Accents

I was just talking to NephthysWrath about this, and I figured I have more to say and I don't think I can finish my seminar reading right now anyway, so...here I am.

I'm never going to lose my accent. There's an American professor in the archaeology department who has been here for God knows how many years, and he has no trace of a British accent. None of the other American students have picked one up. It just doesn't happen once you pass a certain age. You do pick up the slang - you have to because you would sound silly otherwise. I started accidentally using it to my parents about 10 weeks ago (they kindly point out when I do it by mocking me mercilessly for hours afterwards.) So I find myself irrationally annoyed by undergrads who come over for, like, three months and begin pretending that they have picked up the accent and just can't help using it. No you haven't, you poseur.

The other thing is - they're obviously doing it because Americans fetishize the British accent in a way that is completely creepy. No, I'm serious. Think about it. If my situation were reversed, and I were a British student going to school in the States right now, I would be wildly uncomfortable at least 75% of the time. Americans are weird about British accents. And it's nice for me because no one is weird about American accents over here (well, no one I've met, anyway.) At least, I have yet to have anyone act weird about my accent. Occasionally someone will make conversation with me about the States based on my accent (they sometimes ask whether I'm American or Canadian first) but mostly I get treated like I don't have one, which is fine with me. Sometimes people will look slightly taken aback when they ask me for directions to the train station and I answer, and sometimes I will ask someone for directions and they will ask how familiar I am with the city before they answer, but that is perfectly acceptable behavior. But I think, if I were British and in America, I would have been subjected to a lot of enthusiastic and uncomfortable conversations by now.

I actually had a friend here tell me a story about job hunting in America, and being offered a job after she phoned the company for the fist time, based solely on the fact that she had a British accent. I mean, really. Weird. Why are we so weird about accents?