only one who does this? I love singing along to music, but I'll always sing it in the same voice as the singer. Doesn't matter what the band, whether the singer is male or female.
A singing impersonator, if you will.

Back in my musician days (teens / twenties) I avoided singing lead on a song, though my bandmates claimed I was a decent singer.

I had a habit of being something of an "impersonator", as you put it, in styling my vocals.

In the earliest phase ("British Invasion" era; mid-sixties) my bandmates ribbed me for mimicking British pronunciations (e.g., "gull" for "girl"), but kept me in the mix to better imitate the singles we were covering.

This led to my being specialized as the lead vocalist where the vocal style was a hallmark of the given song.

For example ...

I was usually assigned to do the lead vocals that were as much sonorous recitation as outright singing. That meant I was often the default lead on Dylan songs, for which I employed a nasal tone and stretched vowels to the point of wheezing a la Bob. Years later I was unanimously chosen to sing lead on "Sultans of Swing", for which I used the Dylanesque style in a deeper register and with more precise pronunciation.

On "All Over Now" and "Dead Flowers" I preserved Jagger's self-conscious faux southern drawl over a more deeply resonant voice, then softened the drawl and dialed the voice even deeper for "Six Days on the Road."

 

[Spudrick68]

I personally find this really interesting because it mentions this pronunciation of the letter R as still in use in East Lancashire. But it is very definitely also used in Leyland and to a lesser extent Preston.

When I first moved up to Lancaster a lot of people picked out my accent, even though from only 35 miles south.

My wife asks me why I say 'carrrdboarrd' of 'barrrgain'. I can't help my accent!

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-lancashire-67832377

 

[Frideswide]

murrrrrrrrrder!

 

[Mythopoeika]

I personally find this really interesting because it mentions this pronunciation of the letter R as still in use in East Lancashire. But it is very definitely also used in Leyland and to a lesser extent Preston.

When I first moved up to Lancaster a lot of people picked out my accent, even though from only 35 miles south.

My wife asks me why I say 'carrrdboarrd' of 'barrrgain'. I can't help my accent!

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-lancashire-67832377

You'd make an excellent pirate!

 

[Floyd]

After living in Stoke for a while, locals told me I sounded, er local.

 

[SimonBurchell]

I've been gradually hiking my way northwards whenever I can on Saturdays over the past few months, from west Surrey. In Oxfordshire, Berkshire and south Buckinghamshire I can't say I noticed any accent, just generic southern. Half-way between Aylesbury and Leighton Buzzard I started to hear a bit of an accent in rural areas, but not much in the towns. Dropping down into Bedford, I realised that my accent was starting to pick me out - I sounded strange to my own ears! I've now reached Olney in extreme northern Buckinghamshire and on my next hike will be across into Northamptonshire - and whenever I greet anyone, or order anything in a pub, I notice how different I sound. It's not a huge difference (yet) but I can certainly hear the Midlands creeping in.

A few years ago I was hiking westwards, and the accent flipped suddenly from generic southern to West Country at the Somerset border - it was strange how it switched so strongly in the space of a couple of miles.

 

[Floyd]

Strangely, I can't really hear any accent here in North Shropshire right on the borders of Wales and Cheshire.
Sometimes I hear a tinge of Welsh, but it's very light.

 

[Cochise]

I'm kind of the opposite. Born in Essex, still have an Essex accent despite having lived in the US for 5 years and North Wales for - well, now, nearly 25 years. I have maybe adopted a few words and phrases, but the accent is unchanged. As confirmed by independent witnesses, some of whom find it faintly amusing. Nothing conscious or deliberate about it.

 

[Swifty]

I'm kind of the opposite. Born in Essex, still have an Essex accent despite having lived in the US for 5 years and North Wales for - well, now, nearly 25 years. I have maybe adopted a few words and phrases, but the accent is unchanged. As confirmed by independent witnesses, some of whom find it faintly amusing. Nothing conscious or deliberate about it.

