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Re:Why are so many young Americans adopting fake British acc... by elliottkember on Monday May 15, 2023 @10:07AM (#35948362)
I’m from New Zealand. It’s staggering how many people in the US will repeat what I say back to me in a British accent. It’s hard to be annoyed because they’re “just having fun” but my god does it get old.

Fortunately I can do a bit of California surfer dude right back and that usually gets the message across

Re:Why are so many young Americans adopting fake British acc... by inanutshellus on Monday May 15, 2023 @10:35AM (#35948832)
"imitation is the sincerest form of flattery" comes to mind.

Your audience is relishing the unique experience they're having (the privilege of speaking to someone from the other side of the planet). I hope you try to take it as a compliment in the future rather than chastise them with caricatured accents to "get your point across". :(

I get that it gets old, though, as your accent isn't novel to you.

Re:Why are so many young Americans adopting fake British acc... by dev_tty01 on Monday May 15, 2023 @03:52PM (#35953585)
> as your accent isn't novel to you.

I would imagine that part of the reason it gets old is that it isn't "your accent." It is a NZ accent after having been filtered and ruined by US ears and speech patterns.

Old joke. What do you call someone who knows three languages? Trilingual. Two languages? Bilingual. One language? American (US). Speaking as one myself...

Re:Why are so many young Americans adopting fake British acc... by jonnycomputer on Monday May 15, 2023 @10:17AM (#35948522)
I cannot say that your experience includes this phenomenon, but whenever people gather they tend to talk like each other, and pretty rapidly. I've found that I've a tendency to unconsciously modulate my "accent" when I'm with my in-laws in Europe, or when visiting the UK.
Re:Why are so many young Americans adopting fake British acc... by pmontra on Monday May 15, 2023 @11:16AM (#35949569)
When I'm staying for a few days in a different part of my country (Italy) I end up switching to the local phrase construction pattern if it's notably different from my native one. Accent not so much, I guess it takes quite a long time. Words are easy to swap (like truck/lorry in English) and pronunciation quite easy too (change of vowel sounds in my case.) BTW, none of this involves speaking dialects, it's all Italian with regional differences that everybody understand.
Re:Why are so many young Americans adopting fake British acc... by pbhjpbhj on Monday May 15, 2023 @01:04PM (#35951260)
Aren't [geographically] localised linguistic characteristics (different words, different pronunciation) pretty much the definition of "dialects"?
Re:Why are so many young Americans adopting fake British acc... by pmontra on Monday May 15, 2023 @01:34PM (#35951691)
Not in Italy. Dialects here are languages. They basically belong to the same family of Italian but I won't be able to understand a dialect 50 km from where I live if speakers don't want to italianize it a little. What I was writing about is standard Italian with regional inflections in accent, phonetic, dictionary and syntax but still understandable by any Italian speaker.
Re:Why are so many young Americans adopting fake British acc... by pbhjpbhj on Wednesday May 17, 2023 @11:00PM (#35983701)
Ah, interesting, thank you.
Re:Why are so many young Americans adopting fake British acc... by renewiltord on Monday May 15, 2023 @11:56AM (#35950318)
Yeah it's "accommodation". But people also do the other thing where they repeat what you say and honestly I think they're just relishing this other similar sound they enjoy.
Re:Why are so many young Americans adopting fake British acc... by rjbwork on Monday May 15, 2023 @01:57PM (#35952032)
True! Almost all of my extended family lives in South Louisiana and many have quite thick Cajun accents. When I spend too much time around them, I end up sounding a bit different when I get home.
Re:Why are so many young Americans adopting fake British acc... by ndsipa_pomu on Monday May 15, 2023 @10:11AM (#35948429)
I was taught by a kiwi friend how to tell apart Australian and New Zealand accents - just get them to say "fish and chips".

"Fush and chups" - New Zealand. "Feesh and cheeps" - Australian

Re:Why are so many young Americans adopting fake British acc... by nelox on Monday May 15, 2023 @10:16AM (#35948511)
Re:Why are so many young Americans adopting fake British acc... by OJFord on Monday May 15, 2023 @10:30AM (#35948758)
That's great actually, because it also works for South African (I often have a hard time with SA vs NZ) - 'fish and chips' with very short 'i', like it's reluctantly put in at all, I think.
Re:Why are so many young Americans adopting fake British acc... by LouisSayers on Monday May 15, 2023 @12:02PM (#35950409)
The whole fish and chips thing is well overdone...

If you want to tell Aussies and kiwis apart, listen for "Chance" and "Dance".

