When you hear an accent a lot, do you ever start to parrot it?

[RevolutionaryActs]

I'm watching Alias, and there are two people with Scottish accents, and I'm starting to copy the accent.

I have a feeling that if I was to ever live where people had accents, I would so pick it up. Is that weird? :shrug:

[Maple]

1. Takes me about 2 minutes

to pick up someone's accent. It's very embarrassing...I'm always worried they'll think I'm making fun of them

[SW FL Dem]

22. I'm glad I am not alone

I do is all the time and it drives my hubby crazy. I don't realize that I am doing it at the time.

[Spider Jerusalem]

2. Not strange at all...

very normal to adopt the speech patterns of people in your environment to an extent. For most people, anyway (I seem to be an exception; I've lived in the South since I was nine and I have a "mid-Atlantic"/"General American Dialect" TV news anchor accent...)

[alittlelark]

3. I lived in Montgomary, AL for 1 year, and came back

w/ a horrible accent. Took 2 years to diminish, and I still slip into it when I'm 'in my cups'.

[RagingInMiami]

4. When I lived in Dublin for 18 months, I worked as a waiter

which obviously required me to talk to Irish people for several hours a day. When I returned to the U.S., I had an Irish brogue that took two months to fade away.

[SweetLeftFoot]

16. Ireland

I'm Aussie and I lived in bleedin' Dooblin' for 2 years. I didn't really pick up the accent, but I did pick up (and still use) lots of the slang and uniquely Irish phrasings.

EG - "your man/"your one", "after" as in "I'm after going down the pub now", "knacker" etc etc.

[mohinoaklawnillinois]

20. I can sympathize. The hubby is from Northern Ireland

and even though he has lived in the US for near enough 30 years, he's never really lost the accent.

I find myself using his inflections and slang as well. Of course it doesn't help when our closest friends are from his hometown and we all spend quite a bit of time together.

EG- Instead of asking people "what are you doing right now" we say "what are you at" or when describing a really good time, it comes out "the craic was ninety".

[Donkeyboy75]

21. I'll fourth that.

I've been here in Cork (you want to talk about a thick accent) for five months, and have certainly picked up the tempo (sing-song). I'm also noticing the pronounciation when I say certain words. I'm also using the word "grand" a lot. :cry:

[SweetLeftFoot]

30. Grand

Sure it it'll be grand craic and all.

[Donkeyboy75]

37. Bang on, boyo

[alphafemale]

5. I "Can" parrot, but can refrain or speak it at will...dear hubby tho...

...picks it up within moments of speaking to someone and parrots accents back at people.

It's kind of cute, but I do worry someone's going to get REAL offended someday.

[Kire]

6. my college buddy had a strong Indian accent, I picked it up a bit

somewhat like Apu in the Simpsons, but I was seriously not making fun of it. It had a rhythm to it that was intriguing.

years later, I started to think about it and I realized my friend picked up an American accent, and now I can't get into the rhythm the same way

[warrens]

7. when i was a kid I spent a summer in GB and Greece

I came back with a brit accent. Didn't even notice. I still pronounce some words the brit way

[tjwmason]

10. Lucky you

Any particualr accent,? We have some of the very best and some of the very worst around our little country.

The real test is lieutenant which has that unwritten 'f' in it.

[Spinzonner]

8. I have an old high school friend

who has lived in England for 25 years and speaks with a mild-to-moderate British accent and is always dropping Brit idioms I have to ask about.

[DemBones DemBones]

9. My parents always said I had the new accent down pat within

half an hour in the new neighborhood. We moved a LOT (military, you know) and i think that had a lot to do with it, but not all military brats do it. My actual accent is hard for people to figure out but more Northern than Southern, though I slide into a drawl very quickly when I'm talking with people with great Southern accents. In England, though, I sound veddy British.

When I was young, I worried that this was a sign of insecurity or something bad.

Years ago, though, I read an article in "Psychology Today" that was reassuring. I think the terminology they used about accent mimics was "high monitoring behavior" -- we monitor our environment and modify our behavior accordingly. It's not better or worse than being a person who never "picks up" accents. FWIW, I naturally liked that article! ;-)

So, hey, get out and meet some people with accents and have fun with mimicry!

[tjwmason]

11. During my 4 years in Scotland for uni

my accent generally didn't change, but I did occasionally start a slight rolling of the 'r'; which does still occur sometimes.

[orleans]

12. i love the way a brittish accent sounds

when i was young there was a family who lived a few houses away who were from england. i adored listening to their accents. i still remember the mom opening the door and calling out for my friend and the way her voice lilted and carried down the block on summer nights as she called: "On..jew..la..." (Angela)

then i discovered various dialects within the english accent.
very interesting.

tra la.

just wanted to share my angela story--it's a nice memory

[Magrittes Pipe]

13. What, you mean like squawking between words?

No.

