Copying accents

I have this really annoying habit. I feel like I don’t have my own accent, I just copy the accent of whoever I’m speaking to at the time. I am conscious of myself doing it and I try to stop myself but I just can’t! Does anyone else do this? Is it an autism thing? 

  • Theres a roll of the head in India called an "achar" where it means "yes, no or maybe" and I found myself doing that a lot in India

    They do that all the time in India. Like constantly. You can't not do it after a while.

  • I can relate to everything you say.

  • When I've been abroad and come back home I always seem to have a 'twang' of an accent.

    Slightly 'off piste' but when I was at drama school (not studying acting) I had a friend studying acting. He showed me some amazing large pieces of paper with lots of lipstick prints on it. They'd been having seminars about accents, all given a lipstick and then shown basic vowel lip shapes of varying accents and had to 'kiss' the paper whilst making these shapes. It was quite fascinating seeing the difference in mouth shapes from region to region.

  • I enjoy speaking in other accents.  I acknowledge my Yorkshire accent, but always think other accents sound better, especially a Liverpool or Birmingham accent.  I think for me it goes a little further, and it's almost acting out a character, so I'll often link the accent with a film or tv character, or sportsperson and I'll constantly repeat the lines from a film or show, in the accent that I've heard them say.

    I think I use it as comfort, and also as escapism, (possibly from myself).  When I have a speech to do, which fortunately is quite rare, I contemplate doing it in a different accent.  I haven't taken it to that stage yet.

    It also neatly aligns with repetition, which I seem to need, and I'll constantly repeat a phrase in an accent on an ongoing basis.  I've not repeated an accent in front of someone, i.e. played their accent back to them, but clearly a similar, if not the same kind of activity going on.

    I usually do this when at home and I'm comfortable to be me, (i.e. in front of my wife).  I wouldn't do it in the outside world, but of course that's the arena where I then struggle. 

  • I think mine is probably to do with a lot of the original inhabitants coming from near where I am....kinda like the Danish example below but a bit newer.....it might be though; I did impersonate accents a lot as a child.

  • I wonder if that is down to their accent being very copy-worthy or if it is somewhat of an autistic trait.

  • Yeah, that sounds just like the writers of Stargate directly stole that then. Here's what I found on the New Forest from Wikipedia, which isn't always reliable but I think this is reasonable: "Following Anglo-Saxon settlement in Britain, according to Florence of Worcester (d. 1118), the area became the site of the Jutish kingdom of Ytene; this name was the genitive plural of Yt meaning "Jute", i.e. "of the Jutes".[24] The Jutes were one of the early Anglo-Saxon tribal groups who colonised this area of southern Hampshire. The word ytene (or ettin) is also found locally as a synonym for giant, and features heavily in local folklore" (I suppose to add to that, I know the Danish people from Jutland lived in what is now Kent and Hampshire and soon after they arrived, there was something called "the harriering" and that was basically the Anglo-Saxons joining together to wipe out the Jutes...for dominance I suppose....and it might be a semi-offensive term from the Saxons on people they basically commited crimes against.....like above where the word Welsh....or any name beginning with wal is used in Saxon to mean "foreigner").

  • We're all one big family from Africa. Would be weird if we didn't borrow from each other :D But I get the annoying part the the "majority" is right. 

  • I love this... :D Ettin is actually not a word for tall Danes. It translates to "jætte" in Danish and is in fact the name for the evil giants that the Nordic Gods fought in Asgaard. Loke was half Ettin Slight smile

  • Yeah it used to irritate me as a kid when English people would point out how many words Welsh people spoke were English that we's stolen and couldn't rely on without, like Welsh was such a deficient language. When actually the word had it's root in Welsh and had been adopted into English.

  • Yeah, they're the jutes (from Jutland......obviously Denmark) and if we were to be completely correct, we English are really Anglo-Saxon-Jutes (Ytene is apparently derived from the word Jute.....and, oddly, Ytene (or ettin.....which means giant....like tall Danes) is the name for the giants the Asgard fought in Stargate SG-1......yup, random but it's not surprising some of our language is from Danish).

  • Sounds perfectly plausible. In fact I learned recently that a large number of words like egg and window actually have Danish origins from the Viking days. Always though it was the other way around. 

  • Yeah, i can now do phones when previously i had no hope. Occasionally i get anxious and put off, but once on I'm ok.

  • Not only that it helps with my stuttering, 

  • neutral - its just hard to explain.  mimicking other hand does have an advantage.

  • There's a Danish defender at my club (Southampton) and everyone says he speaks like he sounds like he comes from here. I usually put it down to us being next to the New Forest; previously called Ytene as it was lived on by the Danish but I have a Danish-American friend and he sounds like neither :D

  • Yep that is something I do as well. Danish does not have that many variances but I often copy those I speak to most. Also, with regards to reactions, body language, wording etc. 

  • Thank you. I think. Is that good or bad? 

  • my thats peculiar

  • I don't necessarily copy someone else's accent, I just have different accents all the time, I have a Scottish accent but don't speak like a Glaswegian, and don't say Scottish things, I sometimes speak in an Irish accent and sometimes in an American and English accent, 

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