Kiwis will say the 'a' like in the word "aren't", whereas Aussies will say it like the 'a' in "ants".

Much more discrete to ask about dancing than fish and chips ;)

Re:Why are so many young Americans adopting fake British acc... by ndsipa_pomu on Monday May 15, 2023 @12:34PM (#35950872)
Well now I'm confused as Aussies tend to pronounce "ants" as "eents"
Re:Why are so many young Americans adopting fake British acc... by hydrok9 on Monday May 15, 2023 @12:11PM (#35950542)
Canadian: "What time is it now?" New Zealander: "Teeen." Canadian: "??????"
Re:Why are so many young Americans adopting fake British acc... by seanmcdirmid on Monday May 15, 2023 @10:14AM (#35948473)
Do New Zealanders ever speak with a British accent? I mean, the ones I’ve known, it seems different from a neutral American (Midwest accent) but not by much, I would be hard pressed to call them out as British or even non-Americans (well, there is one guy, but he was also born in London).
Re:Why are so many young Americans adopting fake British acc... by talideon on Monday May 15, 2023 @10:29AM (#35948732)
The Kiwi accent is quite different. It's certainly closer to your typical southern English accent than a US Midwestern one, but the vowel qualities and rhythm of speech are completely different from both. As somebody from Ireland, I don't have issues picking out somebody from NZ. I could understand getting a New Zealander mixed up with an Aussie if you don't notice with differences in vowel pronunciation between the two countries, but that's about it.

That said, both AU and NZ have their own "TV accents", which in AU is referred to as "Cultivated Australian", which is relatively close to British RP (though not the same), and I expect NZ has their own equivalent, but most people would have something close to what you would generally think of people from that part of the world sounding like.

Re:Why are so many young Americans adopting fake British acc... by calderknight on Monday May 15, 2023 @11:02AM (#35949310)
I dunno. Aucklanders sound different to Christchruchians. Maori sound different to Pakeha. etc.
Re:Why are so many young Americans adopting fake British acc... by yamazakiwi on Monday May 15, 2023 @11:53AM (#35950266)
That's just more exposure tbh, many people haven't even met someone from NZ.
Re:Why are so many young Americans adopting fake British acc... by seanmcdirmid on Monday May 15, 2023 @11:55AM (#35950306)
In tech you'll run into at least a few during your career. If you lived in Asia, you'll probably see more than that (more common than Australians for some reason).
Re:Why are so many young Americans adopting fake British acc... by EFreethought on Monday May 15, 2023 @01:43PM (#35951824)
Per Wikipedia, about 5% of people in Australia were born in NZ.
Re:Why are so many young Americans adopting fake British acc... by yamazakiwi on Monday May 15, 2023 @02:37PM (#35952648)
I'm in tech and have I've lived in Asia. I ran into exactly 0 until I visited Sydney.
Re:Why are so many young Americans adopting fake British acc... by seanmcdirmid on Monday May 15, 2023 @06:32PM (#35955413)
I ran into a few in Beijing. I guess it might just be a unique coincidence?
Re:Why are so many young Americans adopting fake British acc... by seanmcdirmid on Monday May 15, 2023 @11:42AM (#35950080)
Uh? I get saying its resembles more of a midwest Canadian slant than sounding like pure midwest American english, but Southern English? Having lived in Mississippi and worked with plenty of New Zealanders, I don't see that.
Re:Why are so many young Americans adopting fake British acc... by asveikau on Monday May 15, 2023 @11:56AM (#35950309)
Southern English here means southern England. Like London. Contrast that with something like Manchester.

Not the US south.

Re:Why are so many young Americans adopting fake British acc... by seanmcdirmid on Monday May 15, 2023 @01:31PM (#35951628)
Oh ya, that makes more sense. The south of the USA doesn't, although supposedly they have similarities with accents in England somewhere.
Re:Why are so many young Americans adopting fake British acc... by asveikau on Monday May 15, 2023 @04:17PM (#35953923)
I think the parallels that people draw with the American south are typically the northern UK, like the Scots Irish.

In terms of US-UK parallels, there's also the effect that geographical isolation has in making a sort of language "time capsule" where colonies stick with dated pronunciations or vocabulary. I've heard an attempted reconstruction of London accents from the early 1700s that sound a lot like General American or Canadian English. The same source had an early 1800s reconstruction that sounded rather Australian to my ears. One imagines that English people colonize either place at a given time, leave some trace of their time and place in speech patterns, and their relatives in England go on to evolve speech patterns in different ways.

