Primates change their 'accent' to avoid conflict
phys.org
phys.org
My mom's extended family has an actual long-horn herd around Seguin, so they get a pass on wearing boots and a Stetson. Meanwhile, my upstairs, sociopathic yuppie, mid-West hipster transplant neighbor walks around in cowboy boots on a solid floor for no reason (and no cattle) and has a man-bun despite it going out of fashion about 2016. I wouldn't even pretend to be a "cowboy" on Friday nights without actually roping and herding cattle, otherwise I'd feel like a poser.
:Waves from ATX by way of SJC; parents by way of San Anton; grandparents by way of Nocona, Vernon, and Wichita Falls:
I also have leather soled pre-aged oilskin boots that have been covered in mud at various points in their life (the best 50 bucks I ever spent - you cant go wrong with 50 dollar pair Tony Lama boots, the pre-aged material means they felt wore-in right from the first time I pulled them on) - yet clean up nice enough that I can wear them to a meeting, as well as rubber soled western style boots for work (two otherwise identical pairs, one in steel toe, the other in not steel toe - I loath the narrow toe box of the steel toe ones).
That said, I don't wear boots or anything with a hard heel inside my house, for fear my downstairs neighbors would kill me in my sleep. ;-)
As far as me? I'd love a ranch, with cattle, but in the mean time, I'm perfectly fine being all-hat, no-cattle, besides, a cowboy hat is practical here in Texas (was in Washington too), and frankly so are boots most of the time too, besides, western shirts generally look nice, and wear well too.
I did actually read somewhere that linguists think the British/American accent before America was a separate colony was most likely more similar to an American accent, so actually it was the Brits who diverged their accent.
See also: humans didn’t diverge from chimpanzees, but both from a common ancestor.
I just tell people I travel alot and my friends English from all over the world rubbed off on me.
I would actually say that for a longer time I have consciously avoided regional slang, as American colloquial English is not usually any close to academic English and it is very easy not to notice. But Europeans have no clue what you’re saying if you are simultaneously slurring words, completely altering sentence structure, using idioms, and complete slang.
So maybe it just gravitates towards an enunciated and generic international form of English? Skip a syllable and there it is.
My paternal grandmother was from Cape Cod; lived in Britain, Germany, and the Philippines; and ended-up in San Jose, CA with a New Englander-British (no pun intended) accent. My dad had somewhat of a latent British accent from eating gristle and corporal punishment at an all-boys English boarding school.
Two Norwegian brothers: one was my roommate, had lived in the US for 10 years, and always spoke English like he was drunk and still working on the language; the other had never been to the States before but sounded like he lived in the US for 90% of his life. I'm wondering if it's language speaking/interpretation plasticity skill are more innate to the individual. (I'm probably more like the first brother and sound like a rube in every language.)
Sorry, but what does this mean?
Also I don’t know which “Indian” accent you mean, but I find Welsh English and Hindi have a similar prosody
Indian Institutes of Technology, for those playing at home.
https://phys.org/news/2020-09-acorn-woodpeckers-wage-days-lo...
The worst thing that ever happened was having an interview terminated early because of my use of language. I basically knew an answer to a question but couldn’t remember the world I needed and said something along the lines of, “s*t, what’s that called again?”. I think I would have got away with it to be honest but what pushed them over the edge is that when they asked me why I swore I was genuinely confused why they were asking.
These days I’ve learnt to hide my accent and avoid all language I think could be problematic. I don’t even joke in the office anymore because I’ve found even my sense of humour to be problematic in a lot of cases. Then the other day a new guy started dropping the occasional f-bombs and for the first time in years I found myself reverting back to my old mannerisms and joking around with this guy because we share such similar social backgrounds.
As a autist I’ve always thought it was kind of weird how saying “sup, dickheads” to my friends is seen as totally normal and actually a polite way to say hi but that would be extremely inappropriate in a middle-class workspace. And it does seem to be middle-class workplaces specifically because working retail and in other working class occupations as a teenager I never once had this problem.
If I talk like I would with friends in the big city, it comes off as too intense for slower family members. If I talk similar to them in that drawn out way with a slight simple suburb accent, they seem to like it better.
Edit: She has a neutral accent normally and then switches on Texan mode after being with certain family for awhile. My ears are like "Mom, are you Texan now or what?"
To digress further... I don't see how this is so much to avoid conflict as it is to gain access to benefits from an out group by using mimicry. Think about cuckoo birds or other parasitic species, they aren't mimicking another species to avoid conflict. Some flowers to emit the scent of their pollinating species to attract them. Certainly other types of mimicry are to avoid conflict, like in the case of eyespot patterns, but does emulating accent fit more into which of these?