Why do some people pick up accents so quickly, whereas other people never change their accent?

[CalIie]

Just a question I have never had a satisfactory answer to.

I pick up accents ridiculously quickly. For example, when talking to my friends in Canada over the phone I will pick up a Canadian accent, I'll suddenly notice I am saying "aboot" or something and then become very self-conscious.

Similarly, when my Welsh grandfather was alive I would go Welsh over the phone.

My cousin and her husband moved to Australia 9 years ago. Her husband developed a full on Ozzy accent within a year, yet she still sounds very English, there is not even an Ozzy twang.

What about you guys? And any thoughts as to why this is?

I'm the same, when we were in Canada I started speaking in a Canadian accent.

We also visited the French speaking region of Canada, and I found myself thinking in French!

I moved to Scotland 2 years ago and despite lockdown my (generic posh southern) accent is moving a bit more north. Not properly Scottish but have accidentally acquired some more northern vowels. I also pick up local phrases really easily, but they are in my normal accent. I can't hold a deliberate change of accent at all

I have G8 in a musical instrument and am near fluent in French - and am almost never picked up as being English in France - I think I have a bit of a regional accent in French which masks the English one...

DD (6) is more interesting. She picked up a west Midlands accent before we moved and between lockdown and school she now has a real mix, largely depending where she learned the phrase. She's most Scottish when reading aloud or singing or reciting something learned at school while things she's learned at home are definitely posh English.

It feels like everyone around Glasgow has a variety of accent options... from full on Glaswegian to talk slow for the foreigner to make them understand...

For those of us who are Autistic, it’s echolalia, we can’t help it!

Very interesting thread. I spent 3yrs at an expat school school abroad with multiple nationalities. I then grew up in another country and moved to the UK in my 20's. I shift my accent when I'm in England, and shift back to where I grew up. I can't sing but am musical and good with picking up other languages.

I think its called Bi-accented. The actress Gillian Anderson is one such person- doing shows/films with either an America accent or very British one.

I worked in Oz in a-busy AE unit for 1 months.I came home with a really strong Ozzy accent…didn’t even know that until I was back in England.

I'm autistic and I mirror the person I'm talking to. Their speech patterns, accents, body language, facial expression. I met someone for the first time via Zoom yesterday and I noticed that my head was tilted to one side because hers was.

I do this too. Sometimes it's embarrassing as I don't want people to think I'm trying too hard to fit in, but I can't help it. I've always had a love of languages and accents and growing up we had a lot of people from overseas living with us (think seasonal farm workers, exchange students etc). I can hold a conversation in 3 languages and speak a little of two others. So I think my brain is just very in tune to accents.

Interesting about converging and ASD. We moved to the US from SE England when DS was 2.4. We lived there, in a southern state with a distinctively twangy accent for 3.6 years. Despite being immersed, going to preschool etc, DS never picked up the slightest hint of the accent. He just sounded even more RP as time went on! A few years after we got back to the UK he was diagnosed with autism, and I always wondered if it was why his accent was never swayed (whereas his sister sounded like Penelope Pitstop!) He does mask at school in terms of behaviour, but maybe lacks the social drive to converge.

@Gilead

For those of us who are Autistic, it’s echolalia, we can’t help it!

I didn't realise it was a form of echolalia, that's interesting. I thought echolalia was just repeating words or phrases, which I have always done but it has been so much worse since I joined TikTok. Now I repeat stupid viral audios all day until even I'm annoyed at myself!

Between that and my vocal stims, poor DH must feel like he is living with a large budgie

I also do this despite trying not to, especially a Northern Ireland accent, I think its because I love it so much.
I grew up in England with Glaswegian parents so think I am more attuned to different speech and accents. The only one I can't seem to do is a Geordie .

I have a weird hybrid of the area of North wales where I’ve lived for nearly 30 years and Sussex where I grew up until I was 15

When I go back to visit friends in Sussex they have trouble understanding me (and I them!)
But people here say I sound posh sometimes I can’t win.

I think maybe it was an unconscious desire to fit in when I was a teen as I do remember listening carefully to pronounciation and then copying. I was sick of getting kicked on for my English accent.

I think it's a talent or a gift. Learning languages for these people comes more easily. Children have it but most lose it at some point. My French is perfect but because I didn't learn it in childhood (unlike my DC), I'll always have a faint accent. The DC switch from French to English and back without a trace of foreign accent. It's fascinating.

Picked not kicked

@SeedsSeedsSeeds

I don't start speaking out loud in other accents, but my internal monologue does. On holiday, talking to people with a different accent, or binge watching tv, all my thinking will suddenly be in that accent.

I have the internal monologue accents too! Especially with Scottish and Australian accents.

