I was never there, I only read the book, I only saw the film

[sovay]

A double-header at this afternoon's medical appointment: the tech not only expressed surprise at my calendar age, but assumed from my voice that I was either foreign-born or had spent significant time out of the country, specifically she thought in the UK. Given the current climate, I should be clear that she was curious, not hostile; one of her children had been a staffer in the Obama administration and two others had been some kind of federal employee and she had considerable feelings on subjects from vaccines to tanks. But after I had gone through the standard litany clarifying the rather pathetic fact that I have lived my entire life in New England and the Boston area for most of it, she still thought I sounded British. "You should go over there. You'd blend right in." She herself had an old-school Boston accent. "People from anywhere, they can tell where I'm from." I am not good at other people's ages, but I don't believe that I look younger than my early forties, especially after the last few ravaging years, and I expect to be heard as American by anyone who actually has one or more of the plethora of accents on offer in the UK. Weirdest instance of trying to place my voice remains the time I was told by a very drunk Australian that I sounded like a Norwegian. Someday the question of my vocal origins will come around again because it has been doing so since my childhood and I will answer "Lisson Grove" just to see what happens.

Comments

[chanter1944]

If it's of any interest, I get pinged as Canadian from time to time. Wisconsin+a lifetime of PBS and NPR, not to mention the CBC and a number of other international broadcasters, and there I go. I suspect the PBS aspect has left tells on both of us. :)

[sovay]

If it's of any interest, I get pinged as Canadian from time to time. Wisconsin+a lifetime of PBS and NPR, not to mention the CBC and a number of other international broadcasters, and there I go.

This has turned into such a neat thread of what different parts of this country sound like to other parts. I don't think anyone has ever asked if I was Canadian! I must be missing the illusion of characteristic features.

[chanter1944]

It truly has! :) ... For a minute there, I thought you meant visual illusions of characteristic features, before my reading comprehension kicked in. Whoops on me!

I absolutely get asked if I'm Ontarian, and not always by those far south of me. I also had one customer tell me I sounded like his relatives in Nova Scotia, and the especially oddly delightful thing was, two weeks later, I spoke to a Nova Scotian unconnected to the earlier exchange who, accent-wise, matched closely enough with me that we could have been sisters. I still can't explain that one, seeing as I was born and raised in Wisconsin.

I leave the tendency to accent shifts and mimicry aside, except to say that I'm forever worried I'm going to alter mine while in conversation with someone and they're going to take offense!