Imitating Our Accents
 

Had an odd thing happen to me when I stopped at a Wendy's in Childress, TX a few days ago. The girl behind the counter taking my order started to imitate my accent. Not in a mocking way or anything and she was EXTREMELY embarrassed about it, saying "I'm not making fun of your accent honestly! I just pick it up really fast!".

Now, it takes a while for people over here to pick up that I actually have an accent as it is pretty mild as I lived all over the UK as a child and picked up several regional accents which I then lost. The whole thing was amusing to me but she ran away and hid behind the fryers and got someone else to serve me.

Has this happened to anyone else? I'm going to venture that at least some of you have had the ubiquitous "Ello' Guvnah!" thrown at you from time to time but have you ever been talking to a complete stranger and they just start speaking like you (or at least trying to)? I just wish someone would imitate the Beatles in front of me! :lol:

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Presumably they mean well but it's annoying.

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I can imagine it being annoying if someone was doing it all the time. Especially if they were bad at the accent in the first place.

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I have had people claim to be doing that :lol:
But yes, I get to hear everyone's wonderful Australian accents all the time :rolleyes:

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Just remember rule No 1

No pooftas

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Sounds like my sister, she absorbs accents like a sponge. When she was a student she shared a house with girls from IIRC Birmingham, Liverpool, and somewhere in the North East, and you could tell who she'd been speaking to most recently by her accent.
My accent is the opposite, not strong, but distinctive, and hasn't changed since I was eight years old, when my family left Sheffield. My time living in Gloucester, London, and now twelve years in NC have contributed nothing to my accent, nor does it appear to have muted its Sheffield roots. :unsure:
No, or at least not that I've ever noticed.

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Calm down! Calm down! I get asked all the time about my Liverpool accent by American ladies. Occasionally it has led to some interesting private elocution lessons :-)

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I'm now in Tasmania. I'm a GP and have a patient who whenever I speak sits there and giggles saying "I love your accent", somewhat frustrating in terms of working out why she has come to see me.

(Typical boarding school/ Home Counties accent).

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Yes, I have an American friend who can't help it, but she mimics my accent. I don't think she notices she does it either. It ends up sounding like pepper pig trying to be Australian.

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Usually what I get asked is "Is that a British or an Australian accent?"

One day I'm going to reply: "I can't decide myself actually" :lol:

Bob, in these interesting private elocution lessons, you don't have to tell the ladies to "calm down!" do you? :P

"They do though don't they though?" HA!

DrNemo, Where are you in Tasmania? Hobart? I would have thought Aussies would be sick of our accents! haha

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HAHA does anyone else notice it and ask "Why are you speaking like a cartoon pig with a bad Australian accent?".

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I'm a linguist and speak several languages, so I feel I have a good ear for accents and such. Way back in 1987, when I heard my first real-life British accent (met a guy visiting the USA from Surrey, we're still good friends to this day), I kept trying to imitate him. I kept asking him "don't I sound like a real British person?" He kept saying "no", when to my ears it sounded just like his accent. LOL I did that so many times he just flat out said "you're being really annoying now, stop it", so I did. LOL

Within the USA, I have some relatives who live in Florida, South Carolina, and Connecticut. Without meaning to, I very quickly start picking up their accents when I visit.

Rene

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To be fair, I recently had a friend from home come and visit. She insisted on 'inadvertently' pronouncing place names in a very poor American accent. I can't imagine it helped anyone understand her, but I guess she enjoyed getting in the spirit of things? I couldn't bring myself to stop her, but did hope the general foreignness stopped anyone else from noticing.

These days, I mainly get people not realising I have an accent and just wondering why they can't understand me. The look of pained concentration is unmistakeable :lol:

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British actors seem to be much better than American actors at imitating each other accents. The one that surprised me the most and never suspected that he was not American is Daniel Day-Lewis.

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Mrs Hotscot has been picking up mine...it gives her students a laugh when she says 'a wee minute' or 'och naw'.

Reminds me when I was doing a presentation to a bunch of people in S.F. for Adobe.

I'm on the stage, I start speaking...
One smart a$$ at the back immediately shouts out, 'Hey buddy, do we need a translator?"

I pause, tap the mic, and reply.
'Don't think so pal, speak slowly and I can understand you!'

Much jollity ensued...

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Was talking to someone recently (can't think who) who didn't believe me when I said Hugh Laurie wasn't American. Had to google him on my phone to prove it:lol:

I am lousy at accents - can't do them, not really very good at recognizing them, so if someone was trying to imitate me, I probably wouldn't even realise:o

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Me too. .... The only accent I can "do" even vaguely convincingly is a Suth African one. :unsure:

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When I first saw Hugh Laurie on "House", I suspected he wasn't American so he's not perfect imitating an American accent.

