I hear a lot of Brits. And I’m aware that sometimes I lose the ability to hear an accent somewhat, but this took the cake.
I was just listening to this wonderful man talk about audience behavior at shows
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vc5jRRSK2AE&t=926s
And in my defense, he’s in the musical theatre community and he’s somewhat flamboyant. But I had no idea he was British until he said so and then of course I couldn’t unhear it.
My ancestors are Welsh and Irish and I don’t believe I can ever turn off hearing “The Brit.” I wonder if that’s innate?
I wouldn’t say “not hear them anymore”, but I do get to a point where there’s a certain skill at interpreting thick accents /non-native speaker speech patterns that I hear, that I often wonder why people on TV with those accents are subtitled because I can understand them just fine.
But I’m always going to hear say… Ian McKellen as an Englishman, and I’m always going to hear Heidi Klum’s German accent, no matter how slight. I’m not sure how you wouldn’t hear that, even if it’s not jarring.
I still hear the accents no matter how familiar they get. However, the old All Creatures Great and Small was one of my first consistent exposures to the Yorkshire accent. Mrs. Hall, the housekeeper, was almost completely un-understandable to me at first. After watching a few shows, though, it was difficult to remember not understanding it.
When I go to Georgia to visit the ancestral relatives, after I’ve been there a day or so I don’t hear “southern accent” any more. I’m told I don’t start speaking it myself though.
My ex and I went through this a lot, because when we relaxed and got comfortable with each other’s version of English we stopped hearing the differences. Sometimes I think that discussing the differences that got our relationship started. Well, that and a mutual love of racing.
What seemed weird to me is that I was frequently asked by Brits and Southern folk if I was Canadian. So apparently all the Brit-speak I was hearing affected my pronounciation slightly.
I am currently staying with a friend who is Indian. She speaks a very British version of English as she was schooled by the good Nuns, while growing up. But she’s lived here in the U.S. for a long time so it’s more relaxed sounding than it used to be. The only time my brain registers the accent is when she comes back from a visit to her family, because of she regains that “Britishness” in pronounciation.
I’ve had it happen to me before, watching QI of all things. I’ve also run into situations where someone’s accent seems lighter, and I don’t notice it until they say a certain word, and then I notice.
Your example seems more like the latter to me.
Isn’t hearing an accent so much you no longer hear it actually the normal, default state? We all consume accents all the time, because every speaker has some. We only hear it when the diet changes.
A friend of mine hails from southern Georgia, and has a very thick southern accent. I remember when I first met him, I could barely understand what he was saying.
After many years and many hours around various tables, I no longer notice it, and in fact, have a moment of puzzlement when other people claim to have a hard time understanding him.
I’ve been back in central Kentucky for over three years now, and have no trouble hearing the local accent, especially in its richest and most unfiltered form (not that it’s objectionable in any way, but occasionally is a bit hard to comprehend).
My (American) aunt was married to someone from Australia. I never didn’t hear his accent, but I was quickly able to understand him without saying ‘huh’ every 30 seconds.
I remember at one point I was talking to my aunt about the movie (IIRC) Snatch. She was saying that he didn’t even seem to notice how thick their (British?) accents were while she had to have the subtitles on.
We’ve been watching so much Bluey in our household (we’re in USA) that our two kids are also picking up the accents. The Australian accents aren’t even noticeable anymore, they just sound “normal”.
I don’t have an accent. You have an accent.
I am in public so I had the video in the OP on very low. I held it up to my ear and the first word I heard was “understand.” Obviously British. He doesn’t have a strong accent and in words that don’t have a hard vowel sound it’s harder to hear.
I grew up in the part of Houston that’s got the second highest population of Vietnamese people in the country, so being able to understand pretty thickly accented Vietnamese people speaking English was something I’ve always been able to do.
And over the years, I’ve worked with enough Indian folks in the IT industry that I’m pretty good at understanding Indian accents as well.
Snatch? The only person who needed subtitles in that movie was Brad Pitt. Everyone else was pretty clear. I have run across a few Scots who lived outside of the big cities that were pretty hard to understand though.
No kidding. I don’t hear my own very much, but apparently to some I sound extremely Texan. Which is funny, because I tend to think of myself as having a moderate to faint city Texas accent. They certainly come thicker than mine, that’s for sure!
I missed this claim the first time around. I agree that his accent also sounds quite similar to a certain American accent that I associate with musical theater performers, particularly if they’re gay. I could see that tripping someone up.
Honestly, I’d not noticed the similarities between that accent and a particular British accent. But it makes sense, given how there’s a(n older) stereotype of Brits being mistaken as gay.
Some other things: The theme of his video is how audiences are ‘participating’ when they shouldn’t be.
IF people in the audience are singing to the point of distraction, I never noticed because the show is so damn loud. But i also can’t recall seeing a musical that I knew the music well enough to sing the songs, so I may have just been so entranced that I didn’t notice if audience members were singing.
Since I assumed he was talking about American audiences (Cause were so damn uncouth) that contributed to me thinking he was American.
I’ve had occasion to explain this over the years. I had an English bf for many years and when people ( other women) would comment how I must love the accent I would joke" you’ d think so, until you have to listen to it every day".
But really, I absolutely stopped hearing it. I mean, I could " hear" it but it was no different than anybody else’s accent (except his didn’t annoy me like most peoples’ voice do).
Same. Even my OB/Gyn gushed over my guy’s accent. THAT surprised me. I had stopped hearing it years before.
I lived my first 33 years in the US and have been in southern England for nearly 30 years now. The local British accent is now the default but I do notice accents from other parts of the UK. Hearing American accents now stick out like a sore thumb. I’ve adopted British word usage but still have my Iowa accent.