So I was at this retirement party today for a friend of mine who has been a professor of Health & Exercise Science for some 35 years (and, yes, I was decades younger than almost all the other people there), because I roll hardcore like that, and I think I mortally insulted an Englishman. You see, he was across from me at the table and had this lovely accent.
Looking for topics of conversation (I didn't know anyone there except for the guest of honor and one other person), I asked him, "So how did a nice Aussie like you doing in New Jersey?"
Finishing chewing a bite of sandwich, he gave a rather withering look, and said, "I'm not Australian."
"Really?" I rejoined. "New Zealander?"
"No, I'm an Englishman."
Turns out he's from London. Apparently, though, he's been mistaken for an Aussie before, even by real Aussies, so that made me feel better, since I'm rather good at recognizing accents, and, since the Australian accent is heavily based on London Cockney of the 19th century, it makes some sense that at least some areas of London still produce an accent that sounds similar.
Still, it was a bit... awkward. I was a little afraid he'd go hooligan on me there for a sec. But I wasn't headbutted from across the table, and we ended up having a nice conversation about John Adams and Thomas Jefferson. He's quite knowledgeable about American history, it turns out, moreso than most Americans, I'd hazard (though, sadly, that isn't terribly difficult).
4 comments:
Hahahaha. That still doesn't beat: "Hey Frank? Are you Southern, British, or Gay?"
I think you need to travel more, Frank.
i know the accent that your talking about, i work on the phone and was trained to recognize certain birtish accents and even tell what part of the country they were from. But when they travel abroad they end up sounding like auzzies and than it gets difficult.
Ha! I totally get how he feels having lived through years of people asking me whether I was American.
I used to live in Glasgow, a place renound for it's very strong scottish accent. I then moved to London, and it blended with the accent there.
My accent is still fairly weird, as I'm now living in Manchester, anther place with a strong accent. Apparently now I just sound posh and snotty. Don't know how that happened.
I read somewhere that after a certain age, your brain is harwired so that learning another language without accent is pretty difficult. I guess this phenomeno shows that for some people at least, they are more sensitive to intonations, and if the accent of their first language can change, then surely gradually overtime they should be able to do the same with a second language.
This is not the same with my father...though we have a family theory that it's his because he's missing the gene that lets him roll his tongue.
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