I was born in Birmingham so I had that accent until our parents moved us to Staffordshire. When I eventually moved to Norfolk I picked up the nick name 'Derby' because that's what I sounded like to locals. The Mrs sometimes says something in a Birmingham/midlands accent now because although she's Norfolk, she's picked that up off me. I've just spent a few months crashing at a bloke's flat from the east Midlands (North Hampton) and so my brummie twang's come back.

 

[Kondoru]

Im from Wiltshire so I have a fairly local accent.

But most of my relatives are from South Wales so there is a definite `going west` trend.

I call it the Mid Severn accent.

(But on hearing my voice played back...there is a distinct upper crust accent, which none of my family have. I have no idea where that came from).

 

[SimonBurchell]

Im from Wiltshire so I have a fairly local accent.

But most of my relatives are from South Wales so there is a definite `going west` trend.

I call it the Mid Severn accent.

(But on hearing my voice played back...there is a distinct upper crust accent, which none of my family have. I have no idea where that came from).

That's what happens when you go and get yourself educated.

 

[Floyd]

Im from Wiltshire so I have a fairly local accent.

But most of my relatives are from South Wales so there is a definite `going west` trend.

I call it the Mid Severn accent.

(But on hearing my voice played back...there is a distinct upper crust accent, which none of my family have. I have no idea where that came from).

I always picured you as sounding like a female Phil Harding from Time Team.

 

[SimonBurchell]

I just hiked into Northampton. Just trying to keep my head down and not sound posh (I really ain't). People talk some strange Midlandish tongue up here...

 

[Frideswide]

Have I mentioned that I sound like my speech therapist?

I sound like my speech therapist.. @Ermintruder ? what do I sound like?

 

[Ermintruder]

I sound like my speech therapist.. @Ermintruder ? what do I sound like?

You speak with a natural, clear & confident delivery. Definitely someone who is used to speaking informatively to groups. An instantly-detectable Scottish accent (in my opinion) but *not* sufficiently strong that it would be recognised as being such by all English-speaking recipients.

I'm going to guess from transferable experience that (similar to me, and many other Scots older than 40) you might well have a stronger Scottish accent when stressed, drunk or very relaxed. And conversely you'll probably sound hyper-correct when describing something that's crucial, complex or contentious.

I do now also remember...you've described yourself on this forum as sounding like Hyacinth Bouquet to some members of your family, and sounding like Billy Connolly to some others. I suddenly recalled that (although I'm probably paraphrasing your description).

Me myself: I have had to codeswitch throughout my whole life (unconsciously and perhaps effortlessly), a multilingual freestyle of context-crafted catechisms & corn. Woops- almost did it again....

my speech therapist

I beg your pardon....? Do you mean that you're training a speech therapist?

 

[Frideswide]

You speak with a natural, clear & confident delivery. Definitely someone who is used to speaking informatively to groups. An instantly-detectable Scottish accent (in my opinion) but *not* sufficiently strong that it would be recognised as being such by all English-speaking recipients.

I'm going to guess from transferable experience that (similar to me, and many other Scots older than 40) you might well have a stronger Scottish accent when stressed, drunk or very relaxed. And conversely you'll probably sound hyper-correct when describing something that's crucial, complex or contentious.

I seem to have something in my eye... That's made me well up! And you are right on the stronger/weaker context dependent stuff.

I do now also remember...you've described yourself on this forum as sounding like Hyacinth Bouquet to some members of your family, and sounding like Billy Connolly to some others. I suddenly recalled that (although I'm probably paraphrasing your description).

Yes! I'd forgotten but that is the experience precisely. So if it wasn't me I'm still nabbing it for mine

Me myself: I have had to codeswitch throughout my whole life (unconsciously and perhaps effortlessly), a multilingual freestyle of context-crafted catechisms & corn. Woops- almost did it again....

you are a fascinating conversationalist - here and in meat-land

I beg your pardon....? Do you mean that you're training a speech therapist?

I wish! No, I didn't speak until I was about 7. My grandparents (I think both autistic in affect, if not diagnosable) had words and echolalia phrases before that but carefully kept my secret. I always communicated with them and a few others rather well. I had a speech therapist through the education service to try to get me to speak - and I sound like her to my ear. Not like the rest of my family for example.