Videos about languages/accents?

[cattiechaos]

Mods, please delete this if it isn't allowed. I apologize for cluttering the comm if it isn't.

I was wondering if anyone had any humorous/comedic videos about different languages or accents, just for entertainment purposes. Here are two:

Sketch about Scottish accents:

Click to view

German accent commercial:

Click to view

On that note, how long do you have to live in a

Comments

[dorsetgirl]

As to how long it takes to "pick up an accent", I'd say it varies according to the individual. Some people only have to talk to someone for five minutes to pick up their accent or perhaps their intonation. I certainly find that by day 3 of my annual holiday in Norfolk, where I'm around people with rural accents, I'm definitely starting to pick up aspects of the way they speak. And that's in my own language.

[cattiechaos]

My question is, when you consciously realize that you are beginning to "pick up an accent", do you make a conscious effort to stop it? Why or why not? (You're not obligated to answer these questions, I just wanted to ask :))

[dorsetgirl]

I'm actually hopeless with "doing an accent" consciously, because I don't hear it clearly enough in my head, so what I pick up is just intonation, the rise and fall of a sentence. But even though I'm hearing myself and cringing, I can only stop it 50%. I end up with something between my own speech and what I could do if I allowed myself. (Which wouldn't be a full imitation, but that's because I fail in that direction anyway).

[cattiechaos]

Ah, okay, thank you for your input!

[muckefuck]

The Burnistoun sketch came to life for me when reports emerged of Siri's difficulty with accents that weren't General American. Stephen Colbert poked fun of this on his show: http://www.colbertnation.com/the-colbert-report-videos/403350/november-30-2011/conservative-siri.

I've been told that Phill Jupitus' Geordie isn't very accurate, but that doesn't stop me from loving this next bit:

As for picking up a regional accent, I think you will unless you make a quite conscious effort not to. Pretty much anyone I know who's lived "abroad" for more than a few years (and by that I'm including even, e.g. Southerners in Yankeeland) has gone experienced been told their accent has "changed" on visits home again. Sometimes you can even hear them drop their now usual way of speaking and revert to something more traditional upon contact with old friends or relatives. It's charming.

[cattiechaos]

Stephen Fry's tie ♥ It is a thing of glory. Loved the Colbert segment as well. Thank you!

[inner_v0ice]

"Listen, they've got war drums."
"The thievin' bastards!"

AHAHAHAHAHAHAHA. I love it. ♥
(and good grief, Stephen Fry, if a clueless foreigner like me could get the joke, I can't believe you couldn't!)

[banshee7]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dABo_DCIdpM

this guy is good IMHO.

[cattiechaos]

"Remember that time in Volograd?" Priceless. Thank you!

[banshee7]

welcome. 8-)

[devotfeige]

For a number of years (broken only by my current uni situation making the trip immeasurably more difficult) I went to Scotland every year about four weeks at a time for winter holidays. Within a few days I'd have people over the phone informing me that I was picking up my annual Scottish accent, so I started paying more attention to that sort of thing than I think people usually do.

If you're consciously thinking about it, it's pretty easy to notice when you've started picking up an accent (or at least bits and pieces of it; I would argue that I certainly never came across to anyone as anything other than the broadly-travelled American I am, but certainly other Americans started giving me grief about the cadence of my speech being different). By the end of my four-week holidays I never fail to end statements with a lilt as though they were questions, which if all Scots don't do then all of the ones I am intimately associated with do. I'm not consciously trying to do it, though by the last week of my trip I'm usually looking for it

[ember_cyprus]

I tend to mimic accents a lot - I can change the way I speak after watching a movie or talking to a person for a few minutes. But it is temporary, easy to get rid of through conscious effort and only applies to English (while my mother tongue is Russian). My Russian, however, is also affected by being exposed to a foreign language (Cypriot dialect of Greek + English with Greek accent). On the one hand, these changes are more subtle - it's rather intonation in general than pronunciation of some particular sounds, on the other hand, they stick longer and they are almost impossible to even notice, let alone eradicate. I had it really bad in the first couple of years, when I didn't have any Russian friends here, and spoke English or Greek almost all the time. At that time, my parents would often comment on my "foreign" accent. Now I have more opportunities to speak Russian, and it is almost back to normal.