What's the most wanky thing you have ever done?!

[lardylegs123]

I cringe when I think of this. First year of university, and I was studying Languages. I'm from a working class, Scottish family and was the first ever to go to university. Mother's Day comes and I thought it would be a nice idea to write out the card entirely in the languages I've been studying I thought mum would be so impressed, but she just looked at me and said 'but Lardylegs, I cannae understand a word'.
I think I was too busy being a pretentious dick, that I'd forgotten about this mere detail

My pets (past and present) are called Demetrius, Lysander, Hephaestus and Ulysses. I ordered escargot thinking it might impress the In Laws (I do like it, but that wasn’t my motivation for ordering)

I don't think it's about accents changing when you move somewhere. It's about deliberately trying to sound "better" than where you came from- at least in the example I was talking about upthread!

I gave my first dc a pretentious literary name I was 25 at the time and not long finished an equally wanky and pretentious degree. I was brainwashed.

I'm one of those accent sponges which can get really weird if I'm not paying attention

Army Brats, Junior Ratings and whatever the other equivalents are are well known for this!

People who are accent sponges can be invaluable in covert situations - it's not something that they need to work on as it's mostly completely unconscious.

When I was early 20s and had facebook I remember (cringingly) fancying this guy I knew, we were Facebook friends and I'd look at all the pages he liked and like them too so if he looked at my profile he'd see we had everything in common 😭😱 want to curl up in a ball now as I think about it

Not me but I went to a restaurant in Germany years ago and they served the meal on a slice of wood. Just a chunk of a tree not even a wooden plate. Really weird

Struggling to think of something I’ve done (altho am certain lots) but one of the wankiest things said to me by a former friend to me was when she made a point of correcting my pronunciation of tissue (I say it tish-you and not tiss-you like she thought I should). I remember just looking at her like this as I’d never even thought about the way I say it.

That’s interesting about accent divergence/convergence. I was born in England but my parents moved “back” to their country of origin - or at least used it as a base - when I was about ten. I went to school there until I was 18. My accent remained very very English and people used to ask why.

I’d never admit it in real life, but I disliked the country, and thought it a hole and longed endlessly for Britain. I thought I did a good job of covering this up. Probably not.

@AdelindSchade

I do think some people are 'accent sponges'. I lived and worked with some girls from Wolverhampton for a few months once and ended up talking like them. I was not trying to fit in with them or anything, nor did I covet the midlands twang - it did just happen!

I agree. Also I'm always a bit unsettled by the expectation that people's accents can never change.

Yes its wanky to affect an accent to impress when you're with certain sets of people.

But I also think those people who insist that your accent can't ever change from what you spoke in the home as a child are a bit backwards-looking and controlling. Just because you spoke a certain way at five doesn't mean you're not allowed to evolve. What if you moved overseas, for example. If, say, you spent 30 years living in the US would it not be acceptable for your accent to change?

I ordered an espresso at a coffee bar when I was meeting up with older mates.
The barista asked me if I was sure that’s what I wanted.

I had no idea what they were as I’m a big tea drinker.
I had to drink the cup of filth through gritted teeth while they all had lovely long milky concoctions with whipped cream and syrup ☹️

I had to change accents at school - if I sounded like my grandmother, I'd have had a right kicking every day instead of every other

DP has a broad Dartmoor accent, but had to do the same when he moved up here because he was being treated like he was mentally deficient - which is shit when you're trying to get a job; the only one he could get with his degree was working in a photo shop, because as soon he got to interview (civil service, banks, etc), they would home in on his accent and what it's like being in a city compared to fields and sheep. When the last civil service type interviewer told him that he obviously wouldn't have met a black person before and how could he convince somebody he wasn't a racist, he decided it was time to change his entire voice.

It comes back when he's relaxed and happy. I can still switch (and take on extra accents) if necessary.

At university I named my houseplants after Thomas Hardy characters, including Bathsheba the rubber plant and Tess the spider plant.

I did the reverse accent transition in primary school as I moved from an English private school to a Scottish state school. I remember saying "Aye" in a strange plastic accent for several weeks at the start. I must have sounded very strange. By the time I made it to University (still in scotland) my accent was so thick that even the natives couldn't understand me.

@PowerhouseOfTheCell

Decided that 13 year old me would look the height of sophistication with a pocket watch looking back I must have looked a right twat at the bus stop just whipping it out

Bloody hell @NeverDropYourMoonCup, that's awful

I am someone who has trouble sticking to an accent and I seem to pick up on aspects of the accent and dialect etc of the people I am talking to. Most people can’t place where in the UK my accent is from. We moved around quite a bit in my early childhood and both of my parents have very different regional accents (and both from places I have never lived) so I guess I was around a number of different accents as I learnt to talk. Even when we settled in an area it was a town which has a lot of people moving in from all over the UK so there isn’t a strong local accent and when I went to Uni I seemed to lose any traces of that accent I did have. I’ve since lived all over the UK, currently in the north, and I’m aware my accent often changes depending on who I’m talking to and that I tend to mirror other people’s accents but it’s not something I do consciously.

