Contagion

- Contagious -

No, I am not referring to some sort of mysterious epidemic making the rounds or to the frightening e-coli breakout that's scaring the living daylights out of vegetarians across Europe. I am talking about the most common of all contagious diseases expats invariably catch when living abroad.


Accent contamination.


Have you ever thought about it? As a foreigner, does your accent in your foreign language catch the accent of the place you're living in? Does it give away the place where you are not from by belong to? (at least temporarily)

Whenever Hubby speaks in Spanish, people always tell him his accent sounds mexican! I don't really buy it because he can't pronounce "guadalajara" correctly (no Frenchman can), but the fact is he's picked up all the mannerisms of the accent when he speaks: the musicality of the words, the way he constructs his phrases, even some of the slang he uses, all lean more towards the Mexican accent than the more common Spanish (from Spain) tone you hear most foreigners speak in Europe.

When he moved to London last year and I came over to visit during the time I was still based in Paris, I quickly started to notice that his English was picking up a slight British twang. It used to drive me crazy. I'm ashamed to admit I'd impatiently throw him a "stop it! you sound stupid" whenever it happened because quite frankly I was not used to him asking me if "I reckoned" anything!! After all, he's been married to ME all these years, the least he can do is stick to my accent and not drop it like a hot potato the minute I turn my back, right?

But then Kyle and Seba came to stay with us a couple of weeks ago, and every once in a while they'd suddenly interrupt me while I was talking, point an accusing finger at me and yell "you just sounded SO BRITISH!"

Whaa-aat?!?!

Let's get one thing straight people. If there is one thing I am damn proud of is that I have a very strong, very annoying, very authentic American accent. I've got nothing against the British accent, don't get me wrong, I love hearing it, but heck, I am half American! I am famous for over indulging in the uhm 's and the like, you know 's. Americans themselves ask me what part of California I'm from. You can't get more American than the Golden State. NO WAY am I picking up a foreign accent to supersede my own mother tongue accent!!

I decided Kyle and Seba had to get their ears checked and filed their observations under "whatever".

But the question kept looming around in my head and I started to notice that accents are contagious no matter how much you fight against them! My first clue came from my friend Jorge, who is Spanish but who ever since he started hanging out with yours truly (for the past 6 and odd years) sounds more and more like Polo Polo and less and less like Zapatero (don't ask). I used to think he was making fun of me... now I know he's just been contaminated.

And just like Hubby's English got contaminated with the British accent and Jorge's Spanish with the Mexican accent, I soon had to come to terms with the fact that my French accent had always been contaminated with the unmistakably Parisian twist. "That's normal", you say.. after all I learned French in Paris, right? The thing is, I was suffering from local contamination: depending on who I was talking to my accent shifted slightly! If I was hanging around Hubby's friends I would suddenly start to sound more "jeunes" and a bit "banlieu-esque"... but once I was at work and surrounded by my work colleagues I noticed my accent became more "branche"* since this was the way most of the people around me spoke.

Contaminated. Guilty as charged.

To make matters worse, the more I think about it the more I realize you can even get contaminated with a different accent in your very own language!!! When Hubby was living in Bordeaux he told me he picked up the very recognizable french southwestern twang and when he came back to Paris got a lot of teasing as a result.

And when I was living in Yucatan it seems every other word that came out of my mouth was "MA-re". To this day, it only takes me a few hours of being back in Merida for me to start picking up that very recognizable way of speaking and having Hubby roll his eyes at me.

I never really thought about all this before because I guess I was so used to my accent being foreign, period, that I didn't really consider what part of foreign it was.

Here, I figure I am going to have to over stress my "y'all"s and "howdy's" going forward if I want to avoid full blown, head to toe contamination.


I wonder what will happen if we ever go live in Japan.

Photo: "Howdy" by Fned.

Fned.

*
"Jeunes": young crowds
"Banlieu": outskirts of Paris
"Branche": hip and trendy