Friend and her accent

[ByKindLilacFinch]

Not an AIBU, just interested if anyone else has experienced this.

my friend has never had any kind of accent (well spoken, sounds like a news reader). Over the last few months has started pronouncing words differently. She sounds a bit like she’s from Russia but has been in the UK a very long time and the accent is subtle but it’s there.

I’ve asked her why she is speaking with an accent and she just looks at me blankly. I know I’m not imagining it as we both met someone new last week and they asked where she was from as she didn’t sound British.

I’m curious as to whether anyone can shed any light, just really curious.

Sleeper agent.

Well this is actually quite interesting- I’ve known her a while - about 10 years but she is extremely secretive about her past. She’s a real closed book. She’s a freelancer - she’s one of those people who is very charming and personable but no one actually knows anything about her. She has no social media and come to think of it looks like one of those beautiful Russian/ Eastern European models. She’s middle aged now (like me) but still drop dead gorgeous. Sort of person people look at when she enters a room, charismatic and certainly no need to speak differently.
maybe she’s having some sort of middle age crisis

Haha my sister is the same - we are actually Yorkshire born and bred but she now speaks in a “posh London” accent - it grates on me so much as it just sounds completely fake to me. She’s always been the same and adapted her accent to whoever she is around, whereas mine has not really changed even though I’ve lived all over the country. When she’s spent some time with me I can hear her Yorkshire accent coming halfway back - it’s like she conflicted in how to speak - it’s bizarre.

In that case she potentially is a spy and I'd report her.

No! And she doesn't spend any time there either 🤦‍♀️

I moved areas around 10 years ago and had my children here, they have the local accent and I have a very slight accent but you can still tell where I originally from.

But my sister went from speaking with a Manchester accent to a really really thick heavy Yorkshire accent overnight, it's just so bizzare. I don't even know why it bothers me so much but it really does annoy me 😅

I assume you’re joking?

Is she going deaf?

Ooooh this could get interesting! Spies, beauty, charisma, secretive background, Russian accent.

I think if Scottish, the Glaswegian accent is really easy to pick up without realising or meaning to

We are Scottish and my DP often comes home from working in Glasgow for a week or two with a very strong weegie twang to his Fife accent

Honestly she is so mysterious- I think that’s why I like her so much. She’s so funny as well, but I think she intrigues me!

It's not about intelligence or trying to impress someone. If I spend a lot of time with someone /in a different region I unconsciously change my accent. I just automatically pick it up. It's such a mish mash now that while I don't sound completely British, no one can pin point where I'm from , and I don't sound completely foreign either.

Intriguing! She may well be Russian / Eastern European but as she is working from home and possibly not speaking an awful lot she is out of practice when it comes to faking the English accent and is reverting back to what is more normal to her ….hmmm🤔

Yes she could well be, but I’ve known her for a long time and she has told me she was born and raised locally- so I just believed her, no reason not to really

Oh how scary and interesting with this foreign accent syndrome, never heard of it! The other option would be if she’s not actually a native English speaker, and May now be speaking more to people speaking her native language, so may be reverting back to her mother tongue and thus developing an accent.

Im not a native English speaker, and through the course of my life, depending on where I lived and who I worked with, my accent has been pure sort of cockney, very Dorset British and now as I live in my native country again but still speak English at work and with DH, I definitely have more of my native accent in English again. When I go back to to UK, my friends do notice. At one point I worked for an American company and got a very American accent. Accents aren’t static.

I so want it to be this! Definitely preferable to a neurological issue. But seriously OP I hope your friend is OK.

That would be my concern too.

Yes, I understand that, but she works locally.

My teen went through a phase of sounding American (lockdown, online gaming/tiktok etc). Fortunately it passed after enough people asked if she was from Canada/the US… she’d just tuned into the accent and absorbed it.

ETA (in response to a PP below… she is autistic, too. I am as well and can mimic after a limited exposure, so there may be something to that theory too.)

Is she autistic?

I am and copy people's accents all the time subconsciously, it's called mirroring and I hate doing it.

Was thinking the same 🤣

Yes maybe a spy

If she has a Russian background originally, she may not be keen to come clean about this now with the state of the world. No need to be a spy. I have several close Russian friends and they all try to avoid people finding out they’re Russian as far as they can, a lot of prejudice going on at the moment due to the war in Ukraine (which of course is beyond horrible but it’s sad that civilian Russians who may have lived outride the country for decades are being subjected to prejudice now)

Yes, I understand that, but she works locally.

If I spend a day or two with my best friend I go slightly American. Maybe she has a new influence in her life (boyfriend,family,friend or even online stuff) that's influencing her accent.

Is she multilingual
If so, do you know what other languages she speaks?

My kids often okay in an American accent! Peppered with candy and diaper references! Drives me crazy lol

i had a southern Hampshire accent I didn’t realise I had until I moved to Essex! People still heard it after 20 years. Until I visited family back in the New Forest who said I sounded Essex! So I have a hybrid weird thing going on.