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My latest piece for NPR’s Monkey See blog, this one on the perils of extended exposure to audio book narration.
I’ve (re-)discovered a few things over the course of the recent Days Of Rage. Some of them are great!
I found it while researching a murder (…this is a sentence I have more frequent use for than most), the true story of a neighborhood legend from my childhood. I grew up in a leafy, …
You want embarrassing accent absorption? My mom is from Texas, my dad is from Kansas, and I went to a Catholic school taught entirely by Irish clergy. Then I went to Europe for college. Sometimes, I sound like an alien who learned to talk from monitoring Earth broadcasts.
Wow. I thought I was the only one with accent sponginess. The worst part, for me, is that I pick up a really bad, really fake, cheesy accent. The people I pick it up from assume I’m doing it in a lame attempt to be funny. They are not amused. The harder I try NOT to … the worse it gets. My recent addiction to BBC America? Not helping.
Love. Excellent piece.
I do this with accents also. When I first moved to Oklahoma, I had to guard mightily against picking up the twang. I think I have succeeded, though no one tells me I sound like “the news people” or “I have a ‘Northern’ accent” anymore, so…perhaps I’ve only managed to fool myself.
Your comment on Will Patton cracked me up — I’ve listened to him read all of James Lee Burke’s Dave Robicheaux novels, and I always have to stop myself from using south Louisiana slang for a while afterward!
I’m glad I’m not the only one with this problem, although it manifests itself in the form of me absorbing the vocal cadences and mannerisms of my friends. I’m starting to wonder whether I’ve even got my own personality….
Hee!
I have the same accent-absorption problem. When my boss at my second job recently hired a Brit, I immediately assured her that if I started to speak with a cheesy British accent, it was not mockingly so. It’s more like some strange form of Turrett’s that causes me to utter nonsense phrases at unnecessary times, most of which inexplicably come out in an accent. The biggest problem came many years ago when I had a boss from the Long Island region of New York. Judging from the expression on her face, there were a few close firings in that case. Yeesh.
Aw, man…it’s a shame it’s TRUE crime. Barbara Rosenblatt and CJ Critt are the best damned crime narrators out there.
I’m glad I’m not the only one who’s accent-prone. I haven’t had much exposure to audio books in future. I’ll have to watch out for that. Thanks for the tip. Maybe adopting just a couple of Britishisms could work as a safety valve, without raising your British boss’s ire; you might try the multipurpose “Quite.”
“In future, comma, I’ll have to watch out for that.” On account of how I’m not a time-traveler. Agkh.
Ha! I totally do that!
This reminds me (lovingly) of the great Paul Winfiled “City Confidential” narrations.
For some reason, when I talk to strangers I apparently get a Southern accent. It’s not conscious, but I keep getting asked where I’m from, and when I say “Colorado,” I get strange looks. Like Mary, trying to stop it just makes it worse.
I guess I’ll have to take comfort in knowing lots of us have this problem . . .
I have a sadly-underused degree in theater and sing a lot in other languages, so shaping my speech/pronunciation and picking up accents is a necessary skill for me.
It’s bad enough that I am constantly suppressing my natural rural northern Ohio flat swallowy accent AND the Minnesotan vowels that surround me every day, but for whatever reason, though I have never spoken this way naturally, when I get stressed, I go straight to my grandparents’ Appalachian drawl/twang thing. Just the way to get taken seriously, I tell you.
I also have a stupid crush on someone with an accent that is none of the above, so I have lots of moony mental conversations with him – accurately accented. I have on occasion replied to reverie-interrupters using said accent. Yargh.
At least you do it with audiobooks. I do it when I read. Read a book with lots of British dialect (written out the way they speak) and I start talking that way. After I read Shogun, I spoke, badly, Japanese words for the ones defined in the book.
Gah!
The hubby person is an accent sponge too, but he does it deliberately, and for comic effect.
I only do this in French. I always assumed this is because I don’t speak French as well or as often. I always assumed it was a character flaw… Reassuring to see it happens to people in their first (or only) language too!
