Does your accent change when you're drunk?
If your accent has changed since you were a kid, do you find when you've had a few drinks that you revert back to the old accent?
When I was a child my family moved from an area where we spoke with the Northern Cities Vowel Shift. We moved to California where I seemed to have picked up a lot of merged vowels as I grew to adulthood.
But even as early as my teen years,I noticed that when I'd had a few drinks (or some herbal refreshment as a high schooler) I seemed to revert back to my pre-merged regional Northern Cities accent. It still happens when I get a little buzzed (alcohol only now). Has anyone else in a similar situation noticed this phenomenom?
I grew up with two languages and when I'm really really legless I tend to mix them up...which results in complete unintelligibility...That though, doesn't deter me from getting pissed every other weekend at all :-)
I know someone from "Wiscansin" that really toned down her accent, but one day when she had a bad cold, it really came on strong. And she had been living here for 30 years!
Our Scottish accent never changes! I mean - come on!.....who's ever heard of a drunken Scot???!!! The very idea.......!
hic....pardon me....
Ya each and every persons accent changes when they drink for first time or in small age,but for daily drinkers an accent wont change.
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meshil
Addiction Recovery New Jersey
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Why would their accent change? Don't you mean they change the WAY they speak...
<<So I guess, roundedness of the merged vowel is still avoided, due to many factors, even lack of prestige.>>
Yeah... the idea is that we're always running an internal program that monitors our speech. If our first accent, as a child was say, Southern American, but we moved to the Pacific NW while still a child, we start running that internal program and by the time we're in our teens there's hardly any trace of Southern acent in our speech. However, when you're buzzed, or very tired, it's more difficult to maintain the monitoring program and so your *real* accent shows up, unmonitored. That's my theory and also the theory of some people I used to get stoned with in 10th grade..... the people who first noticed it in me. Stoners tend to develop theories about everything when they're stoned. This is a pretty funny article along those lines:
http://www.theonion.com/content/node/38734
I code switch between the West Coast and the South, so when I'm drunk, that may be the only time I speak with my "native" accent. Of course, I have no recollection of what it sounds like.
drunk ? maybe I should try that getting drunk and try to approach these blonde hot american girls, so they can better understand me.