I think a lot about when Gwyneth Paltrow was temporarily British and she introduced Anthony Hopkins at an awards show but she kept saying "Antony" and afterwards he was like "Its Anthony." How embarrassing for her!
As for faking an accent? I was British for a week after Sorcerer's Stone came out. Forgive me, I was 10.
LMAO!!! I was British adjacent for a week myself in fourth grade. But it was way vaguer. I was like, "I've traveled quite a bit everywhere." Also, yes, Paltrow!!!! OMG. Thank you for reminding me.
"Favorite" is the wrong word, but I am fascinated by Madonna's weird morph into an English accent over the early 2000s.
The only "serious" faking of an accent I've ever done was when I worked retail as a teen at the Blockbuster Video (a statement which ages me greatly). To pass the time on boring nights I'd answer the phone in a French accent, to the point where there were some employees at other area Blockbusters who were convinced that there was a frenchman named Jacques at the Green Hills store.
I guess this isn't so much an accent but I just thought this was funny. In kindergarten, I would get made fun of by some of the white kids, because they thought that when I said "think" it sounded more like "tink." But to me, when they said "think" it sounded like "fink." So I started saying "fink" and didn't have problems with that anymore. I'm Desi and grew up with English as my first + only language but I guess my pronunciations seemed a little off.
😠Not water and butter. Do you think you’ll ever fully lose your English accent? (Side note: I’ve seen so many Aussie people lose theirs at big ages!)
I have a similar experience at the central american grocery store by my house. If I ask about "cilantro" or "tortillas" there I get puzzled stares from some of the folks unless I say those words with a spanish accent.
Dorit is my fave accent faker though I suspect it's because she rocks all my signature high school hairstyles while sounding like the annoying theater kid that is always "in character"
What are your thoughts on people who can't control their voice and how they naturally assimilate to their surroundings or have mental difficulties where they take on the accents of the content they take in. So let's say that someone grew up on a massive amount of content from one culture and then later moved there and completely assimilated - is that fake? Is someone developing an accent due to living somewhere make them fake? What is an accent if not where you are from and let's say you have a brain injury and end up reverting to whatever is your "natural" state and you realise that you know other languages almost better than English now because who knew? If you read and watch and listen to a culture you are from your whole life and then finally move back to where your family left - are you faking it? If your family moved away and you move back - is it fake?
very frequently speak in an exaggerated working class New York City accent as a kind of joke with some of my friends who were also born and raised here. But that accent, which I've only ever encountered in people from like Bensonhurst and other racist white enclaves of the outer-boroughs, sometimes finds its way into my regular speech and it's always somehow kind of mortifying and hilarious at the same time.
I grew up in Tennessee and my brother and I both "lost" our southern accents early on (we're white). Over the years i've tried to explain it away different ways (we watched a lot of cartoons and didn't hear a lot of southern accents on spongebob / my grandmother was first-gen norwegian/swedish in boston and then moved to Tennessee and had my mom so that's a weird combo / my dad was a military brat) but I do wonder if a lot of it has just been the deep shame of loving to read, wanting to feel smart, and that feeling impossible to do while sounding like a "hillbilly." I've seen this happen with other kids I grew up with who wanted to blend in too. Now we're young millennials who all sound like we live in Portland lol. Thanks for this newsletter and your thinking in general!
I'm fascinated by Savannah Brown's fake accent. She's an American YouTuber and poet who moved to the UK after high school and somehow adopted this strange in-between accent.
I think this is very normal and this is basically what happened to my accent when I moved to the UK. It just shifted slightly, and for some people I think it's really normal that it happens to them. I don't think it's fair to say it's "Fake". It would have been harder and taken more effort to like, maintain my "Canadian accent" than just let they way I speak naturally blend into what was happening around me. I would have felt more fake going out of my way to maintain a Canadian accent.
okay watching this video of Camille after the video in the newsletter REALLY drives it home: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=llbNPZi1sSU this is from 2016, and the Vogue video is from 2019 (posted the wrong link before, whoops)
My dad, he would use this annoying Thai accent to talk to my stepmom. He said he does it so she can understand him better. Keep in mind my dad is from Brooklyn. They don’t have accents.
