As strange as it may seem, I hate my accent and want to speak like an American because I think it sounds cooler and more like how I want to sound.

I’ve more or less perfected my version of an American accent on my own, I think.

But whenever I’m with other people who know me, I revert back to my old accent instinctively because that’s how they know me to sound like. I’m unsure about how I can subtly transition without them noticing a sudden change, such as through gradual exposure to my accent changing more each time they hear it. That way I could argue that I don’t know how it happened and it was a slow progression if they eventually realise it’s different, rather than something forced that I started doing one day.

The biggest thing I think is changing the pronunciation of certain words with “a”, such as going from “fahst” to “faast” for the word ‘fast’, or “mahsk” to “maask” for ‘mask’. Because it’s really one or the other, there’s no in-between. I feel like for most other sounds, a gradual transition into more American sounds can be possible, but that one’s like, how can I make the plunge and will people notice it straight away and think it’s weird?

  • _dev_null@lemmy.zxcvn.xyz
    2·
    10 months ago

    Foreign accent syndrome:

    a medical condition in which patients develop speech patterns that are perceived as a foreign accent[1] that is different from their native accent, without having acquired it in the perceived accent’s place of origin.

    Foreign accent syndrome usually results from a stroke,[1] but can also develop from head trauma,[1] migraines[2] or developmental problems.[3] The condition might occur due to lesions in the speech production network of the brain, or may also be considered a neuropsychiatric condition.[4] The condition was first reported in 1907,[5] and between 1941 and 2009 there were 62 recorded cases.

    Here’s to becoming number 63!