• XaeroDegreaz@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    A: Humans mimic others speech (unconsciously) in order to fit in. EG: person from country A moves to country B. Both countries speak English. A few years later A moves home. People in country A now hear a country B accent when this person talks.

    Yep. As an American who’s lived in Korea for about 10 years, I catch myself doing this all the time when speaking English to Koreans who understand some English. I also find myself doing the same thing to other Americans, and even my family.

    I’ve also been told that I speak Korean with a female accent. I’m pretty sure it’s because the majority of my Korean language exposure is from my wife of 18 years, and her friends. I’ve only really started making male friends of my own in the past three years or so.

    Strange how all of that works.

      • Swedneck@discuss.tchncs.de
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        1 year ago

        Closest thing i can think of is valley girl and surfbro accents in the US, though i guess most affluent people in the past had fairly distinct speech between men and women, because sexism!

        The valley girl/surfbro divide is also fundamentally sexism but not outright “this is how women/men should be speaking”, it’s just a natural result of people hanging in groups of their own gender.

        • Terevos@lemm.ee
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          1 year ago

          Oh yeah. Excellent example.

          I don’t know if it’s sexist or anything. People can talk with whatever accents they want to.

      • XaeroDegreaz@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        I’m not sure about other languages in general, but in Korean females tend to use different intonations, pronounce vowels a little differently, and use different verb endings as a means of sounding more cute.

        If you’re not familiar with Korean, then perhaps you’ve heard Japanese males speak before. They’re more harsh, sometimes gutteral, whereas females are more gentle when they speak.

        I think I picked up the gentleness speech patterns, and I often catch people off guard. Firstly there’s a foreigner speaking Korean, but he also sounds like a hot chick 😂