Non rhotacism (lack of pronunciation of R) also left some traces in the American south (and northeast). That feature began in southern England after colonization, so I believe it was generally fashionable people keeping up with the latest English trends who brought it west.

Re:Why are so many young Americans adopting fake British acc... by EFreethought on Monday May 15, 2023 @01:43PM (#35951833)
Honestly, if a genie in a bottle gave me three wishes, one would be that all women speak with Australian accents.
Re:Why are so many young Americans adopting fake British acc... by alias_neo on Monday May 15, 2023 @10:42AM (#35948979)
No, their accent is quite clearly identifiable as Kiwi to us Brits.

They're easy to understand, they enunciate when they speak but the intonation and inflections and general sound is very different.

As for "a British accent". Would an American say there's "an American accent"?

There is no single British accent, we have, English, Scottish, Welsh, Irish and others with their own languages (and thus accents), then in England, we have widely varying accents, many clearly identifiable to a Brit; Newcastle (Jordie), Birmingham (Brummie), Liverpool (Scouse), London (Cockney), Essex, Yorkshire, etc.

I think when people say "British" like the article in OP, they really mean what we call "posh". We do it ourselves at times, but most people don't actually speak that way.

Re:Why are so many young Americans adopting fake British acc... by web007 on Monday May 15, 2023 @11:25AM (#35949737)
> As for "a British accent". Would an American say there's "an American accent"?

Of course, just the same as British. "American accent" for foreigners usually means "Southern Foghorn Leghorn" e.g. Daniel Craig in Knives Out, but can also mean New York, Boston, Chicago, Dakota (aka Fargo) or some other variation. To Americans it really means "unaccented" Midwestern English, aka broadcast (radio or TV) voice.

Americans know "American accent" from "British accent" by the same standard, the British "unaccented" voice is called RP and sounds posh or overly fancy to most Brits, but Americans don't distinguish RP from Cockney, Yorkie, Jordie or any of the other variants. RP is the broadcast voice.

To be clear: I used to be the same. "British" was one accent that Michael Caine, the Queen and Chris Ramsay all spoke. (For Americans: "Robert DeNiro, Harrison Ford and Dolly Parton have one accent" is equally wrong and hilarious.)

Re:Why are so many young Americans adopting fake British acc... by dontlaugh on Monday May 15, 2023 @02:00PM (#35952089)
Geordie.
Re:Why are so many young Americans adopting fake British acc... by alias_neo on Tuesday May 16, 2023 @02:48AM (#35958457)
Thank you. I looked at it a few times, knew it was wrong, but couldn't for the life of me find a G.
Re:Why are so many young Americans adopting fake British acc... by ngngngng on Monday May 15, 2023 @10:13AM (#35948453)
When I'm talking to British friends they'll often repeat back what I said and exaggerate the rhoticity of my western US accent. I'll poke back with a "It's chewsday innit bruv?"

Seems pretty common.

Re:Why are so many young Americans adopting fake British acc... by hydrok9 on Monday May 15, 2023 @12:12PM (#35950555)
Had a Londoner tell me that they "litchrally" invented the language so N.A. says everything wrong.
Re:Why are so many young Americans adopting fake British acc... by ngngngng on Monday May 15, 2023 @02:16PM (#35952305)
Ha. My defense is that my west coast US accent is closer to what Brits sounded like at the time of the American revolutionary war than a typical London accent is today.
Re:Why are so many young Americans adopting fake British acc... by hydrok9 on Tuesday May 16, 2023 @11:57AM (#35963649)
My defence was just by asking them how many "c's" were in literally.
Re:Why are so many young Americans adopting fake British acc... by slap_shot on Monday May 15, 2023 @11:28AM (#35949802)
I watch a YouTube channel that frequently features a guest from New Zealand, and in every video in which he appears, different people in the background will parrot the guest after he says certain words that really show off the NZ accent. I think he's become numb to it, because he shows no reaction. I'm sure it gets very old, but hopefully it's seen as endearment. imo, it's the best accent one can have :)
Re:Why are so many young Americans adopting fake British acc... by BerislavLopac on Monday May 15, 2023 @11:29AM (#35949815)
I'll just leave this here and see myself out... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i6c4Nupnup0
Re:Why are so many young Americans adopting fake British acc... by cancerhacker on Monday May 15, 2023 @01:24PM (#35951536)
Counter with Flight of the Conchords: https://youtu.be/qTwAoFR4DuM?t=104