Accidental Accent

Hi all -- new to this section of the boards and still awaiting my spousal visa approval (uggh, I'm sure you all know how awful the *WAITING* is).

But I thought I would cheer myself up by hunting around and asking some of you already-ex-pats about a subject I struggle with even now still living in the US: my accidental accent.

My co-workers often hear me talk to my husband on the phone as L.A. and London are still 8 hours apart (the new visa rules haven't changed everything). And one has a fondness of saying - "It's 2pm, Angela is about to be British!"

I honestly don't even know I'm doing it. How do you guys deal with this? Do people find it annoying? Did you find once you moved you got more "American-sounding" or adopted more of the accent in your new home? Do your friends and family in the US take the piss?

Even the expressions I use are highlighted by everyone here: "I reckon", "take the piss", "having a go", etc. My husband is cockney... I know, I'm never going to use the letter "h" again.

Good to meet you all - I can't wait to be one of you!

Angela Randall

Even after almost two years here, I still sound definitively American - at least to my friends and family here. 

DH believes my American accent has gotten softer and a bit more neutral since I've moved here and a few of my pronunciations are more British, but I am still very American and everyone I speak to can recognize it.  I think eventually, after years and years, I may end up with an accent that's not totally British, but isn't quite American anymore either.   

Though, I did run into some American tourists a few months ago and they thought I was Canadian.  Maybe that's what happens when you have an accent stuck between American and British, hehe.

Just three months in, I've already been accused of saying words differently, but my basic accent is unchanged.  I guess I do stuff like drop H's, and then the Scottish turning TH into H.  (Think = "hink," and so on.)  My husband is sure to laugh at me every time.  He couldn't get over it when I first said something was 'orrible. See, he's from Cumbria, but has lived here in Edinburgh and St. Andrews for the past several years.  So he's got a muddled Cumbrian/Scottish accent.  It does get funny at times, and it leaves me with an odd accent to subconsciously model myself after, haha.  At the same time, he's picked up some things (or shall I say, "hings") from me as well.  Our friend commented that I talk a bit British and my husband a bit American.

Really gets me though, because I swore that my speech would never change!  Plus, I find it ridiculous that I'll say 'orrible without an H, but it's hink, with an H, not think.  That makes no sense, but it's what my husband's accent has morphed into, so I blame him.

Of course you'll pick up different words and phrases that will probably stick with you forever.  How could you not?  Use them enough and they're just as much a part of your own vernacular as a Brit's.  It may sound unusual to some ears, but I doubt they think it sounds bad.  Most likely they're just noticing it's different.  If they're not incessantly picking on you for it, I wouldn't worry. 

Im a long timer expat came here to Scotland in 1999 from Mass. where i was born ,brought up and lived till moved here..
I neither tried to maintain my Mass accent or tried to pick up the scots .. It just kinda happened over time..
My own mum has trouble understanding me at times lolol ..
My best freind in the states who i've been freinds with for 31 years "loves to hear me talk scottish" lol
I know i've picked up a accent but it surely isn't that thick.. I do use most scots words ... occasionally merrican ones sneak out from time to time..
Folks that meet me usually can tell im not from Scotland but canna quite place where.. Its prolly cos i've been here so long lol
Others experience may vary. lol

I've been in Norwich for 5 months as of today and before I moved I had a strong southern accent. Now I continuously get the "Are you Canadian?" or "Are you Australian?" question. I can switch back to extreme southern in a heartbeat though, due to my cousins and I learning all sorts of different accents when we were younger. We would put on "talk shows" with different guests from around the world for our parents. Boy did we have an imagination! I can also drop any accent due to needing to give presentations with precise pronunciations while I was earning my bachelors degrees.

Anyway, I think it depends on the person. If you really want your accent to change and completely immerse yourself in it, the accent will probably change quicker. My husband told me that if I ever start losing that southern twang he would get me to talk to my grandmother (who is the most southern you can get in my opinion!). I'm just taking it as it comes, and if I get made fun of for my accent, I'll just take it as a mixture of curiosity, maybe a bit of jealousy, and a small price to pay for being able to live here with my husband. 

HA HA this is a cute thread!

I used to live over here as a kid, in Ireland, when I was about 5 1/2 till about 6 1/2 or maybe 7, and then we moved back to NYC, and I got beat up for having an accent... Even tho I lived in a hood where everyone had some sort of accent - but, mine had changed, so, I got picked on.

Then, as a pre-teen we went back to Ireland, and everyone 'loved my NYC accent' and we stayed for a couple of years, and when I went back to NYC, I was once again teased for having an accent...

Now, I have been living here for a year and a half, and I met my BFF in Paris a couple of months ago, and she told me I was picking up the accent. But, in London, people totally tell me all of the time that I have a NYC accent, OR ask me if I am Irish.

Even in NYC I was often asked if I was originally from Ireland! Irish tourists would ask me if I was from Ireland.

My dad was from Belfast, and my mom was Cuban, and she spoke Spanish, and as a kid I spoke mostly Spanish in my hood, at home, and even in school. Most kid in my hood were first generation, or more likely immigrants, so we all spoke a bit off.

I think I have always had a tiny bit of a strange accent.

Every once in a while, after i say something, my hubby says, "OK shamrock" as a joke, as a way of letting me know it sounded Irish.

