/lit/ - Literature

[Anonymous No.4303993]

Sort of /lit/ because it has to do with language

I have this very strange habit

When I speak home or to family members I speak with a more 'american' accent' as people have described it - which i think i picked up from my parents. But when i talk to people outside of my family i speak with an Australian accent.

Ive done it ever since I was born.

Kind of like....think switching between a native tongue and english. Except both feel pretty natural to me.

Some of my cousins and siblings speak with a straight more american twang and they often give me shit about 'why i change my accent'

Its worse when I have friends or gf's over and my accents is a complete cluster fuck between the american one and australian one.

Ive tried straight talking one but it just doesnt feel right. When I speak with an australian accent at home my family gives me the whole 'lol why change accent for' or if i speak to non-family member i just straight cannot do my 'home' accent.

Has anyone encountered this (Im guessing cos your murkans seem to have a ton of different accents)? I really have no idea why I even do it.

[Anonymous No.4304021]

>>4303993
I don't do this personally, I've encountered it before though. I would attribute it to Australian English being a culture-less, poorer version of the "Queens English".

I live in Australia, I'm twenty years of age and I see every day how miserable spelling, reading and comprehension levels are among Caucasian Australian's my age, and it only gets worse the darker you go in the pigment colour wheel.

Australians don't use English properly most of the time, they use a lot of colloquialisms and slang, m8. (Don't worry, I find it idiotic too.)

TL;DR It's probably because Australian's don't speak English anyway.

[Anonymous No.4304026]

>>4304021
>miserable spelling, reading and comprehension levels are among Caucasian Australian's

>'

[Anonymous No.4304059]

>>4304026
>dat eye rho knee

[Anonymous No.4304069]

u wot m8? imma reck ur shit i swer on me mum
y arnt u proud fff spekin strayan?

[Anonymous No.4304072]

>>4303993
Yes. I know precisely what you mean.
I was born somewhere in SEA to an Australian who left Australia so long ago that it resembles little of what the place looks like today and people sounded very different as well. And I was born to an Asian who was not from the country in which I was born. Quite an odd mix.

I attended american international schools before completing HS in Australia and then university in the UK. In this pattern I followed two siblings.

When talking amongst siblings, I sound slightly more americanised - and so do they; a remnant of our shared international school upbringing in Asia perhaps.

To our parents and relatives, we speak a kind of RP - a remnant not only of our formal education in the UK, but also because that's the way our father speaks (I don't hear very many Australians in this day and age that speak so clearly and clipped anymore, that is that are not extended relatives of his - I think that accent is mostly extinct).

Amongst friends I'll speak less clipped and polished, more twangy and lazy - though not a "lazy sounding" that is characteristic of the Americans.

I've come to notice that, subconsciously, all 3 of us will alter our accents depending on with whom we speak, tailoring them accordingly.

But when we need to be fully understood, say, when speaking to someone whose first language isn't English, we revert to that weird RP hybrid.

I suppose that was its original function, after all.

[Anonymous No.4304073]

>>4304026
What?

>>4304059
There is none.

>>4304069
What a pathetic excuse of an organism.

[Anonymous No.4304078]

>>4304073
You used an apostrophe where there shouldn't be one in a post where you talked shit about grammar.
>Australians
It's a fucking plural; learn the rules.

God you are a bloody moron. Do you even G8???

[Anonymous No.4305833]

>>4303993
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assimilation_(sociology)

OP read this. you are probably doing it subconsciously to blend in

I knew a kid who had an accent when i was a kid. People used to always point it out and ask him to say certain words for a cheap lol. I guess he became selfconscious about it.

By the time we got to highschool his accent blended in with everyone else. But when he got mad or something sudden happened or in general every now and then his old accent slightly breaks through

Its like the movies with Nicole Kidman, Portia DeRossi, Naomi Watts etc. They often have american accents in their movies but for like 1% of their speaking role they would slightly break into their aussie accent

Also didnt Madonna try to change her accent to a british one and Kelly Osborne to an american one as their default one for interviews?