Nearly ten years after coming home from Hunan province, I still say “Aiya!” and “Aiyo!” when annoyed, despite the fact that I’m from Alabama. If I watch too many episodes of “Sharpe”, there’s “nowt”ing here and “reet”ing there, and it’s just freakish. I talk much too fast to be a bona fide southerner, too. People from the north claim I’m heavily southern-accented; people from here in plantation country think I’m a Yankee transplant. You can’t win, y’all.
I do this as well, and it also gets worse if I try to stop it. For me any british accent is the worst. I’ve actually told many people that if I start mimicing them please don’t take it personally because I don’t know I’m doing it. They always give me a funny look when I say that, but at least half told me later on that they thought it was weird when I said it but all came clear when it turned out to be true.
A linguistics teacher told me once that it’s rather common and has to do with an unconcious desire to make the people you’re talking to feel comfortable and accepted because mimicry is one way humans do that, it’s a way to show you “get” what they’re saying. To bad in actuality it usually just freaks people out.
My mother has this exact problem with audio books. She is currently listening to a thriller that takes place in Paris. I took French in college, and at least once a day, she calls demanding definitions of phrases and then insists on using these phrases in her daily life, complete with French-c/o Sonora, Mexico accent. It’s kind of hilarious.
Ha! Very amusing article.
For some reason, when I am talking to store clerks I become Southern. I have never lived in the south.
I know a couple words in many languages, so as soon as I hear one foreign word, I immediately want to respond with another, regardless of whether it is the correct language. I confuse a lot of people…
My fiance picks up the accent of the Pakistani guy running the liquor store (or as East Coast kids call it, the “Bodega” [I think]). It’s Really Embarrassing, because I feel like it sounds like he’s making fun of the guy. Which he isn’t. We love that guy, he’s my whiskey dealer.
I am a little bit of an accent sponge, but only until someone points it out to me, at which point it abruptly stops. I cannot for the life of me imitate anyone’s accent *on purpose*. Sort of like the way I can walk and chew gum at the same time only until someone mentions it to me, which causes me to immediately stumble.
When I was in high school I did an exchange year in Holland. One of my methods to try to learn the language was to read the same book in English and Dutch concurrently. The only book I had in both languages was Gone with the Wind, which meant I was always thinking of Vivian Leigh, with the bizarre side-effect that I speak Dutch with a heavy helping of fiddle-de-dee on the side.
I do this all the time. I’ve always suspected it was a side effect of my mother’s pronunciation and enunciation pickiness and both my parents’ dislike of things like “ain’t” leaving me with an unidentifiable lack of accent and few regional twitches, which is so not unique — most people from English speaking countries seem to think I’m from wherever they’re from even when it’s NOT happening — that everything else sounds more interesting to me and just gets absorbed.
Anything sets it off. Hearing an accent, reading a book by someone from a certain place or set in a specific place, talking about a book or television show with a distinctive sound (3 sentences about Friday Night Lights and I suddenly have a Tami Taylor twang and start using the word “y’all”, with Doctor Who it changes depending on the season being discussed). Since I’m in the group who have no awareness that they’re doing any such thing it nearly drove my mother to murder me years ago whenever I was working on a play with accents. (Near death experiences: Irish, English, and Russian.)
On the plus side, in h.s. it did help convince my Japanese teacher that I was a genius. I had no other basis for hearing that language than her, and her accent in English was heavy enough that I never parroted that one.
The two I seem to pick up the most frequently and with the least exposure to are most variants of US southern despite never living anywhere near south of the Mason-Dixon line (my dad was born and spent most of his childhood in rural VA) and most English ones despite never leaving the US (I blame early overexposure to Roald Dahl and Frances Hodgson Burnett). I’ve even found myself thinking in those after too long. Yikes.
Is there a support group or something? At least I can send people here now whenever it comes up as proof that I’m not entirely insane. Well, not because of THIS.
Emma, I’m the exact same way – pick up accents subconciously, drop them as soon as someone points it out, and completely unable to do it on purpose. My fiance, on the other hand, seems almost accent resistant – the only thing he picks up is if he’s around someone with a heavier drawl than his, his thickens. However, he can do almost any accent perfectly on demand (as well as cricket noises, but that’s another story).