[Jeff in Cincinnati]

14. Repeating the phrase "Pieces of Eight"

Whatever in the hell those are...

[Connie_Corleone]

15. I do it all the time when I speak with people from the South.

I start talking with a southern accent.

So, that's why Madonna is speaking with a british accent now! :D

[Freebird12004]

17. I really don't mean to

but I pick up accents very quickly

[BikeWriter]

18. If they sound like a cross between Kenny Rogers and Dennis Weaver...

Who are what I sound like, or so I've been told.

[ze_dscherman]

19. Sometimes it's embarrassing

I pick it up very quickly, sometimes in the middle of a conversation. Both my SO and my daughter have complained about it - but I don't even do it on purpose. Most have some chameleon in my ancestry.

[Lerkfish]

23. yes, darn it. I can't help it. I really annoyed an Irish waiter one time.

I try not to, but when conversing with people with accents, I unconsciously slip into the accent: british, irish, australian.
If I don't catch myself, the person I'm talking to gets offended because they think I'm making fun of them (a natural assumption).
Especially if it happens on the phone. Face to face they can more tell I'm not trying to be cute, but on the phone, they only know I'm slipping into their accent.

My wife's family is from Kentucky, and I do the same thing if I'm talking to them for any length of time, but the only person who gets ticked off by it there is my wife.

I just pick up accents very easily.

[Left Is Write]

24. I try not to. I prefer to keep my Minnesota mouth.

[NewJeffCT]

25. I make an effort not to do it

Though, I find it hard sometimes when I speak with my company's office in North Carolina, as the women in the department I deal with all seem to sound alike to me, as they are all natives to the area and around the same age.

But, with my wife, I only sometimes make fun of her Chinese accent, as her English is nowhere near perfect. Of course, my Chinese gets a few laughs sometimes as well.

With my ex-wife, I did it sometimes, too, as she had a south Jersey accent, so glasses would be "glee-ass es"

[CBHagman]

26. Oddly enough, while living in Germany...

...I picked up the lilt of my Irish neighbor's accent. We all spent a lot of time speaking German, but when I hung out with other Americans and with Britons and the Irish, we spoke English, of course. I also traveled to the U.K. and Ireland that year, so I had a sense of how jarring my U.S. accent sounded among all those beautiful accents.

And then I'd get back to Germany and be hit with the Franconian accent. So my English changed over the year.

[KurtNYC]

27. Hard Day's Night gets me going.

Who's that little old man?
Oh him, that's Paul's grandfather.
He's really clean ya know.

[cmf]

28. Yes. I can't help it

I try not to do it, but it always happens.

[Blue Diadem]

29. I do that too

I end up embarassing myself because I don't realize I'm doing it. Then it takes a couple hours for the slight accent to disappear.

[Richardo]

31. When I get around people from Pittsburgh, I fall back into that accent

Had a vendor from the 'Burgh into the office yesterday and by the time the meeting was over I was back to my Pixburghese n'at.

[patcox2]

32. Yes, its involuntary, do it every time. Does this have a name?

It happens every time, then I get paranoid people will think I am mocking them, but noone ever has taken it that way. I think many people cannot hear their own accents coming back at them. I will also mimic their syntax, by the way.

[patcox2]

34. Its called "accomodation" or "linguistic style matching"

According to some papers I found through google. Fascinating stuff.

[cedahlia]

33. Glad I'm not the only one who's done this

One of my best friends in high school had a hint of a southern accent, left over from the state she grew up in. As highschool girls often do, we spent lots and lots of time together...I practically lived at her house most of the time. And I did wind up talking like her! My brother made fun of me a bit for "trying to sound like" my friend, but it really was an unconscious thing (I was still slightly embarrassed about it though!)

And it's funny, because when her relatives from where she used to live came to visit, her accent would get even heavier, so this happened to her too!

[La Lioness Priyanka]

35. yes, within days.

[Bertha Venation]

36. I live with an Appalachian hillbilly, and I can't help but pick up her

accent, her idioms, and even some of her mannerisms. My sisters make fun of me, and I just flip 'em off. It cannot be helped, and it doesn't bother me. I'm probably the only person on earth who grew up a surfer chick but talks somewhat like a hillbilly. :shrug:

[Mojambo]

38. I tend to pick up different types of laughing from new friends n/t

[vixengrl]

39. I do, can't help it.

British, Irish, especially. I work in a phone call center in New Jersey, and all day, I usually hear New York, North Jersey, South Jersey, and Philadelphia accents. I'm never really tempted to sound more, say, Brooklyn (no offense to anyone from Brooklyn) because my natural nasal closed-vowel Philly accent fights it off. But I hear a brogue, and it's like a strange attractor to my tongue.

Odd thing, I'm more prone to taking on an accent when I've been drinking. I was once asked where I was from in a bar, and I realized my poor confused tongue had been unconsciously going on in a non-Yank fashion. I couldn't explain, so I pulled the "What accent?" thing.