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shiftdnb t1_ircmopb wrote

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.

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Octavus t1_ircq1cf wrote

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.

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the-magnificunt t1_ircnvk3 wrote

Or ADHD.

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Syd_Barrett_50_Cal t1_irk1ma0 wrote

Explain?

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the-magnificunt t1_irldocz wrote

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.

This post shows an example of it.

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Syd_Barrett_50_Cal t1_irta307 wrote

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.

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Savings-Nobody-1203 t1_irkrggn wrote

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

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