I have a confession y'all...Sometimes, around certain company...I change my accent. Yes, I know. It really is against everything I preach but it has been pointed out by others (namely my wife) that I do it. I'm aware, but not really ashamed. No matter what I do I'll always have a bit of an accent. It shows my roots and my heritage. Sometimes I do it because to some people in some parts of town find a drawl like mine hard to understand. Sometimes I do it to show that the perception of people from my neck of the woods isn't always true. Sometimes I just want to sound a little classier normal. It's not like I'm a 14 year old girl sporting some generic/fake British accent; I'm not pretending to be someone else, just something different. It's like putting on nice clothes before meeting important people.
Other times when I'm around old high school friends I notice my accent is stronger. It also seems to happen when I'm out and about and someone makes mention of my Southern heritage or talk about how they think I live in the meth capital of the greater Birmingham area.
Do you change your accent up depending on the situation? Has someone else pointed out that you inadvertently do it? Let us know in the comments.
2 comments:
My husband does this VERY noticably - I know when he's talking to his Dad on the phone because he gets very LOUD and southern. If he's talking to an employee, it gets very southern and casual. But then if we're at some sort of formal function, you wouldn't even know he was from Alabama. Yet it's all mostly subconscious... I wonder if I do it, too.
I'm willing to bet everyone does it to some extent subconsciously and I'd bet many don't even notice.
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