That’s so interesting! I’m not sure he’s being 100% honest with himself about why he’s doing it, but I do think it’s normal and fairly common to mimic and mirror people’s accents. A lot of times it comes from a place of empathy and trying to relate to others. It’s still very weird and cringe-worthy!
I think it's very normal that depending on where she would is and who she is talking to she will sound sometimes more American, sometimes more French. I have known other people who are fully bilingual with a parent who speaks each language and who lived in both places and they would do this. It's normal
I think it's normal for people to certain people to adopt the accents of those around them and I think it's unfair and weird that they then get accused of "faking". My accent has changed slightly depending on where I live. Some people don't have a good ear for accents and theirs will never change over their lifetimes and that's fine, but other people are more able to adapt the way they speak. I have always been praised on my "accent" in all the languages I have studied, because I can really hear when what I'm saying sounds different and I'm good at recreating the sounds I hear. I am fully bilingual French and English, when I lived in Europe my accent was modeled after a Parisian accent, but then I went to university in Montreal and now my accent in French is very Quebecois, because that's the society that I was participating in, that's what I heard, that's what I imitated.
I lived for 5 months in Edinburgh and I developed a different accent while I was there, not liek full Scottish but my accent just sort of ...shifted. It just happens. I naturally adapted to speak more like the people around me. And now I've been living in my hometown for a year it's a very rural redneck area, and I'm already speaking with a way stronger "Canadian" accent than I did when I lived in the city. For me it's natural and subconscious to shift how you speak to match the people around you, and frankly I think it's rude and ignorant when people say it's fake or cringe.
I think a lot about when Gwyneth Paltrow was temporarily British and she introduced Anthony Hopkins at an awards show but she kept saying "Antony" and afterwards he was like "Its Anthony." How embarrassing for her!
As for faking an accent? I was British for a week after Sorcerer's Stone came out. Forgive me, I was 10.
LMAO!!! I was British adjacent for a week myself in fourth grade. But it was way vaguer. I was like, "I've traveled quite a bit everywhere." Also, yes, Paltrow!!!! OMG. Thank you for reminding me.
"Favorite" is the wrong word, but I am fascinated by Madonna's weird morph into an English accent over the early 2000s.
The only "serious" faking of an accent I've ever done was when I worked retail as a teen at the Blockbuster Video (a statement which ages me greatly). To pass the time on boring nights I'd answer the phone in a French accent, to the point where there were some employees at other area Blockbusters who were convinced that there was a frenchman named Jacques at the Green Hills store.
That’s so funny. ðŸ˜
I guess this isn't so much an accent but I just thought this was funny. In kindergarten, I would get made fun of by some of the white kids, because they thought that when I said "think" it sounded more like "tink." But to me, when they said "think" it sounded like "fink." So I started saying "fink" and didn't have problems with that anymore. I'm Desi and grew up with English as my first + only language but I guess my pronunciations seemed a little off.
Gotta be Ryan Gosling. Our best Canadian Marlon Brando.
If I ever write a follow-up, I’ll mention him!!
I fake an american accent when ordering a burger or asking the location of items (specifically water and butter) in the grocery store
😠Not water and butter. Do you think you’ll ever fully lose your English accent? (Side note: I’ve seen so many Aussie people lose theirs at big ages!)
Never! Been ten years. Surely after that long it’s stable??
I have a similar experience at the central american grocery store by my house. If I ask about "cilantro" or "tortillas" there I get puzzled stares from some of the folks unless I say those words with a spanish accent.
Dorit is my fave accent faker though I suspect it's because she rocks all my signature high school hairstyles while sounding like the annoying theater kid that is always "in character"
What are your thoughts on people who can't control their voice and how they naturally assimilate to their surroundings or have mental difficulties where they take on the accents of the content they take in. So let's say that someone grew up on a massive amount of content from one culture and then later moved there and completely assimilated - is that fake? Is someone developing an accent due to living somewhere make them fake? What is an accent if not where you are from and let's say you have a brain injury and end up reverting to whatever is your "natural" state and you realise that you know other languages almost better than English now because who knew? If you read and watch and listen to a culture you are from your whole life and then finally move back to where your family left - are you faking it? If your family moved away and you move back - is it fake?
