Korean Job Discussion Forums

[decolyon]

I've noticed something interesting happening in the last few years, I wonder if anyone else has noticed it too?

There have been a few threads on how the quality of our English can decrease a little over time if we are constantly teaching to new or mid level learners and have a lot of Korean friends. We like to use some "Konglish" with our foreign friends for laughs and inside jokes, and this, over time, becomes a habit.

What I've noticed is that all of my Korean girlfriends in the past and my Korean coworkers and friends, all seem to be at about the same English level. Conversational sure, maybe some would term "fluent." But not native level and they certainly still speak with an accent and make grammar mistakes here and there. It's not a bad thing. Rather impressive actually. But the longer I've been around them the more I subconsciously start to mimic them. I then find myself speaking this way to other native speakers without realizing it.

After catching myself a few times I began to think back of other times I found myself doing this. My first year abroad I happen to be around a number English, especially from London. They turned me on to British comedy (and not just Python) and I've been hooked ever since. British humor just appeals to me more. But I found after weeks of exposure to my friends and the hours of British programming I was consuming, I started to mimic the accent there as well. I even began replacing British terms for American ones (i.e. elevator became lift, line became queue, etc..) It took an earnest effort to stop myself from doing it, but even to this day when I read, the voice in my head is Stephen Fry (who's your voice, btw?)

I went back even further and remembered in university running around with a few guys from Boston. When we would go out to a bar or club and meet some new people, they'd often ask if I was from Boston too. I'd tell them no and they'd gasp because I sounded like my friends.

Now, I'm from Alabama. And you know that stereotype of how people sound that are from Alabama..... yeah, well some stereotypes are stereotypes because they're true. My entire family sounds like the just jumped out of a Forest Gump sequel. When I tell people I grew up there, the one comment I always hear is "you don't sound like your from Alabama though."

So I can't explain this. How is it the accent I was raised around for 2 decades never seemed to stick, yet these accents I just come in short term contact with, seem to super glue themselves to me?

One bonus I've found is this; when I speak Korean, or Spanish, or Japanese, or even German (mind you, I don't know any of these languages, but if I read them in English or the phonetic spelling) the native speakers of these languages are incredibly surprised as they say I sound just like them. I've found this gets me into more trouble in Korea as when I tell someone in Korean that I don't speak Korean or that I just speak a little, they often continue to carry on in Korean as if I'm just being modest. My ex gf said it's because I said the sentence almost perfectly (meaning tone and pronunciation.) But honestly, I was just mocking how I heard it being spoken to me.

I know this was a rambling post, but I was just wondering if anyone else has experienced this? I wonder if it might be more prevalent in those that have lived abroad?

[nero]

Oh, I definitely do this.
Especially with North Americans. My fake American 'accent' is akin to Sarah Palin (Oh...wow...geez) and they are NOT impressed. I also put on airs after a couple of lagers and start sounding like my inner voice (Jennifer Saunders).
I have noticed a tendency of North Americans to speak sllloooowly and enounciate every word very specifically when they speak to me, as if they have forgotten that although I have an accent, I actually DO speak English and I am not one of their students!

(A side note - I was in a band called 'the Fake American Accents').

[RMNC]

I think there's something to be said about your own level for being able to step outside of your own accent/dialect/language to accommodate for others. You're not teaching those people, so saying words in an accent( even if it's not "correct") that they understand is easier for getting the information across the language barrier.

Kudos to you for being a polymorph.

[lalartu]

this is one of the reasons why one of the first lessons in a good TESOL classrooms is about accents, or to be more specifically, about how we all have them and how we all acquire them over time

the Canadian school where I took my TESOL certification course had 50 English teachers and 20 of them had unique accents (including Brazilian, Italian and Mexican) and their excuse for having such a diverse staff was that there is absolutely no reason to try to find someone with so called "American" accent because it simply doesn't exist.

A good ear can always distinguish a specific accent and in that sense, we all sound very unique.

So in conclusion, don't be surprised if you start sounding Korean after a couple of years because that's how language acquisition works.
A few years ago I used to have a high school student with perfect British RP accent, who lost ALL of it in less than a year and started sounding like me, which was both flattering and scary at the same time because I lost my accent and acquired a new one which makes me sound like a Korean ajoshi on steroids...

[sirius black]

Accents can and do change. Its how the brain works. The human brain is an adaptable organ. This may sound a bit overboard but its a surival instinct of some sort.

For instance there are intense language programs that work on full immersion. You ONLY hear the acquisition language. One of the reasons is that the human brain will force itself to acquire the language as a survival function.

If you talk to any immigrant in your country who spoke either another language or in the case of english speaking countries, another accent such as the Irish or the UK, if they spent a few years in America I can almost guarantee you that in phone calls or visits back to their home countries their friends and families have told them their accents have changed. Constant exposure to a different accent or language does that to many people. Its difficult to avoid. UK and Irish people in America will stop pronouncing the pronounced 'T' in the middle of words like better and letter and start pronouncing it with the American 'D' sound which makes better and letter sound like 'bedder' and 'ledder'.

Its happened to me as well. I've also picked up the local korean accent which is a rural accent when I tried to learn Korean and have been asked by Koreans in Seoul if I worked in a certain province. Just like how the deep south and new england have regional accents, even a country as 'small' as Korea have them as well. Jeju island, Pohang and Seoul have very distinct and different accents to all Koreans.

[thurst]

i don't think i'll be speaking with a korean accent anytime soon, but i've noticed (with myself and friends) that are vocabularies has atrophied a bit. so now when i'm outside of work and speaking to friends i try to drop a few SAT words into the conversation to remind myself that i "still got it".

[tatertot]

I almost exclusively hang out with my adopted Korean family nowadays, so I don't use English much. I have adopted their mispronunciation of my name, so I now actually mispronounce my own name.

[FMPJ]

Mirror neurons