{"id":3696,"date":"2010-09-20T12:43:30","date_gmt":"2010-09-20T16:43:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/norwichhumanities\/?p=3696"},"modified":"2010-09-20T12:43:30","modified_gmt":"2010-09-20T16:43:30","slug":"speaking-english-by-accident-or-design","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/norwichhumanities\/2010\/09\/speaking-english-by-accident-or-design\/","title":{"rendered":"Speaking English- By Accident or Design?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>About two weeks into our time here, I had a phone conversation with my mother that I found to be very interesting. I was going along and recounting some of my adventures when she interrupted me, saying \u201cThat\u2019s great, Elizabeth, but don\u2019t talk to any more English people.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Puzzled, I asked, \u201cWhat do you mean?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI can barely understand you as it is!\u201d she replied.<\/p>\n<p>After some explanation I understood that she meant I had picked up an English accent and was speaking to her in it, to which I responded \u201cNo I haven\u2019t!\u201d and then heard myself, sure enough, dropping my h\u2019s and generally sounding like a lifelong Londoner.<\/p>\n<p>Now this isn\u2019t really very surprising, knowing me. Back home, I frequently slip into different accents for a variety of reasons: I have a really good ear for accents (which served me well for acting), I grew up around a variety of different accents (Californian\/valley girls, a father from New England, a grandmother from Arkansas) and I watch\/listen to far too much BBC. Picking up an accent while in England is the natural progression for me.<\/p>\n<p>Around my American friends, I don\u2019t notice it much, if at all. I\u2019ve changed the way I say certain words, such as con-TRI-bute instead of con-trib-ute. But I start slipping into English speech rhythm and sounds much noticeably around the natives (let\u2019s face it: we\u2019ve all been saying \u201csorry\u201d differently). Then, what, I wonder, is the explanation for it popping out so strongly when I talk to my parents? Am I just a particularly adept mimic? Do I want to show off a bit for them? Or am I somehow fulfilling the dream closest to my little Anglophile-heart? Am I BECOMING English?<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter\" src=\"http:\/\/winandwinnow.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/06\/win-and-winnow-american-british-english.gif\" alt=\"\" width=\"492\" height=\"359\" \/>[Photo from: http:\/\/winandwinnow.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/06\/win-and-winnow-american-british-english.gif]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>About two weeks into our time here, I had a phone conversation with my mother that I found to be very interesting. I was going along and recounting some of my adventures when she interrupted me, saying \u201cThat\u2019s great, Elizabeth, but don\u2019t talk to any more English people.\u201d Puzzled, I asked, \u201cWhat do you mean?\u201d [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":378,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6670],"tags":[15189],"class_list":["post-3696","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-2010-elizabeth","tag-accents"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/norwichhumanities\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3696","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/norwichhumanities\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/norwichhumanities\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/norwichhumanities\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/378"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/norwichhumanities\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3696"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/norwichhumanities\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3696\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/norwichhumanities\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3696"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/norwichhumanities\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3696"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/norwichhumanities\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3696"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}