Is changing your accent to fit in with locals a good or bad idea?
Inspired by what I find to be a fascinating video of a recent press conference where an English football player is speaking in a new French accent, this is a topic that I think resonates with most expats to some degree. This player – Joey Barton – seems to have consciously decided to sound as much like his French teammates as possible, even when speaking English. The article from the Guardian about it concludes that it’s just his way of trying to fit in, which I’m sure is true.
We’ve all seen people who’ve lived in a new land so long that their accent adapts at least a bit, but in this case it’s so dramatic and so sudden that you have to wonder if he’s trying to do it, or just didn’t consider that Brits back home might hear it and make fun of him for it.
How aware are we of mimicking locals?
In the late 1990s I remember visiting two friends from the American state of Arizona about a month after they’d (temporarily) moved to London. To my amazement, both of them had already begun ending almost every sentence with “yeah?” tacked onto the end. It was clear that locals in their social circle ended sentences that way, and seemingly without even realizing it, these two started it almost right away. I found it bizarre, but it’s actually a technique that salespeople use to make potential customers comfortable.
Another friend of mine is a sales trainer, and one fairly basic skill that he teaches is “mimicking and mirroring.” Essentially, you gauge the tone and cadence of a customer’s speech and you change yours to closely match it. This even includes speaking in a folksy Southern accent if the customer speaks that way naturally. The theory, which seems to be true, is that people more easily trust others who are similar to themselves.
Do we adapt or stay true?
Now, it seems pretty clear that almost everybody eventually adapts and starts sounding more like those who surround them, but in the first months and years it feels more like a choice that we can make or defy. On one hand, I think most of us like the sound of our own accents and are generally proud to be from where we are from. For me it’s kind of fun to be a rare American voice in many parts of Asia or even Europe. But I also find that I speak more slowly and clearly in those situations to be more easily understood, so I already sound quite different from how I do back home.
Of course, it’s not just about our accent, it’s also about choice of words and even hand gestures we use while speaking. I grew up in Los Angeles and after living in New York City for a few years my California friends said that they noticed differences in my speech and movements that weren’t there before. I certainly didn’t try consciously to adapt to fit in with New York friends, but it happened anyway.
Has your accent changed and how aware are you of it?
This discussion really makes me curious how prevalent this is among other expats around the world. Again, I think it’s virtually impossible to avoid doing this while we are living abroad, but it seems less embarrassing if we can totally shut it off when speaking to old friends from back home.
Do you notice a change in your own speech, accent, and choice of words, and was that something you tried to do or maybe you tried to avoid it?