I guess....do you? I can't judge something like that. I don't know if it's fake!
I have been known to don a British accent--once to my dismay, when meeting an actual British person without knowing they were British! SMH.
Favorite fake accent: Dorit Kemsley from Real Housewives of Beverly Hills. Where is it from?? No one knows!
very frequently speak in an exaggerated working class New York City accent as a kind of joke with some of my friends who were also born and raised here. But that accent, which I've only ever encountered in people from like Bensonhurst and other racist white enclaves of the outer-boroughs, sometimes finds its way into my regular speech and it's always somehow kind of mortifying and hilarious at the same time.
I grew up in Tennessee and my brother and I both "lost" our southern accents early on (we're white). Over the years i've tried to explain it away different ways (we watched a lot of cartoons and didn't hear a lot of southern accents on spongebob / my grandmother was first-gen norwegian/swedish in boston and then moved to Tennessee and had my mom so that's a weird combo / my dad was a military brat) but I do wonder if a lot of it has just been the deep shame of loving to read, wanting to feel smart, and that feeling impossible to do while sounding like a "hillbilly." I've seen this happen with other kids I grew up with who wanted to blend in too. Now we're young millennials who all sound like we live in Portland lol. Thanks for this newsletter and your thinking in general!
I'm fascinated by Savannah Brown's fake accent. She's an American YouTuber and poet who moved to the UK after high school and somehow adopted this strange in-between accent.
Here's one that's very American: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YSHnnPunShg
And here it leans slightly British: https://youtu.be/cN6isRwETxs
That is bizarre!
I think this is very normal and this is basically what happened to my accent when I moved to the UK. It just shifted slightly, and for some people I think it's really normal that it happens to them. I don't think it's fair to say it's "Fake". It would have been harder and taken more effort to like, maintain my "Canadian accent" than just let they way I speak naturally blend into what was happening around me. I would have felt more fake going out of my way to maintain a Canadian accent.
okay watching this video of Camille after the video in the newsletter REALLY drives it home: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=llbNPZi1sSU this is from 2016, and the Vogue video is from 2019 (posted the wrong link before, whoops)
THANK YOU!
The Blaccent or I like to call it, the "falseghetto".
ðŸ˜
My dad, he would use this annoying Thai accent to talk to my stepmom. He said he does it so she can understand him better. Keep in mind my dad is from Brooklyn. They don’t have accents.
That’s so interesting! I’m not sure he’s being 100% honest with himself about why he’s doing it, but I do think it’s normal and fairly common to mimic and mirror people’s accents. A lot of times it comes from a place of empathy and trying to relate to others. It’s still very weird and cringe-worthy!
I actually find it truly bizarre that you're saying Camille Rowe's accent is fake, like....she's French American. What is she supposed to sound like?
I think it's very normal that depending on where she would is and who she is talking to she will sound sometimes more American, sometimes more French. I have known other people who are fully bilingual with a parent who speaks each language and who lived in both places and they would do this. It's normal
I think it's normal for people to certain people to adopt the accents of those around them and I think it's unfair and weird that they then get accused of "faking". My accent has changed slightly depending on where I live. Some people don't have a good ear for accents and theirs will never change over their lifetimes and that's fine, but other people are more able to adapt the way they speak. I have always been praised on my "accent" in all the languages I have studied, because I can really hear when what I'm saying sounds different and I'm good at recreating the sounds I hear. I am fully bilingual French and English, when I lived in Europe my accent was modeled after a Parisian accent, but then I went to university in Montreal and now my accent in French is very Quebecois, because that's the society that I was participating in, that's what I heard, that's what I imitated.
I lived for 5 months in Edinburgh and I developed a different accent while I was there, not liek full Scottish but my accent just sort of ...shifted. It just happens. I naturally adapted to speak more like the people around me. And now I've been living in my hometown for a year it's a very rural redneck area, and I'm already speaking with a way stronger "Canadian" accent than I did when I lived in the city. For me it's natural and subconscious to shift how you speak to match the people around you, and frankly I think it's rude and ignorant when people say it's fake or cringe.