I do this all the time, but mostly intentionally. I pick up accents from new people I meet and sometimes accidentally mimic them, but also just regularly change accents because I can and it's funny. People be at how easily I can switch and how good I am at it. I can't do a Welsh or Jordy accent very well, but most others are spot on. I was very good at drama in my youth.

I also impersonate people I know, mostly men. It's not meant to be mean, it just makes anecdotes funnier. I accidentally did an impression of my manager to his face during my review though. I hadn't even noticed until he said "did you just impersonate me?". He took it well though.

I'm from NI. Pretty much no accents from here are nice, I have no idea why people think otherwise. The Belfast accent makes my whole body cringe.

My eldest ds (12) has taken after me. He can do it too. His brother is truly awful at it, which surprises me because he takes after me in most ways.

I am sadly immune to accents. It would have really helped to be able to pick them up (growing up in Scotland as an English person) but no...

Unescorted Wed 26-Jan-22 20:35:16
The empathy angle is interesting... I change accents really easily but do it less when I am tired or stressed.

Unescorted, can I ask if you mean you do it MORE when you are tired and stresses, not less?

I ask because I often reverse words like that and

@merrymelodies

I think it's a talent or a gift. Learning languages for these people comes more easily. Children have it but most lose it at some point. My French is perfect but because I didn't learn it in childhood (unlike my DC), I'll always have a faint accent. The DC switch from French to English and back without a trace of foreign accent. It's fascinating.

My cousin was like your children. Spoke English with an Aussie accent and German with a German accent. She moved to Berlin aged 5 and went to school in Germany but continued to spend a lot of time in Aus. She and her sister would flick back and forth between languages without even realising. I always loved listening to them.

I am going to confess something: I really dislike it when people change accents quickly like this and it makes me feel uncomfortable with them. Speak your own voice, I think. Speak your own voice.

I've done both.

I kept my Yorkshire accent all through school (we moved when I was 9) and then in my early 20s I started working in healthcare, and found that a lot of older people couldn't understand me, but did if I used a Lancashire accent.

SO I picked up a Lancashire accent and then moved to Oxford, a few years later and I was in London and I am now in the midlands.

My accent varies on who I'm speaking to and can cross 3 counties in one sentence.

I picked up a neighbour's grandchild once, neighbor is Scottish, the grandchild is from London but she said good by to her friends in a full yam yam accent, got in to the car and started to chat to me in her London accent.

My grandparents had Indian accents (that I never, ever noticed when they were alive- only in video looking back). They had lived in the UK half their lives so I guess it was less strong.

When they first arrived they lived in Manchester, with some family and my mum remembered the kids laughing at how they all spoke, so assimilation must have been high for the younger family members.

My mum doesn't sound Indian any more, but there's a rhythm of speaking that is different and her original accent resurfaces when speaking to family.

DH has a lovely Suffolk accent that I used to notice, but don't anymore. I know I've picked up some of his way of speaking (my mum notices and laughs). He always picks up the accent wherever we go in the UK.

@Humnhumn

I am going to confess something: I really dislike it when people change accents quickly like this and it makes me feel uncomfortable with them. Speak your own voice, I think. Speak your own voice.

I pick up accents. Its not done on purpose. I worked abroad with a cohort that were largely from Yorkshire so by the time I came home I had a Northern twang. I did raise my eyebrows at a girl from my school who went to the USA for 6 weeks and then spoke with an American accent for the next two years. That was weird.

I was shocked at how Australian I sounded when I came back from living there for 18 months. I heard myself on my mums answer machine and thought it was my Australian friend. I then realised why when I was calling about registering with job agencies they were asking about visas

I can’t mimic the accent now.

When I spend time with my dads side of the family I realise I mimic speak pattern (they talk very quickly and more expressively and high pitched)

Yeh this happened to me living in england. Although i think i was assimilating. Now im home and people ask me if Im english. I had a lovely accent to start with. Now its a strange hybrid.
Im quite musical too, is it linked? My dd can also pick up a tune like a musician and can do accents v easily

@ComtesseDeSpair

I think linguists believe it’s driven by the psychosocial instinct to “calibrate” your communication with that of those around you as converging linguistically with an interlocutor is a social skill which means you are more likely will be accepted as one of the group. We do it instinctively with other features of language when we speak to e.g. children or to people from a particular social group.

Which isn’t to say that people who don’t converge their accent and speech don’t have that instinct. It’s apparently less common in neurodiverse people, and becomes harder to do as you get older. It’s also less common in people who have travelled around less or been exposed to different linguistic patterns, suggesting it’s also linked to identity with the region where an individual initially learned to speak, and to simply having less practice at converging.

Wow. 👍 Good post