Sudden Accents

The ones with the sudden accents are I would suggest weak minded fools with self-esteem issues?

I was staying in a hotel near Westport once. Lovely girl serving us in the bar all weekend with a strong american accent. Asked her where she was from in the States. Answer - Tralee. We were a little surprised and asked her the shtory with her accent. She said her mother had a B&B with a mainly US clientele and she just picked it up from them. She did seem quite pleased that we asked her and therein lies some of the answer. I reckon it's a very attention seeking thing. We were instantly weirded out and we steered clear of her for the remainder.

I agree that in certain circumstances you change the way you say things in order to be understood but if you don't revert to normal speech in your normal environment..well...you're just looking for a shlap.

3 good points there so I withdraw my sweeping generalisation.:)

My family moved to Ireland (my father's home country), from England, when I was five. My brother and I both had pretty well established English accents at that stage. But not long after starting school in Ireland, we quickly lost them. I have vague memories of us being the odd ones out, so to speak, and we most certainly lost our accents quickly so we could 'fit in' more quickly.

These days (30 yrs later), my brother has an accent that fits in perfectly where he lives in rural Ireland. Mine is still somewhat neutral, sort of somewhere between an Irish and an English accent. Yet when either or both of us are around English relatives, we find the English twang becomes more dominant again. Similarly, my father will revert to a pseudo-English accent when around English people, just as he did during his 20 years over there.

It's all about acceptance really. It's human nature for most of us to want to fit in with our peers. As for the people who return home after a relatively short spell away and persist with the adopted accent, perhaps it's because they feel less of a need to 'fit in' on their return as they're back on home turf, and don't realise that they're still speaking their strange accent?

boreds wrote:

I have an americany accent from time to time. I blame telly though. Much of the media I am exposed to is from the U.S.

A large proportion of English-speaking Dutch people I met while living there, spoke their English with American accents. I quit asking if they'd learned English in America after the ones I had asked all replied that they'd learned and heard most spoken English through american TV and movies.

I stubbornly kept my accent for years while her in Ireland: the only thing that really changed was the terminology - you cant really say 'pants' here in a conversation and be taken seriously. Lets just not get started on cross-terms.

What I did do in that regard though is pick what I liked - I like to spell it Color, I put 'like' at the end of my sentences (because I hate dumb blondes, and anything to disassociate myself, you know?)

Of couse I lived in a house with my father (very stubborn personality, hence a proud, New-England accent - though he also adopted the 'terms') and I also lived with a Dublin family of 3 but I suspect me and my Dad won the culture war in the house

But when I got to college I had decided before I got there because I wanted to try on the Irish accent. People still pick me out as American but I enjoy the Limbo: neither here nor there. To me it was about becoming more rooted here and to yes, fit in. I got a little bored of the snide observation that my accent hasn't watered down in 7 years. Annoying to me only because trust me: there are far worse American accents than I have in my arsenal.

As far as people spontaneously adopting the accent: I can get really pissy when someone I'm talking to begins to suddenly 'mock me' with their attempt at talking through their nose :rolleyes:

Blush_01 wrote:

there are also suggestions that people whose accents change rapidly have a musical ear.

This is what I've heard too.

I also know somebody from Kerry who's been in Dublin for the past 30 or so years and every time she speaks to somebody from Kerry, her accent is reborn:)