Changing accents

This is always something that interested me. How does someone's accent change when they move from one area to another?

A bit of a background. I'm originally from Ballyfermot but moved to Kerry at age 11. Despite living there until I was 22, I still have a strong Dublin accent and didn't seem to adopt the Kerry dialects at all. My parents and siblings were the same.

However I recently befriended someone in a similar situation. She moved from Dublin to Kerry around the same time as me, lived there for 16 years and returned to Dublin with a predominantly Kerry accent, except for some words where you can still hear her roots. I also met a friend of a friend who moved over from England and now has a Kerry accent.

I'm just curious as to how it happens, or doesn't happen, as the case may be?

NipNip

Karsini wrote: »

This is always something that interested me. How does someone's accent change when they move from one area to another?

A bit of a background. I'm originally from Ballyfermot but moved to Kerry at age 11. Despite living there until I was 22, I still have a strong Dublin accent and didn't seem to adopt the Kerry dialects at all. My parents and siblings were the same.

However I recently befriended someone in a similar situation. She moved from Dublin to Kerry around the same time as me, lived there for 16 years and returned to Dublin with a predominantly Kerry accent, except for some words where you can still hear her roots. I also met a friend of a friend who moved over from England and now has a Kerry accent.

I'm just curious as to how it happens, or doesn't happen, as the case may be?

I've an ear for music and language. Downside of this is that I sound like I was Connemara born and bred after an hour speaking with natives. It means I am brilliant at languages, but sound like a complete eegit in most circumstances.
You either have an ear for it or not.
Latest example was about a month ago and a girl in work said 'hi' to me in her high pitched voice. My response to her was a pitch perfect mimicry of her 'hi'. I'm sure she thought I was taking the piss lol

Eeden

I've also heard that it is connected to an ear for music, or perhaps something to do with empathy? I don't know, but I reckon if I moved to New Zealand in the morning, I'd start picking up the accent by nighttime. I really, really can't help it. Maybe it's a desire to be better understood?

I know that people look down on someone whose accent changes. In fact, people can get quite worked up about it. Whenever I hear myself speaking (on a recording or some such) I cringe myself, because I have that supremely annoying US-Irish accent mix. But I'm stuck with it, unless I really wanted to put in some work to make it one thing or the other.

NipNip

I've stopped apologising for it.

hullaballoo

My accent changes depending on who I'm talking to. In one college course I took, which I think was called all-round bullsihtology, we were told that it's down to a personality trait. In effect, the idea was that people whose accents change around various people are the same as people who manipulate others by saying what they think others want to hear. You know, like psychopathic behaviour!

Anyway, I've discussed this phenomenon with others who do it and I believe that it's down to (a) the when-in-Rome aspect that you don't want to mark yourself out as too different from whatever group you're in and (b) having an ear for accents, which you then almost subconsciously adopt.

(a) and (b) are not mutually exclusive either, in fact, I'd say they go hand-in-hand.