The thing is, it is not just the things I say, like, "He is on his tod" or "Sorted" or "the flat" although those things are said, nor is it the way I pronounce words... it is more the lilt in my speech - it is the intonation. It is more the sing-song quality to my speech, that 'sounds Irish' to people. And, a NYC accent and an Irish dulled down accent are very similar - neither of us feel the need to use the letter R for much of anything.

Someone in Worthing recently told me I sound like the wife in the film Goodfellas, and later that day, someone who spoke to me on the tube asked me how long ago I left Ireland for London, and if I was from Dublin.

Personally, and this is something I never really talk much about, I think I sound strange because I am deaf in one ear (gun went off next to my head as a child and blew out my eardrum, at age 4 1/2), and I think it seriously affected my speech development.

Anyway, my father in law told my husband, that since I moved here, that HIS accent was changing to be 'more like an American'!!!

Of course, he said that right after my hubby said, "Yo, that was dope!"

You're not alone and this subject comes up on a fairly regular basis on UKY. 

My changes depending on who I'm talking to.  Don't even realise I am doing it.

For example, One of the guys I work with on a regular basis in Australia actually thought I was Scottish, he only ever heard me on conference calls, when I was with my other Scottish co-workers and I guess my accent was doing something strange then?

But we met up in the US and I was surrounded by American accents and I guess I switched into sounding American. So he was really confused when he actually met me in person! 

My sisters will sometimes say I sound Scottish. But then I tell J that and he just laughs and he goes, hahahha ,you sound American to me!! 

I'm guessing it's more down to the words and lanugage I use, rather than the accent.   

Yup, I'm one of those with the flexible accent as well, although it's not UK specific (I went to Uni in the midwest and picked up the regional accent there as well).  I regularly get the "Irish" question, and some people have started assuming I grew up here and then moved away?
It's great fun, although my Uni boyfriend (a jerk!) once accused me of being "fake" because he heard my accent shift while on the phone with a French friend of mine (we were alternating between English and French, and I tended to sound "English with a French accent").
It's good fun though. If odd.

I have had two relatives (my mom and an aunt) visit me since I moved here. Both said my accent sounded more British. My husband can't tell and neither can I - but I guess he is around me all the time. Whatever happened, it's definitely not something that happened on purpose. If anything, I went out of my way when I first moved to continue to sound like myself.

I am from the deep south, but I went to uni in New York and have lived all over the USA, so I have an indeterminate American accent. That being said, I have been asked here if I was Canadian, Australian, South African and Irish.

I'm from an area in the States that has a really regional accent that tends to mimic Northern Irish sometimes...so when I moved here it just kind of HAPPENED.  When I first moved it got to the point where I didn't want to talk, not only because I felt it threw out a big "I'm not from here!" flag, but also because it got to the point that my American accent ANNOYED me.  It just wasn't what I was used to hearing all day.

I think pronunciation wise I've pretty much stuck with the American version, unless it's a word that will get me ridiculed (aka: herb versus 'erb).  My inflection though has definitely gon e a bit Norn Iron.  When I'm home most people say 'everything you say sounds like a question.'  I always like to have a chat with taxi men when I"m on the drive home, and it's funny how some of the pick up on my American-ness as soon as I state my destination, but some won't realise it until conversation eventually turns to "so are you from Belfast?"

Here's a question for everyone-- do you think people in the States judge you for going a bit Brit? I always worry that people will think it was a conscious decision and that I'm 'putting it on' 

Yeah, you want to avoid the Madonna thing!

Yeah, you want to avoid the Madonna thing!

Ugh. My friend told me I sounded like Madonna the other day.  I think he was just saying to wind me up because no one else thinks I've changed accents. DH is always saying "that was proper Boston" when I talk.

Here's a question for everyone-- do you think people in the States judge you for going a bit Brit? I always worry that people will think it was a conscious decision and that I'm 'putting it on' 

I would say yes. I'm not going to lie, I get a bit annoyed with expats who adopt the 'mid-Atlantic' accent. Many of the people that I've met who do this though, are really, really trying to put it on, usually to try to hide the fact that they are American. And I say: Be proud of who you are!

I feel that my accent is so strong that it will never change, no matter how long I live abroad. Certain words may change, pattern of speech, but I will always sound this way. Just like the American actors on TV/films and the newscasters on CNN.

My sister says that I ask questions differently now, and what she means is that I ask with a slight 'inflection'. I don't notice it at all, until she points it out. 

I'd hope people would know that everyone's different.  Some may develop a different twang quite naturally while it may never happen to others.  Myself, I will always have the "generic American" accent, being from the Tampa Bay Area.  I'd never be able (or want) to hide it.  That isn't necessarily to say I won't be affected at all, though.  When I was around friends and family members from, say, Georgia or North Carolina long enough, or when I lived in West Virginia, I picked up some stuff from them too.  Just how I am, even though it embarrasses me.  I'm very stubborn about pronunciation even if my mouth doesn't always agree with my brain.  I know it's probably silly to be so staunch about how I say stuff, but I never claimed to make sense.

Do I think it's silly to force change?  Personally, yeah, a bit.  I can understand with things like "herb," "tomato," or "aluminium" that otherwise may elicit ridicule.  But like... forcing a full-on Estuary accent or something is quite different from natural influence.  I mean, my husband's own accent has changed noticeably from when I first started talking to him.  There's more Scottish leaking in over time, and even Americanisms he's picked up from me over the years.  And I highly doubt that's on purpose!