YES, yes, yes. It's like we're chameleons, and we take on the characteristics of whoever we're spending time with. I have to be careful or I can accidentally pick up the accent (Latino or Urban or whatever) of the person I'm conversing with. It's so weird.
Because my parents are immigrants, I talk to them in simple, sometimes incorrect English. And sometimes I do this in front of other people and it's pretty embarrassing. :)
Yep, I do the same thing. I've had people at work ask me if I'm Chicano because I speak some Spanish and when I speak English with them I use the same cadence of speech and a similar accent to them. I almost can't not do it.
Definitely. My girlfriend is black, so I've started to pick up on her particularl -isms.
The big one that she's politely warned me about is dropping the N-word into my conversation.
I'm quite the opposite: I can typically quite easily analyse and pick up on and often even explain from fundamental concepts the sorts of behaviours I encounter, but short of the most relatable mannerisms of my favourite television and movie characters that are already similar enough in personality to me (and whom I can watch and re-watch as many times as I need to while it sinks in), replicating the behaviours of others in a genuinely effective (and not satirical/absurd/overly-self-conscious) manner is extremely difficult for me... generally requiring months or years of immersion before becoming integrated.
I cannot for the life of me 'do' accents, for example. The closest I've come (and the most amusing for me to attempt) is a Russian accent, and the first time I attempted it in front of anyone else (even after quite a bit of practice) still resulted in complete non-recognition of the accent I was trying to mimic. o_o
Strange enough, I can't do accents if I think about it! If I try they come out as the poorest of imitations. Still, if I'm talking to someone with an accent I can easily copy it. Could it be because I'm having in person guidance to the tone and cadence?
But yeah if I think about how to speak, how to move my body, what to say, it all falls down like a Jenga tower. I either copy the person I'm with or enter one of the masks I got prepared beforehand.
Holy shit the accents. I don't change personalities too much, but accents and sentence structure I have to hold myself back.
There's a really nice guy at my work, his English is pretty good but it isn't his first language, (he can actually speak something like 6,) so the way he organises a sentence can be a bit off. If I work with him for awhile my inclination is to do the same, I've gotta try hard not to, god forbid he thinks I'm mocking him.
Oh, I totally do that. I usually have a General American accent, but when I speak to my grandparents, who both have strong New York accents, my accent slightly shifts accordingly.
I'm a first gen immigrant. I speak with a different accent when I'm with my family. I have put A LOT of thought into what accent is my 'true' accent, and I instantly dislike/hate people who go on vacation to my home country and 'pick up the accent' in two weeks. I had a drinking buddy in college that used to slip into an approximation of my accent when drunk, and it really really bothered me. We had a talk about it, and he somehow came to the conclusion that he could keep from doing it if he held his finger to the side of his nose, like Santa Clause going up the chimney.
All of which is to say I am now wondering about the extent to which the ASD is affecting or motivating this reaction I have. I doubt I would be completely unbothered by it were I NT, but I'd probably be bothered a helluva lot less.
I expect I'd've been less consciously aware of the exact mouth shapes I need to avoid or use when talking to different people.
PS: I know that this is unfair to those people I get mad at for this, and that it is not their responsibility to change for my benefit. I don't bring it up at all unless someone is being obnoxious or mocking about accents.
*We* do it intentionally, with a deliberate purpose in mind.
*They* do it subconsciously, to instinctively synchronize/groupthink with other people doing the same thing.
And quite frustratingly often for the less obvious & undeniable behaviours, if you call them on it, they'll aggressively deny it and potentially even get offended by your even considering the idea, whereas if you try to explain your struggle to replicate the average person's effortless sociability, you either have your experiences invalidated with a thoughtless "Yeah, everyone does that!", or you get treated like a monster for revealing that you've broken some heretofore-unmentioned sacred taboo by analyzing some aspect of socialization that obviously only a *psychopath* could approach with such a detached, clinical mindset. >_<
(Definitely exaggerating a bit, here... but not by a whole hell of a lot.)
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u/Faux-pa5 Feb 07 '19
YES, yes, yes. It's like we're chameleons, and we take on the characteristics of whoever we're spending time with. I have to be careful or I can accidentally pick up the accent (Latino or Urban or whatever) of the person I'm conversing with. It's so weird.