6 ms·

There was a video I saw of an American with a burger shop in Tokyo. He had adopted something of a vaguely Japanese-sounding accent. I think it just happens to s

There was a video I saw of an American with a burger shop in Tokyo. He had adopted something of a vaguely Japanese-sounding accent. I think it just happens to some people

yurishimo 3y ago
I’ve seen that one as well! Interesting video for sure. I was also surprised to hear him say he did not speak Japanese despite living there for 20 years and being married to a Japanese woman.
tjpnz 3y ago
I've always wondered how that happens. Having lived in Japan for eight years my accent has become more neutral, but that's about it.
mabbo 3y ago
My sister, a Canadian, has lived in England a decade now. The locals can't hear it, but I can hear her accent and how she generally speaks has changed quite a bit. She can hear it and knows it but can't help it at all.
- BoxOfRain 3y ago
  I've lived in England all my life aside from several years in Wales and it's interesting how contrived the accent a lot of foreigners associate with us actually is. There's a lot of natural variation in our accents (they can change from town to town over the course of a dozen miles in extreme cases) but RP, 'posh English' or 'BBC English' was a product of 20th century radio broadcasting based on the natural accent of the south-eastern upper classes and somewhat controversially declared to be the standard pronunciation for British English. The result of this is that a few of my friends and I have very similar sounding accents despite our families being from other ends of the country and having very different 'default' accents; it's entirely down to our respective mothers telling us to 'speak properly' every time we'd drop our Ts or show other 'common' habits of speech as kids!
chris37879 3y ago
Autism, ADHD, and various other neurodivergencies can all lead to people 'mirroring' those around them, including picking up others accents. As a notable personal example, my mom and I were recently talking about how I don't 'sound gay', which, while a stereotype, it is actually something I do, especially when around other gay men with the same affect. I pointed out that all my non-southern friends say the same thing about my southern accent, until they hear me talk on the phone with someone back home. Though I notice it in myself very prominently, I think everyone is prone to this kind of mirroring behavior to some extent, and I could easily see someone living in a new region for a while developing a new accent that doesn't sound quite like the one they came to the region with.
- footlose_3815 3y ago
  Don't you think it's weird to instantly blame those disorders for someone assimilating to an accent?
  - chris37879 3y ago
    Absolutely, which is why I was presenting it in the context of my experience as someone with those conditions. I don’t have a frame of reference otherwise, and if you read my last paragraph, you’ll notice I did concede that I think it’s something that happens in everyone and is more expressed in people with those conditions, which is a studied phenomenon. Don’t you think it’s weird to ascribe hidden meanings to someone’s words?
    - valval 3y ago
      I know someone with your conditions and they often start stories in the exact same way you did here, stories that might apply to like 80% of neurotypical people as well just like yours did. It just sounds a bit weird, and there’s no ascribing hidden meaning to someone’s words behind that.
      - chris37879 3y ago
        Yup, it's wild that the pathology is so clearly obvious once people know to look for it, and yet we still have to have these conversations. I'm getting from your reply here that you completely understood my original comment, meaning your comment to me asking about it was simply to provoke this conversation, not to actually talk about my point. Which is interesting, because I'm really interested (some may say eSPECIALy interested) in this topic, and would happily talk to you about it, had your original question been this message instead. I'm also willing to concede that the autism diagnosis and acceptance is still really new for me, so I'm going through the phase of putting back together who I was and dealing with the fact that a lot of things that I've blamed myself for, for literally years, were simply because of this condition, and that some of my coping mechanisms have in fact been making me worse for a long time. It's weird to re-learn who you are as a person at 32 years old after having felt so sure of it for so long. Which is what I think leads to these overly long explanations. I've been so misunderstood for so long that I'm literally afraid of it happening now.

There was a video I saw of an American with a burger shop in Tokyo. He had adopted something of a vaguely Japanese-sounding accent. I think it just happens to some people

yurishimo 3y ago

I’ve seen that one as well! Interesting video for sure. I was also surprised to hear him say he did not speak Japanese despite living there for 20 years and being married to a Japanese woman.

tjpnz 3y ago

I've always wondered how that happens. Having lived in Japan for eight years my accent has become more neutral, but that's about it.

mabbo 3y ago

My sister, a Canadian, has lived in England a decade now. The locals can't hear it, but I can hear her accent and how she generally speaks has changed quite a bit. She can hear it and knows it but can't help it at all.

BoxOfRain 3y ago
I've lived in England all my life aside from several years in Wales and it's interesting how contrived the accent a lot of foreigners associate with us actually is. There's a lot of natural variation in our accents (they can change from town to town over the course of a dozen miles in extreme cases) but RP, 'posh English' or 'BBC English' was a product of 20th century radio broadcasting based on the natural accent of the south-eastern upper classes and somewhat controversially declared to be the standard pronunciation for British English. The result of this is that a few of my friends and I have very similar sounding accents despite our families being from other ends of the country and having very different 'default' accents; it's entirely down to our respective mothers telling us to 'speak properly' every time we'd drop our Ts or show other 'common' habits of speech as kids!

chris37879 3y ago

Autism, ADHD, and various other neurodivergencies can all lead to people 'mirroring' those around them, including picking up others accents. As a notable personal example, my mom and I were recently talking about how I don't 'sound gay', which, while a stereotype, it is actually something I do, especially when around other gay men with the same affect. I pointed out that all my non-southern friends say the same thing about my southern accent, until they hear me talk on the phone with someone back home. Though I notice it in myself very prominently, I think everyone is prone to this kind of mirroring behavior to some extent, and I could easily see someone living in a new region for a while developing a new accent that doesn't sound quite like the one they came to the region with.

footlose_3815 3y ago
Don't you think it's weird to instantly blame those disorders for someone assimilating to an accent?
- chris37879 3y ago
  Absolutely, which is why I was presenting it in the context of my experience as someone with those conditions. I don’t have a frame of reference otherwise, and if you read my last paragraph, you’ll notice I did concede that I think it’s something that happens in everyone and is more expressed in people with those conditions, which is a studied phenomenon. Don’t you think it’s weird to ascribe hidden meanings to someone’s words?
  - valval 3y ago
    I know someone with your conditions and they often start stories in the exact same way you did here, stories that might apply to like 80% of neurotypical people as well just like yours did. It just sounds a bit weird, and there’s no ascribing hidden meaning to someone’s words behind that.
    - chris37879 3y ago
      Yup, it's wild that the pathology is so clearly obvious once people know to look for it, and yet we still have to have these conversations. I'm getting from your reply here that you completely understood my original comment, meaning your comment to me asking about it was simply to provoke this conversation, not to actually talk about my point. Which is interesting, because I'm really interested (some may say eSPECIALy interested) in this topic, and would happily talk to you about it, had your original question been this message instead. I'm also willing to concede that the autism diagnosis and acceptance is still really new for me, so I'm going through the phase of putting back together who I was and dealing with the fact that a lot of things that I've blamed myself for, for literally years, were simply because of this condition, and that some of my coping mechanisms have in fact been making me worse for a long time. It's weird to re-learn who you are as a person at 32 years old after having felt so sure of it for so long. Which is what I think leads to these overly long explanations. I've been so misunderstood for so long that I'm literally afraid of it happening now.