> Incidentally, I think this happens somewhat automatically; as in, humans naturally mirror the accents around them, or at least subconsciously change their dia

> Incidentally, I think this happens somewhat automatically; as in, humans naturally mirror the accents around them, or at least subconsciously change their dialect to be understood better. I think it works the other way around too - people might subconsciously mumble things they'd rather not say. I studied in an English speaking middle school, in a Spanish speaking country. Only a few of our classmates were native U.S. English speakers and we occasionally picked up words from them, from music or movies. > You can pick up accents, both pronunciation, phrasing and vocabulary this way. Incidentally, this is why I dislike (find divisive) the fact the Afro-Americans use the N-word liberally - I don't think it would be hard for an non-PoC to accidentally pick up the word if they often communicated with people who used it. At some point, when we were about 13 years old, my classmates picked up the "N-word", perhaps from a song or from a movie. And we started using them between ourselves (classmates) during recess and lunchtime. This went unnoticed for some time. Even by some of our local teachers. That lasted for some weeks until an U.S. American teacher heard us. Then he took us to the classroom and spent the class explaining to us that not everyone could use that word. We spoke about how some people may use it and other not. While Spanish does not have this restriction, English does. For example he explained to us that because he was white, there was no way he could use it. Then he looked at us, and told us that some of us _may_ be able to use it depending on our skin color, but not all of us. That it should be better for us not to use it.