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Agent80s
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11 Jan 2008, 3:39 am

ALittleLost wrote:
This topic is interesting because I have always wondered why I still have a bit of a British accent. People accuse me of doing it in on purpose to get attention, etc. My younger sister and brother do not have a British accent. They don't understand how I can still remember how to talk with the accent because I left England when I was 7.

I'm so confused on why I do this. I don't mean to do it. I don't know that I'm doing it until someone points it out to me. I sometimes find that I can't pronounce a lot of words properly unless I say it with a British accent.

Are there any theories on why we do this?

I think the British accent is a result of a need to speak clearly.
Growing up completely unaware of Aspergers Syndrome, I natural assumed everyone put as much emphasis on words as I did.
So assuming that everyone was as prone to misinterpretation others (as I was), I spoke clear unaccented, unabridged English such as you would hear on a "Learn To Speak English" cassette.
It seems to me that a neurotypical is capable of communicating not just in verbal meaning of words sense but in a combination of verbal, body language, tonal control, situation (or contextual) implied meaning, ect (although Aspies aren’t totally un-proficient in these types).
Thus, it seems to me that with the various facets of non-verbal communication it isn’t necessary for a neurotypical to have a perfect, textbook accent to convey verbal meaning.

When I look at other members of the animal kingdom such as dogs, cats ect.
They don’t have a language as we do and yet they can communicate with each other and even socialise.
My best guess is that as humans, we have evolved to become more reliant on our direct language based communication then implied or sensed meaning.
As our intelligence improved, we became more concerned with details and details are very difficult to convey without a language.
Bees for example use pheromones for basic communication but if one bee wants to tell all the others the exact location of (for example) a tree, they use a kind of dance-based language combined with buzzing of a certain frequency.
I do not know the specifics of bee body language but I know that it is a transfer of meaning in a direct, literal sense (hence a language).



Lightning88
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11 Jan 2008, 3:48 am

lol My friends and I were just having this conversation on the bus on Wednesday! One girl who has never ridden our bus before asked me if I was always that proper. I said for the most part, yes. lol She couldn't even believe I was originally from Houston, too (since I have no southern accent). I don't really sound like the Hoosiers here either though. A lot of people actually say I sound Californian and I'm unusually proper for my age, even though I do often use teenage slang.



11 Jan 2008, 4:29 am

I have an accent. I have been talking like this since I was six. I sounded totally different when I was five couldn't believe that was me talking but I was very hard to understand because I didn't speak correctly.


People think I am from somewhere else like from the east. Some think England, and some think Australia.


Could it be my condition or me being deaf. Doctors say it's both.



Odin
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11 Jan 2008, 9:41 am

I have a fairly typical Upper-Midwestern "Fargo" accent. I round my long Os (so Minnesota becomes "Minnes-OH-ta,") and if I am talking quickly I occasionally turn my voiced th into a d (the becomes da) and my unvoiced th sounds like a t (thirds becomes terds). I usually say "yah" instead of "yeah," I pronounce the a in "bag" the same as the a in "flag", not like the a in "back." I also use the typical upper-Midwestern stock phrases like "uff da," "dontcha know," and "yah sure, you betcha."


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shopaholic
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11 Jan 2008, 2:54 pm

My accent (and the whole way I talk) varies depending on my mood, the situation & who I am talkng to.

My "natural" accent is well-spoken but not posh (strange because most of my family & friends when I was growing up had a regional accent).

But I am equally at home with "common" (when I am angry & trying to be rude I revert to pure "Grange Hill" - a British TV show about London schoolkids for anyone who doean't know it).

I will always try & talk to people in their own "language" i.e. use teenage expressions when talking to teenagers -e.g. "innit", American idioms when talking to Americans, or Asian-English when talking to Asians - "yeah, yeah" & "right", or a Northern inflection when talking to Northerners.

I probably come across as being really weird when I do this as it is so unlike the way I would normally talk. I am probably trying to use it in the way most NT's use body language - to try & fit in. Sad, eh?



Cameo
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12 Jan 2008, 4:57 pm

People ask me where I'm from a lot, apparently I "talk funny". I'm from SE Wisconsin and I can hear it in my speech, but there are "Wisconsin accents" much heavier than mine. I've been told I sound like I have an accent (foreign) by a lot of people around here though, so I guess I do talk funny. Oh, well.



pakled
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13 Jan 2008, 12:14 am

this must come up a lot, because this is the 3rd post I've seen on it..;)



Sifr
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13 Jan 2008, 5:13 am

When I speak a foreign language, especially with my parents, I notice that my accent is not similar to my parent's dialect. They're always criticizing my pronunciations (e.g. you dropped a letter, you lisped this word, your H's are more fricative, you softened this letter, you used a word that isn't spoken where we're from). I don't even understand why because it doesn't happen when I speak english (the lisp, etc). I guess I picked it up from too many movies/music.

I also find that I copy people's accent subconsciously as well.


OT: I like speaking in an Iranian accent, it's funny. Hindustani as well. :D


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