May I Borrow Your Accent?

Are you guilty of accent borrowing?

I am.

I was mortified the day I attended a training session and sat beside a woman from Australia. We chatted happily until the session began and the instructor  asked the dozen of us for an introduction.

My neighbor said her name, and added that while she was from Sydney, she was delighted to be in California.

I gave my name, newly arrived from Connecticut.

The instructor eyed me. “Are you Australian also?”

I put my hand to my mouth, mortified. I’d spoken in the accent of the woman sitting beside me.

To be fair, I didn’t mean to borrow her accent, I’ve just lived in so many places that I’ve unconsciously picked up native inflections.

I grew up in Los Angeles; we don’t have accents there.

But even I can hear the “ooww” leftover from our time in New England, where houses flattened to “howses” and going out turned into “owwt.”

You understand it, eh?

(We lived near Canada for four years, I picked that up, too).

I can rattle Hawai’ian words with the best of them–you just pronounce all the vowels–and while no one would mistaken me for a native, I sound like a kamaiana.

I’ve never picked up pidgin, however, and when I’m in the southern United States I carefully avoid slipping into their accent.

I really don’t want to make someone think I’m making fun of them by starting to sound the same way when I’m obviously not from their linguistic group!

For what it’s worth, I apparently have a pretty good Spanish accent  and experience has shown I’m expected to understand far more than I do because of that accent.

But why me?

I’ve pondered this often, and the only conclusion I’ve reached is musical.

I’ve been a musician since I was six years old–sounds and tones are important to my ear.

I spent a lot of time mastering the clear tone on my clarinet–I can’t abide a fuzzy sound.

So, I assumed that was why I picked up accents like germs whenever I’m in the company of people who speak a little differently than I do.

Especially in English.

Convergence

Research at UC Riverside, however, indicates a possible reason for my . . . ever-evolving accents:

“People who interact with a person with a different accent subconsciously mimic their twang because they want to ’empathise and affiliate’ with their conversation partner.”

That sounds a lot better than embarrassing theft.

(It’s also, apparently, similar to feeding a baby with a spoon. Think how often you licked your own lips while trying to get an infant to eat off a spoon!)

“Humans are incessant imitators,” said Prof Lawrence Rosenblum, a psychologist who led the study:

“We intentionally imitate subtle aspects of each other’s mannerisms, postures and facial expressions.

“We also imitate each other’s speech patterns, including inflections, talking speed and speaking time.”

“Sometimes we even take on the foreign accent of the person to whom we are talking, leading to embarrassing consequences.”

I’ll say.

This type of accent issue has an official name:

“When two speakers become more similar in their speech this is called convergence or accommodation (opposite: divergence). This can occur on all levels of language, phonetics and phonology, syntax, semantics, and pragmatics. When mutual intelligibility is not an issue, accomodation mainly occurs when speakers like each other or want to appear likeable.”

Singing

The problem also can occur from vocal music. Growing up listening to Julie Andrews sing My Fair Lady or The Sound of Music tracks, I imitate her accent when I sing the songs!

Similarly, while seeing the musical Wicked in London, I knew something was odd about the performance, but couldn’t put my finger on it until intermission while listening to others in the audience speak.

The performers were speaking their lines with a British accent, but singing the songs with an American accent!

 

I’m glad to know I’m not the only one.

Funny, how it all seems to stem from wanting to be popular . . .

Tweetables

May I borrow your accent and other absurdities? Click to Tweet

Adopting another accent for admiration not fun. Click to Tweet

Stealing your accent? No, it’s all about empathy and convergence. Click to Tweet