mimicking other peoples accents

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Scottish, yes. Welsh yes....Yorkshire I sound like im scottish

I have done it loads of times. I have no control over it happening, my accent just changes to that of the other person.

I must slip into accents subconciously I've had people think I'm all sorts from Irish to Filipino.

Whenever a stranger asks me a question, I reply in a copy of their accent. However, as I absolutely cannot reproduce accents, this must sound dreadful, like an offensive form of caricature.

The worst is when somebody with limited English speaks to me.

'De possed-offeece - where ees?'

And I respond,

'Ah, de possed-offeece! Ees there, on de, how-you-say, on de right.'

I HATE doing it. I hear myself talking like this, and think, 'Stop it!'. And I can't stop it. I can't find my own voice anymore.

- Dani.

Most of the time I speak in the standard American English accent.

If I'm tired, more of a southern accent is apparent in my speech. If I attempt to sing the southern accent becomes quite pronounced.


I have tried mimicing various accents seen on TV to varying degrees of success.

I cringe at all the people I know who do apprenticeships at college because they 'come back' with a put-on accent. Now that I'm at college, I'm pretty sure that I - to an extent - have done so too. It has to be said though that I don't do it to nearly the same degree as these people I know.

I think it's an attempt to fit in. Where I come from - a suburb that is - we all have accent-less voices relatively speaking, and so want to sound more 'city' when we get to college (ie. not sound 'posh', which is probably a load of crap anyway).

Dani nailed what I was going to say. I learned this about myself in Mexico a few years ago, I'd talk to a random street vendor and it would come out in the same half-english they all speak. (I like to think they understood it better that way)

My non-autistic sister does it too, but that may be a fluke.

If I ever become sufficiently moneyed an individual to do things like this, I'm hiring an acting tutor to teach me as many accents as I can learn, just to mess with people. I'm decent at it now, but I want to be undetectable.

I don't know if I do this to their face or not but when I quote someone, I have quite often found myself mimicking their accent.

I don't talk outloud to enough people to notice this, but I do notice that I tend to mimick people even online with text! And I notice it, but I can't seem to help it, and I'm not trying to mock them! But its almost like.... I copy, I adapt their form of typing to my own. Even though what I say are my own thoughts and opinions, but it ends up looking the same way as they were talking - maybe not exactly the same, but similar. I really felt bad when I noticed my english start to slip up just because I was talking to someone who has some trouble with English. I hope he didn't notice and think I was making fun!

Why does this happen exactly?

I tend to do it unconsciously. Whenever I am speaking to someone with a British accent, I tend to drop into one as well, within a few sentences of speaking to them. I've also done this when I spoke to someone with a New Zealand accent. These are the only accents I've come across, so I do not know if if will happen at other times. I can't really stop this from happening; once I hear the new accent, I can't seem to recall what my old accent sounded like.

I'm from Ohio, but moved to a more Southern state when I was 12.

I assume I've got an Ohio accent to this day, people tell me I don't sound like I'm from around here, but there are situations where I'll slide into an Applacian accent, but I'm pretty sure that's conscious. (I almost always do it when faking small-talk, now that I think of it! Or when I'm quoting someone else, especially if what they said struck me as strange and confusing.)

But, when people make fun of the way I talk, they often use a really bad British accent. I doubt I actually sound British, so it's kinda strange.....

I have a natural appalachian accent and it makes me curious as to where you live now. If you don't want to say thats fine, i'm just curious.

Normally, I wouldn't say, but South-Eastern Kentucky.

Weird.

Who? Or what? How? In what way? *disabling confusion*


I'll confess it here, for the first time anywhere: messages under about five words in length disturb and confuse me, and make me feel very defensive. I can't understand what they mean or refer to. I read all kinds of possible things into them and assume the worst. I'd rather have somebody come right out and say something bad than leave me wondering.

It's usually quite entertaining to confuse and worry me; a short, cryptic, and enigmatic message is one of the easiest ways to do it, for anyone who would like to know. With that, I place myself at your mercy.

y.

Yeah I do. I also mimic when people moan. If someone says "John stop it" I mimic them and take the p*ss. I can't help it, but its fun.