Foreign accent syndrome

[qxcontinuum]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foreign_accent_syndrome

[Simbi Laveau]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foreign_accent_syndrome

Well then, Madonna has had quite a few strokes I guess.

Lol

[Frank Merton]

It's terrible. Put me in London a few weeks and I start talking like the Londoners; the same happens in Atlanta (and please you don't want to know what happens in Dallas).

The locals sometimes think I'm mocking them, but I promise I am not. I just have an ear for accents and pick them up unconsciously.

[Ealdwita]

It's terrible. Put me in London a few weeks and I start talking like the Londoners; the same happens in Atlanta (and please you don't want to know what happens in Dallas).

The locals sometimes think I'm mocking them, but I promise I am not. I just have an ear for accents and pick them up unconsciously.

I believe that rather than being an impediment, that's quite an advantage when learning languages. Many years ago, when learning Russian (much of it forgotten now), my tutor was Polish...to this day, I speak Russian with a Polish accent! I used to know a Chinese family in Hong Kong who spoke English with an Australian accent. After a week or two back in Nepal, where a lot of Nepalese officials prefer to speak English at every opportunity, I catch myself mimicking their accent. Fortunately, it amuses rather than offends them.

I'd rather nobody asked about my Anglo-Saxon English accent!

[Frank Merton]

I leaned my French from a French-Canadian, and to this day don't speak the language properly as far as Paris is concerned. I keep getting asked, "Ette vous Belgique? Suisse" I don't know what game they are playing.

[qxcontinuum]

It's funny how many of you have learnt a foreign language and accent so fast. It's well known that accent is something you develop at younger stages. I live in Canada and everyone around me is immigrant including myself. I haven't meet a single person ever capable of having english accent excepting those here since early childhood. Apparently graduatedly after age 4 while learning a new language, the accent from one to a native is starting to be different.

[Frank Merton]

There was a time when I very desperately wanted to sound American, and I worked hard at it. Now I realize how silly that was. Americans, so long as you are easy to understand (they are lazy that way and don't want to have to put in any effort to understand you) think foreign accents are cute or sexy or intelligent or whatever (it depends on the accent). The only accents they look down on are the ones of their own nation.

Some people have an ear for accents and some I know who have studied English all their lives still can't break the old habits. I don't think it is terribly important and nowadays when I give advice I make a big deal out of getting the stress on the right syllable, because that is where difficulties in understanding usually come from, and don't worry about getting the vowels exactly right.

[Eldorado]

Steve McLaren!

(For non-Brits.... the above guy is English!)

[MissMelsWell]

Years ago I shared an office with a woman who had some kind of Accent Syndrome problem. I'd be willing to guess it was psychological though. Throughout the day, she'd speak in a variety of accents (most of them pretty good), ranging from hillbilly Appalachian accents to British, to German etc... It was pretty rare for me to hear her use her normal speaking voice. There were times where she'd hang on to one accent for several days in a row--I strongly remember the three days of Yiddish. It was REALLY weird. I have to admit I was glad when her contract was finally up and she left... she was driving me kind of crazy. LOL. Other than the strange accents all day long, she was pretty normal for the most part.

Edited October 15, 2013 by MissMelsWell