Submitted by Imaginary_Emu3462 t3_xxjm44 in todayilearned
Is this what happened to Madonna?
Same as Alec Baldwin’s wife, Hilaria. Born and raised in Boston. Uses an occasional Spanish accent when it suits her. Clip of her on a tv show where she pretends to not know English words. Attention seeker. Mother of 7.
No. Madonna just likes attention
Weird, I do this trying to speak in other languages. My English becomes broken when there are words I don’t know and try to blend them. I also pick up accents insanely quick. If I’m talking to family in Massachusetts I’ll speak with a Boston accent and family in the south I’ll have a southern accent. It just depends on the person I’m talking to. It’s not something I actively try doing. My mother does it as well so I thought it was just from how many times we moved. TIL I may have brain damage.
It sounds more like you are code switching, it is completely normal behavior. Some people do it stronger than others but we all do it, even if just switching between family, friends, or coworkers.
Or ADHD.
Explain?
It's very common in people with neurodivergence, especially ADHD, to mimic the accents of people they're talking to, often without even realizing it. It's a kind of unintentional masking because we're often mirroring the gestures and facial expressions of people we're talking to in order to fit into our environment.
Oh god yeah I have ADHD and definitely do this. Back around 10 years ago I became internet friends with a bunch of British dudes and would play games with them pretty frequently, like 6+ hours a day throughout the summer. Eventually one of my non-British friends started playing with us and nearly died laughing when he first joined the Skype call. Apparently I had unconsciously started picking up their accents on several words. I still do it to this day with any accent that surrounds me, at this point I don’t even know what my “normal” accent is supposed to be. I’ve moved around so frequently and been around so many accents that it’s a combination of “generic American midwestern white guy”, “generic urban black dude”, “generic southern white guy”, “generic Ontario Canadian”, mixed with a hint of “generic Latino dude”. I need to stay put for a few years or else I’m gonna start sounding like Andrew Tate or Jared Diamond or something.
What the article is talking about is taking sudden brain damage, like getting hit in the head, and suddenly you sound like you have a foreign accent.
There’s a video of a guy accidentally crashing his bike into a guy working on his car. You can hear his accent change from before he got hit to after. The change is permanent
I still cringe at hanging up on a poor british lady with Parkinson's because I thought she was from an Indian call centre.
[deleted]
Ooh! One of my professors actually did some research on this. There are somewhat predictable patterns to the “foreign accents” that people hear. People with speech apraxia usually start speaking slower and with more fortition to manage their speech problems, which is why the accent that is perceived is pretty much always a language that has more fortition. Interesting stuff! If anyone is interested I can find their article
TIL the word fortition, and by looking it up, lenition
Tommy Wiseau after his car accident
I knew a girl in college who tragically lost both parents and a brother freshman year and she came back from break speaking with a Spanish/Mexican accent and she never talked like that before and had none of that in her background. It was the weirdest thing but I guess it helped her in some way.
all i can think of is tom segura
Happened to a friend who was overcome by some welding gases. Enlish but speaks with a Polish like accent.
once when I was super drunk I couldn't stop talking in the absolute worst Australian accent you've ever heard. I still cringe when I think about it. I legit couldn't stop for some reason.
That is where the Australian accent comes from.
My family’s southern hillbilly accent comes tumbling out of my mouth when I’m tired or in pain. It’s the result of a head injury many years ago. I never had the accent before, it was just lurking in the back of my skull.
Can this also explain why I pick up accents so quickly on accident? I was born in Texas and grew up with y'all and yonder, winder and warsh. Then I moved to Minnesota, oh yah, doncha know it there? But now I live in Arizona where it's a mix of California surfer slang, Spanish and accents all kinds. After a day of working with my Mexican coworkers I go home with an accent. I have to force myself to speak "normally". I have had some very severe head trauma over the years, especially when I was a kid.
Picking up different accents based on your location is pretty normal lmao
Wonder if I have this.. was dropped as an infant 🤔
michael_the_street t1_ircff57 wrote
This adds a bit of tragedy to the backstory of Dexter's Labratory