Thoughts about accents

This video, "21 Accents" by Amy Walker, is one of my favorite things to watch on YouTube. I have seen it several times, and am always amazed (and impressed) by the ease with which she glides from one accent into another, not only changing her pronunciation and enunciation but also her facial expressions and mannerisms.

I have always found it enjoyable, and relatively easy, to learn other languages. Regional accents on the other hand have never been my forte, and I'm really bad at doing almost all of them.

When it comes to speaking a "standard" variety of a language, I've been pretty good so far. Most people with whom I have a chance to speak French assume that I'm from France until I do/say something to gives me away as American. I think I have a pretty generic sounding German, but I doubt anyone will think I come from Germany...nevertheless, I might just pass for a few minutes as a native speaker. But ask me to speak French with a Canadian accent or German with a Swiss accent, for example, and I will fail miserably - so I'm always impressed by people who can pull off different accents. I guess we are always impressed by that which we cannot do ourselves, otherwise it would just be ordinary.

Even so, after living among a people for awhile, I do start subconsciously incorporating the local speech patterns and pronunciations whether I want to or not - even to the point of not remembering how a word is "supposed" to be pronounced, i.e. how I pronounced it before my speech changed. This is neither good nor bad in itself, but usually any deviation from "standard" speech brings with it any prejudices that might go along with the given dialect. After living in Baltimore for all these years, there are definitely some words that stand out when I return home to Northern New Jersey! Ah well, such is life.