@TacoSunday

Struggling to think of something I’ve done (altho am certain lots) but one of the wankiest things said to me by a former friend to me was when she made a point of correcting my pronunciation of tissue (I say it tish-you and not tiss-you like she thought I should). I remember just looking at her like this as I’d never even thought about the way I say it.

I say it just like you 😂

I can't think of anything, which makes me wonder whether it's because I don't do wanky things or if it's because I do them all the time but I'm unaware 😳🤔

As a young teenager I decided to have a "goth phase" but my goth phase mainly consisted of me wearing a cape that I got to wear at Halloween - so extremely cheap and flimsy, not a nice one - and cutting myself a terrible fringe over my heavily linered eyes. I also refused to wear my glasses during this phase which meant I couldn't see very well. I look back on that time with a great deal of disapproval

The accent thing though... some people just soak them up and really can't help it (especially if they've a good ear/musical/foreign language skills I find). And Scots, for example, is particularly hard to fight against - almost everyone I knew ended up with a degree of Scottish accent after a few years, and after 10+ years up there you couldn't tell the difference.

I started with modern RP, had a fair Scottish accent (not very strong, but definitely there) after a few years living up there, and have now reverted to RP with the odd bit of Scots, and increasingly some west country. Embarrassingly all it takes to revert to Scots is to return to Scotland, or, worst of all, to talk to someone else with an accent. Sometimes I have to warn them what happens so they don't think I'm taking the piss.

Imagine it's a Brit speaking French, you would expect them to get a progressively more French accent the longer they spend in France/talking to French people etc, wouldn't you? You wouldn't expect they'd retain a British Schoolroom French accent all their lives. It's the same idea.

@Crunchymum

With regards to accents, it is a known thing.

It's called convergence and divergence. If you like someone (or some place) your accent can change to sound more like said persons (or accent from said place)

If you dislike a person / place then your own accent can become stronger.

(It's much more technical than this but I studied it 20 years ago!)

@Crunchymum

that's very interesting! when I talk to my SIL2, who is Belgian so has a Dutch accent I always pick up on little things and imitate them.
especially how she does a few little sounds of approval & disapproval.

we used to talk on the phone for hours so I'd pick up and keep these accents/sounds all day and DH would come home and say "ah, so you've been to Belgium!"🤣

@ChampionOfTheSun

As a young teenager I decided to have a "goth phase" but my goth phase mainly consisted of me wearing a cape that I got to wear at Halloween - so extremely cheap and flimsy, not a nice one - and cutting myself a terrible fringe over my heavily linered eyes. I also refused to wear my glasses during this phase which meant I couldn't see very well. I look back on that time with a great deal of disapproval

Hilarious.

I teach secondary and I look upon these reincarnation with such fondness. They happen ALL the time.

What if you moved overseas, for example. If, say, you spent 30 years living in the US would it not be acceptable for your accent to change?

I've noticed that among the Brits I've worked with who have been in the US, their accent softens but never really goes away completely. They do start using American words for things - soccer instead of football, trash instead of rubbish, etc.

@Purplecatshopaholic

As an angst-ridden teen, I used to listen to, and love Marillion. Listened to some of their stuff again recently - god it’s wanky pretentious shite! Lol

I love Marillion!! Although when I was a teenager I used to speak Elvish to my friends which is top tier wanky!

@AlbaAlba

The accent thing though... some people just soak them up and really can't help it (especially if they've a good ear/musical/foreign language skills I find). And Scots, for example, is particularly hard to fight against - almost everyone I knew ended up with a degree of Scottish accent after a few years, and after 10+ years up there you couldn't tell the difference.

I started with modern RP, had a fair Scottish accent (not very strong, but definitely there) after a few years living up there, and have now reverted to RP with the odd bit of Scots, and increasingly some west country. Embarrassingly all it takes to revert to Scots is to return to Scotland, or, worst of all, to talk to someone else with an accent. Sometimes I have to warn them what happens so they don't think I'm taking the piss.

Imagine it's a Brit speaking French, you would expect them to get a progressively more French accent the longer they spend in France/talking to French people etc, wouldn't you? You wouldn't expect they'd retain a British Schoolroom French accent all their lives. It's the same idea.

My cousins are similar. My aunt was Glaswegian, so they grew up with her accent despite living in the West Country and came here to Glasgow for many holidays every year. When talking to any of us/ being here their accent is immediately peppered with phrases/ accented. So funny.