@Beth: I’ve heard that argument used in defense of both Britney Spears’ and Madonna’s ersatz Britishisms. It would be the ONLY excuse, as pretty much everyone knows they’re from Louisiana and Michigan, respectively.
@Hoolia: I have a similar problem with shopping from a catalogue: I have never lived anywhere close to the southern states. I read somewhere that places like J. Crew have their warehouses wherever storage space is cheap but have their call centres in the South because good telephone manners are still somewhat ingrained there, and there’s a greater likelihood of customers’ being dealt with graciously over the phone that way. Of course, there’s also a greater likelihoood that I’ll be droppin’ my Gs by the end of that conversation, but they can’t know that.
Of course, the fact that I’m apparently part mynah-bird doesn’t make me any less able to think Madonna ain’t nothin’ but a big ol’ phony. Go figure.
Thank goodness I’m not the only one who does this. I will get all Southern talking to Southern friends, all Minnesota talking to Minnesota friends, and INSTANTANEOUSLY British if I talk to someone British. It’s not enough for *them* to notice, I don’t think (if you’re American and you’re talking to a British person, you don’t notice much if their “accent” suddenly lessens a bit — meaning from the other side that their American accent is picking up), but I hear it and feel like a goober. And Kida, I also imitate people’s cadences and mannerisms and sometimes wonder if I have my own personality. Heh.
If I’m not in mixed company, I will fully allow myself to speak in a silly accent after absorbing some kind of foreign TV or what have you. My sisters and I binged on LOTR extras at Christmas one year, and for DAYS were busting out the New Zealand accent. If you’re doing it to be silly, it can be even trickier, because you THINK you’re doing it on purpose, but then you keep doing it even after you stopped meaning to. Also, I still can’t say “Weta Workshop” or “Richard Taylor” or “Wellington” without New Zealand-ing it up. THERE WERE HOURS OF EXTRAS, you guys.
I don’t pick up accents. I can’t do any at all. My current accent is my original strong Kiwi accent,, tempered with Esterine English from living just out of London for four years and having to e-nun-ci-ate some things extra carefully just to compensate. Now I have folks in both places saying I have the accent of the other.
I don’t pick up accents from books. I pick up syntax.
I read Austen, I start using Regency prose.
Shakepeare? I start iambic pentameter-ing
Whatever I read, I pick up the style but not the accent. It’s not as obvious, but I still get funny looks.
I read something about the Napoleonic navy and have been ‘Huzzah-ing’ ever since.
I talk to so many people who pick up accents subconsciously! I’m a language nut so people tell me about their accent sponginess a lot. I wonder if there’s anyone doing research on why and how our brains do that. I try to consciously suppress it if I hear myself doing it, because I don’t want to sound fake around people who really do have that accent, but I do find my mental voice picking it up. Being a language nut, I just like to turn my ear to the details of difference in pronunciation and I guess it’s hard not to absorb that, even when I’m reminding myself in Georgia “do-uhn’t fergit the extra pay-uns…”
@Rebecca: Hee. You reminded me of “Don’t fergit his FANGERS, Ey-ud.”
Ah, I have this problem as well. Interestingly, I have also experienced the reverse, when I was an exchange student in Paris. My french accent was decent — that and the fact that I talked fast often had people taking me for a much better speaker than I was — but I found that when I was at the Tabac I’d be able to keep up my Frenchy low-euuuuh hum all through “Bonjour, je voidrais un ..” but I would drop right back into flat hard, crispy English consonants for “Lucky Strikes.” I don’t think you can give a foreign accent to your native tongue. You see this with Spanish-speaking newscasters too, often — they use the standard Amerircan newscaster singsong for the signoff until they get to their name.
I’m another one of those “pick up other people’s cadence and mannerisms” types. And I have TOTALLY wondered if I have my own personality or speech mannerisms!
I don’t think I’m an accent sponge but I’ve noticed that sometimes when I talk to strangers I start sounding like I’m from Minnesota or similar, despite growing up in California.
Sort of related: I think I’m a pretty good accent mimic, but sadly only if no one else is around to hear. If I try to do an accent for someone else I invariably flub it and come off as an enormous dork. I guess I require more practice.