Charlize Theron from South Africa also does a very good American accent. I should have suspected that she wasn't American when I saw her in the movie Head in the Clouds where she played an English woman and to me it didn't sound fake.

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I'm from Manchester and been in US over 20 years
Haven't lost one bit of my accent and don't intend to either. .
But the first question I always get is are you Australian
I think by and large most Americans aren't too switched on to anything outside of the U.S.
Other than those educated in prestigious schools, they are devoid of any knowledge of geography

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Your accent must be so like mine:)...I get that all the time too.

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You're right Jock
And the next question after that is are you Scottish
I always tell them if a Scotsman was standing here bed be insulted!

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This is a matter of selection bias. Hollywood is still the place to make money in acting, which provides an advantage to anyone who can sound American.

The actors who can't sound American are less likely to make it in Hollywood productions, so you won't hear from as many of them, particularly in the American story lines that dominate US films. Those who you do see were able to adapt, but you're not seeing many of the others who lacked that talent.

Meanwhile, the Americans who are hired to do foreign accents but fail miserably were generally hired because of their star power, not because of their skill with accents (that they generally lack.)

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C'mon you all ! Not one so far has mentioned Dick Van Dyke who will go down in history as the worst attempt at an English accent........ ever.

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I like Jason Isaacs but I wasn't sure if he was trying to sound American or not in 'Awake'.

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Haha, I do this too. When I go to Malta and i'm around Maltese people with Maltese accents for a whole month, I come back to Canada speaking in a Maltese accent! Within 2-3 days i am back to normal though ;)

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That's what they all sound like when they're imatating a UK accent. Dick van bloody Dyke.

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when i was younger i did this all the time (to my OWN total embarrassment). I just had to hear it for a little while and i naturally imitated it. I couldnt stop it easily either as it wasnt til the words were out that i would hear and realize. Happened anytime i met anyone with a pronounced accent (like canadian, south african etc)when i was a teen.

Later on it went a bit weird. i grew up in the south but went to uni in Brum - so adopted a totally brummie accent very quick. Then my first job was in Darlington, next in newcastle and then a year in cardiff. at that point people would say to me ' where are you from' with REAL puzzlement as the accent was a total mismash of all of the above. I moved back down sarf and it gradually normalised and it hasnt happened again - even here in the US.

but i honestly wasnt imitating anyone delibertly or trying to offend. In fact - if you said 'do a brummie ' accent right now- i couldnt do it to save my life.

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but i honestly wasnt imitating anyone delibertly or trying to offend. In fact - if you said 'do a brummie ' accent right now- i couldnt do it to save my life.[/QUOTE]

You know you can, every time you say "I would love a kipper tie"

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That was supposed to be English? :blink:

Joke! :o

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True dat.

Stan Laurel came to America to work in silent films... and a few years later there were TALKIES! Many a foreign actor lost their careers because of thick European accents, but the shrewd Stanley made his accent a key part of the comedy act. I think he laid it on even thicker while playing the dumb Stanley in the flicks. :thumbup:

He came from Ulverston. Lake Country, is it?

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We must be in a bubble here in State College, not one person has commented on my accent...but last week I went 25 miles south, and it took three people in Lowes to work out I wanted to collect an online order.

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Aside from people in person not recognising I have an accent that much, I have some hilarious phone conversations over here. Much more entertaining than I ever had in Britain. The best one was with a woman in Kentucky who kept addressing me as "Ma'am"! :lol:

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When people do try to imitate my accent, they do what they think is an English/British accent, and it has no relation to my actual accent. They dont seem to bother actually listening to how I speak.

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That's what I found. It's like saying, "I love your accent, ching chong chang!" to an Asian person.

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Oh I do hate that.

" I love your accent" and they proceed to imitate a cockney accent. I don't speak like that at all. I have a standard/Received Pronunciation accent.

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I'll never tire of hearing that, probably because my muted Sheffield accent was ridiculed at school in Gloucester and seemed to be unappealing to people I met and worked with in London. :( ..... It is rare that anyone thinks I am Australian though, which is a plus. :thumbsup:

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As a Scouser I agree, nice to have people giving my accent compliments, which just shows the cultural assumptions people make about accents.

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You should have shared your video with us. (Does ramble on a bit though): :sneaky:

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I am ok with it as long as I am not mistaken for something completely different. They should stop at the compliment... I am a miserable git sometimes;)

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Mrs P says I don't sound quite like that, similar but not quite the same. Like he said, the accent varies around the city. I am from south west Sheffield, nr Abbey Lane and Bocking Lane, if anyone knows the area. My grandmother lived further north, still on the west side, on Rural Lane. :)

ETA Oh, and I have never said "thee sen". :frown:

ETA2 Also I don't have as much facial hair, ...... but then again, who does? :lol: