I’ve been told by Indian and Tamil friends that my Indian accent’s pretty good. Speaking in thick Indian accents is quite fun. I’m pretty good at speaking Quebec French, according to my high school French teacher. I can also do a decent Spanish accent, since it sounds similar to Tagalog, which I speak.
I speak German with a near fluent accent but I can’t do a fake German-English accent. It fascinates me as to what neurolinguistic disconnect exists there.
I have been told by a native of the city in question that I can do Glaswegian pretty much perfectly. A’reet, big mun. I can speak Vietnamese-accented and “grammared” Australian English perfectly too. My Cantonese accent is likewise. My generic Irish accent is brilliant to non-Irish and acceptable to the Irish themselves. I can do a reasonable New Zealand accent when I’m trying to, or a fantastic one when I’m not trying to (it’s an easy accent to pick up, and when I used to work with two Kiwis, I’d come home sounding like one each day).
Bein an Australian male, I suspect my “offended Southern belle” (well, AAH nevah!) accent probably isn’t very good at all, but it’s the most fun.
With the modern London accent (whatever you call it - neither Received SOuthern nor Cockney [leaning towards the latter]), I can not only do it, but I’ve found I’ve had to when calling the UK in order to be understood. And it was not so much a matter of adopting the accent, but of adopting the tones.
The vast majority of people who say they can do an “Joisey” accent do not, in fact, sound anything like people from New Jersey. It drives me BATSHIT the number of people who say “Joisey” at me. It has an R!
I can do North, South, and Central Jersey accents. North is very Tony Soprano (James Gandolfini’s from my hometown, actually). South is sort of a modified Philly accent. Central is the accent Natalie Portman had in Garden State. This is what most people in Jersey sound like (in my experience)
Apparently I’ve begun to sound like a native californian, I’m picking up a pretty good central-texas thanks to my boyfriend, and after 2 years working at company run entirely by indians, I can fake more than one indian accent.
Though I think most faked accents are only usefull to non-native listeners, unless you were taught by a native. For example, everyone knows what a New York accent is, and they all sound the same to a californian. But to a local, you can often pick them appart by borough, and recognize a non-specific fake. Some of the best fake accents are ones picked up from out-of-state college roommates or boyfriends.
I’ve got a very good ear. I can emulate just about any accent I hear. I think it comes from about a billion years of singing and performing; not to mention, I grew up around a mish-mash of immigrants.
You don’t get a nickname like MrJackboots without being able to speak fluent Cinematic Nazi. That’s about the space of it, though I’m told that normally I have little bits and pieces from most of the places I’ve lived, so it’s hard to place me.
I used to be able to mimic voices well, so I would only have to hear an accent to be able to mimic it. Sometimes people would think I was mocking them because I would eventually start talking like them, but I did it without even realizing it.
Now I think I have some hearing loss or something and I can’t do it that well. I can probably do British, German, French and a generic Southern if I had to. I have a harder time with Irish but part of that is my mother tried to use an Irish brogue whenever she talked about anything Irish and it was terrible so I just don’t even try the brogue. I absolutely love listening to the Glaswegian accent but I don’t attempt it.
Several years ago I was in an acting workshop. The instructor had written a play that was mostly about 5 women talking. Most of them had accents, one was Southern, one was French and one was German. I was cast as the German woman because I could do a wicked Dr. Ruth impersonation (which is what the instructor wanted), however I often ended up understudying the French and Southern characters during rehearsals. At one time I was going back and forth between all 3 and I ended up with some crazy mixed up Southern French German accent. Fortunately, by the time we had to perform I just had to do my German character with the addition of a teenaged boy, which I did with a bit of California “dude” accent. Come to think of it, that may have been when I burned myself out on accents.