Well, in my teen years I [del]was dragged[/del] moved from southern California to Oklahoma. It was a fight to hold onto the way I talked and not fall into the Okie way, and I did adapt some colorful phrases (Y’all, I’m fixing to go to the store…) But I mostly managed it, so now I talk like a normal person, except when talking to Okies or (for some odd reason) chewing gum. And this is why I do not chew gum.
If I talk to a person with an English accent for any length of time I have to be really careful or I will pick it up. Probably it’s the same with any accent, it’s just that with the English one, I notice it.
I lost a job at a call center once for speaking with a Hindi accent. (Only to co-workers, but I apparently was creating an inappropriate and disrespectful workplace environment. Oh, shame.)
Accents are okay, but if you want real fun you should fake your whole identity. Pretend to be several different people with different names, or show up every few days wearing a different fake mustache or silly hat and say “hi everybody, I’m a new stranger you’ve never met before!” Trust me, it never gets old.
When I taught at a university in Colorado, I found some of my students were having problems deciphering my NYC accent, so I tried speaking in a more Midwestern way, adapting some of my vowel sounds as they pronounced them rather than in my normal pronunciation. This had two beneficial effects, helping my students understand my lectures better, and removing most of my regional accent. (I took some edges off it when I moved from Brooklyn to attend college in Manhattan, then took further edges off when I got to Colorado.) Since I was studying linguistics at the time, this was a very interesting practical experiment, and one that proved quite useful.
If you play with blatant and overt affectations, you play with fire, I think. You can already see how addictive they can be.
I’d be terrified I was turning myself into an empty shell, instead of real person, destined to eventually succumb to feeling (rightly!) an utter fraud, but powerless to turn the train from the track, after so many years. Not sure anyone can play at, being what they’re not, for ages, and not have it come with consequences. Funny how the things we think we toy with, can come to own us.
Reminds me of great big, fake, triple D, boobs. I suppose, if it’s what you need, to make yourself feel good enough, to face the real world, it’s okay, I guess. ( You do know, you’ll be stuck with big old, fake, triple D, boobs, right out there, where we can all see them, for the rest of your life, right? )
Eventually someone from your past or family is going to hear. How will you answer their questions?
I once worked for an ANZ company trying to get a foothold in the US, so I was surrounded by Strine accents. It wasn’t long before I acquired a polished downunda dialect so good that visiting brass assumed I was one of theirs. I did actively work at it after a while and carried it out into the world, where it was great fun until this movie about a crocodile guy came out and everyone assumed I was imitating the film. The ANZies having gone home in shame, I actively purged my speaking of the Aussie bits and went back to native Californian.
I did retain some unusual vowel sounds and terms for a long while, though, and I can still call it up with a little work on some key words.
Right-oh, mate. Roit-o, mate. Wroyto, moite. There y’ahr. Beauty, wot?
If I am talking to a person with a strong regional accent, after an hour or so I will be talking much like them - not a deliberate effort, it just happens.
Define “fake.” I speak fairly “standard” versions of both Hebrew and English, and will generally use the right accent with the right language, but now and then I find myself interjecting an English phrase into a conversation in Hebrew, and I’m just as likely as not to switch to an American accent while speaking it.
On the flip side, almost everyone is “fake” in some way every day of their lives. Most girls wear make-up…they’re not showing their “natural” faces to the world, now are they? The way people dress, as well, is often in effort to cover up a part of their body they’re not proud of or to enhance the looks of other parts (ever heard of push-up bras? Haha.) Deeper in the spectrum is, of course, the way we act with different people: our friends vs our family vs our bosses, etc.
So that makes me wonder if the way I speak is just like those types of things. Most people don’t do such things with their voice, but could it be that most can’t affect accents well enough to pull it off? Or that they haven’t caught on to the fact that certain accents do (fairly or not) present oneself in a different way automatically, the way clothes, make-up, hair colors, and (like you mentioned) plastic surgeries do? And the way we change our personalities to fit the group we’re with?
I’m not sure, but it’s something I wonder.
Also, what about people that get speech and vocal training to change their voices? I’ve heard of some people who do that to purposefully lose their accents for different reasons. What do you think about that?
My family knows and don’t care. We’re all very quirky.
People from my past have heard it too. I told them my relatives from Boston are back and I’m picking up the accent again. They haven’t thought anything weird about it either, and some didn’t even really notice.
Not permanently, but I sometimes affect my speech to give myself a vowel change (wrt the way I normally speak) common in a NJ accent that I don’t normally use. It’s not really deceptive imho because my mom is from there and I’ve heard her speak this way before - I just didn’t pick it up as my regular accent.
I actually knew a guy from India who had trouble with pronouncing the letter “R” in English and I considered recommending that he consider picking up a Boston accent because it drops the postvocalic “R”, but I don’t think I ever did.
Yes. I’m from Philly and speak with little to no accent. When the mood and moment strike me, I’ll either drop into a stereotypical Brooklynese NY Hoodlum accent or a British accent.
There’s this one burger joint I like – when I go in there I use the opportunity to practice my Chicago accent (I’m a voice actor). They’ve never given me any impression that they don’t buy it.
Our 9-1-1 center occasionally answers calls from persons who demand to speak to someone who is/is not of a particular ethnic group or nationality. (I demand to speak to a British officer! or I only am willing to speak to a local. or Put a Jamaican officer on the line!)
Our staff is small and often do not have anyone who natively speaks with the desired accent. But sometimes there is no option but to do our best to comply with the caller’s demands.
That you think faking an accent is akin to wearing makeup is very telling about the enticing power of playing at being something you’re not.
Make up doesn’t tell a lie. It might make my eyes look bigger, or my cheeks rosier, but it does not misrepresent who I am in such a way that I need tell a lie to explain.
Hey, if you’re so ‘quirky’ you think it’s alright to lie to everyone you meet, perpetrate an enormous fraud, because you’re afraid for people to know you’re from the South, go for it. More power to you.
Personally, I’d rather be occasionally misjudged by those who mistakenly believe people with southern accents are rubes, that correctly revealed as a poser fraud with a fake accent. But it takes all kinds to make a world.
(Most of the examples given, by people in this thread, are not related to what you are doing, even tangentially. You are outright lying to people, to cover a fake accent. How you spin that into anything other than you are a complete fraud, need only meet your criteria, no one else’s. And clearly, it’s okay with you.)
Everything has consequences however. Everything has a cost. I’d be afraid, were I you.
We’re all very quirky.