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.

Won't let you take her photo? Definitely a spy then 😀

Gosh I won't let anyone take my photo due to DV in the past/moved from the event/person. Is it really that odd?

Sudden Australian accent in your 20's? Were you watching Neighbours?

At the end of my first wk at uni in scotland i had acquired a scottish accent. It took someone from my hometown to point this out and i stopped. i am also aware that if im talking to someone with a distinctive accent such as aussie or kiwi i will often mimic. IT’S MORTIFYING!! i have no idea why i do it. i just subconsciously copy what i hear. I am alert to it tho and stop myself as soon as i puck it up. Could it be that she has a new Russia boyfriend or colleague and is mimicking?

Don't ask too many questions OP, you've might end up gone!

My DH does this when he talks to someone with an accent.

He doesn't realise it nor hear it in himself.
Fades after about 3 days after the encounter.

I don't say anything anymore.

As a young child I would take on my aunt's Welsh accent after speaking to her on the telephone. My family used to tease me about it. I didn't realise I was doing it and then the accent would wear off after a couple of hours.

Your friend sounds really intriguing. How did you meet her? Do you work in any sensitive areas?

She’s probably autistic and has just picked this up from somewhere it’s really common, shes not got anything medically wrong with her

OP's gone, it seems. This isn't such a crazy situation to assume the friend might be working here undercover. Maybe a penny has dropped?

Check on freebmd that she was actually born in the UK! I soak up accents like a sponge, I love them! Been asked if I'm Australian, Albanian, Irish. I'm suspecting she could have foreign accent syndrome.

I immediately thought this too 🤔

Rosamund Pike narrated a really interesting podcast called Mother, Neighbour, Russian Spy about a Russian couple planted in the US in the early 2000s. They were all uncovered in a famous spy ring about 10 years later.

Had been given comically Irish-American names - one of the many bizarre ways their 'handlers' chose to organise things.

'Cindy' made friends with a local American woman who is interviewed a lot on the programme. One of her neighbours did seem to tweak the couple was Russian, at one of her children's birthday parties, but the friend didn't see it.

(It's a great podcast, even if the OPs friend isn't a spy...but I'd say 'being a freelancer', secretive, no SM, no photos, consistently vague about her background etc, husband similar, accent suddenly faltering but she's using a poker face, means it's not crazy to consider it as a possibility. It feels MORE possible to me than a stroke.)

why would anyone adopt a yorkshire accent....on purpose?!

there are many accents in the north of ireland!!

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Is there a high proportion of Eastern European people living in her area, OP? The reason I ask is because where both DD & I have been born & raised, is in a upmarket town in North Yorkshire. The accent is very posh but with Yorkshire pronunciations. However, a few years ago, thousands of families decided to move up here from London & the south east. No idea why but you cannot go anywhere here or even turn 360° without hearing a southern accent.
Well, they all seem to have sent their kids to DD's primary school! So now DD has a slight southern accent, despite neither of us having ever been to London or anywhere near it (besides connecting at Heathrow!) it's hilarious!

DD now says "Barth" instead of bath, "demarnd " instead of demand, "Frarnce" instead of France etc etc you get the idea! It does make me giggle.

There are lots of ex-Russian spies living in the UK, just blending into the background. That was the case behind the Russian spy who was poisoned by Novichok down in Salisbury. He was an ex-Russian spy who had chosen Salisbury to settle down in. I listened to the recent inquiry about it (and the poor innocent civilian who was killed by it) and they said that there were hundreds of ex-Russian spies living in various parts of the UK to this day.

Is she watching a lot of videos voiced by someone with that accent? It's normally something that affects teens, but if the voices she hears most have that accent, she could subconciously be picking it up.

This is a good honest reflection. People are so judgey about accents and accent changes like people have consciously decided to change their way of speaking and are acting affected or pretentious, it's just a natural thing that happens, often without people even noticing. Lulu used to get pelters for it but the woman left Glasgow when she was 14 or 15 and probably spent little time around Glaswegians, it's natural she lost a bit of her accent. Paul McCartney spent the first chunk of his career still surround by other liverpudlians including the rest of the band, wives, his brother and roadies and their accent was much parodied and publicized in their interviews etc so he kept his. Similar with Billy Connelly the accent was reinforced by its fame and part of his act. I am fairly strong Glaswegian but I've no doubt if I'd spent more time working in London it would have softened significantly but is still be fiercely weegie as ever. I understand why the OP is trying to get at the root of this change tho, I'd be wondering myself what has brought it in. My friend starting working nearer Edinburgh and quickly developed a bit of a twang which I of course slagged her relentlessly for, she couldn't even hear it 🤣🤣