Accents, speech inflections and tones

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I'm curious if anyone else has an issue with accents and if it's a common autie/aspie thing.

One of the things that I noticed about myself growing up is that I never heard or noticed accents, speech impediments, odd speech patterns or inflections. When someone talked to me, I would notice the tone or "music" of their voice and rhythm, but it was like all of the accent information got thrown away before my brain noticed it. A side benefit was/is that I generally have no problem understanding people with extremely thick accents. The downside is that I find it *extremely* difficult to speak other languages. B's and D's and T's, rolled R's vs L's, e's vs a's; It's all a blur to me. I've learned to listen for accents now, but unless I consciously do it, I just don't notice them. I still find it impossible to hear subtle distinctions in other languages. But, if I build enough of a vocabulary, context kicks in and I'm OK.

Now, on the flip side, when I drink to the point where my guard is down, I would apparently adopt the accents and speech styles of the person/people that I was talking with (Quite effectively, I've been told. I just wish that I could do it consciously). I didn't need to be "drunk", just mildly buzzed. I had no idea that I was doing it and it was something that I had very little control over even when it was pointed out to me. Generally it wasn't a big issue, but I do remember having my friends drag me out of an Irish pub because a number of bruisers thought that I was mocking them and were debating the most appropriate way to shut me up. It was also a bit of an issue when I used to travel internationally. I had to be very careful around alcohol in public.

I'm just curious if others have similar issues. I've found people commenting on the opposite issues; not being able to understand people who speak with an accent or having an odd accent themselves. But I couldn't find any examples of "hearing past" accents or subconciously mimicing them.

I have a problem when people put on and act when they talk-they do not talk naturally but have to talk in a "broadcaster" type tone putting on an act towards others with that deep monotone delivery thinking that they are a radio broadcaster and it drives me crazy and people that put that little upswing on the last word they say inflecting upwards in that condescending way they talk to you and people that talk to me like I am a grandchild-like Mr Rogers-and people that put on a sly way of talking like a gangster-you know "hey pal-lee"-ugh I hate that because they do it on purpose to hide their intentions even though I have a hard time as it is reading intentions-and also people who talk like they need to blow their nose are just hard to understand for me.

I don't know if it's a common aspie thing or not, but I pretty much always notice accents and different ways people pronounce certain words and whatnot. I've always been fairly good at imitating and understanding people with accents. I tend to imitate the accent more when I've been drinking, and it depends who I'm around at the time. I've always been fascinated by language for some reason. I'm not fluent, but I took german for 4 years and regularly listen to german music, so I can speak it.

Oh, I'm fascinated by it as well. I'll pick up foreign language books and magazines in languages that I don't know just to see the word constructions, common pieces with languages that I do know, etc. When I did travel, I had very little problem understanding people (if I prepped some vocabulary beforehand). Unfortunately, they generally couldn't wade through my marble-mouthed attempt at mimicking their language. I would usually resort to having them speak in their native language while I responded in english. This worked surprisingly well in most urban areas.

Paradoxically, I can hear my cats meow or dog bark and I can hear enough of the subtleties to tell you what the specific situation is. I can even tell which particular neighbourhood animal has wandered into our backyard by the subtle differences in warning meow from our local watch-cat. It actually bothers me when I watch TV shows with dubbed animal sounds and they don't match the mood/situation. It's like a human being walking up to a coffee counter and yelling "fire" and having the barrista hand them a coffee like nothing was out of the ordinary. Nobody else seems to notice it, though. I'm not crazy. The sounds aren't words or language, but the underlying mood/intent just seems so obvious. Similarly, I can read the body language of animals perfectly well, but I generally miss anything but the most overt human body language. (fist coming at my face....hmmm....this guy might be angry It really irks me that they seem to be completely different things to me. I can even "get" primates. Just not these weird bald ones with the clothing.

I sound like Mick Avory with my Cockney accent with a monotone mixed in. It's very hard for me to immitate anybody but myself. I like that, though because it makes me different.

I hate it when I watch a documentary on YouTube and there's a voice-over with a deep British accent. I can barely understand what it's saying.

As for me, I grew up around a Midwestern accent, aka no accent at all (yeah yeah, I know it's still technically one). But I can't talk without putting an accent into my words. It feels more natural in my mouth for some reason.

My mom says that when I finnaly learned how to speak, it came out as a loud monotone. I had no inflection whatsoever but my parents swore everyone within a three mile radius could hear me.

I do this all the time (without the influence of alcohol, I mean). It's really embarrassing. I don't talk much around my in-laws anymore - they're black and I'm white, and I think my partner's grandmother thought I was making fun of her because I was accidentally mimicking her.
I actually have some trouble understanding people with accents because I have auditory processing issues, and although I'm decent at learning other languages, my pronounciation is terrible in every one I've tried.

You have my sympathy. In another alcohol related incident, I had coworkers extract me from a bar in Philly (just a bit in from the piers before they cleaned up that area). I'd only had one drink, but I was tired and oblivious to the dirty looks I was getting for my involuntary "accent osmosis". I'm still convinced that they were imagining it, but I've come to realize that I might not be the best judge of these things.



I remember my French classes all too well. "It's pronounced fauteuil"...."that's what I said 'fauteuil'" ..."no...fauteuil"..."fauteuil"..."no...fauteuil" (repeat until the bell rings or I get kicked out of the class for being difficult).
Unfortunately, the accent thing is subconscious and not something that I can do deliberately. I probably should have just had a few drinks before my class. But that probably would have opened up a whole other bag of social filtering issues. Unfortunately, I couldn't even drop the class because it would have put it below the minimum enrollment requirement and they would have had to cancel the class completely. I got a nice collection of warning letters which I'd just drop back in admin office with a copy of my denied request to drop the class. I ended up on academic probation for the whole semester, but it never went beyond that. I did go to the written exams and I managed to squeek through on those alone. But I never took another formal language class after that.

This could be viewed as 'reflecting' back and a good thing. Maybe the stranger-to-stranger and they don't know how to read you. But obviously, real world, this and the Irish pub incident, people do take it the bad way.

Please remember the self-defense tactic of walking toward a crowd, or toward an area of more people. And the social disapproval seems to escalate in stages. So, it's not about picking up enormous subtleties. It's the overall pattern. What I tell myself about playing poker, just about avoiding burying my head so deeply in my own cards that I miss what is patently obvious right in front of me.

I also tend to pick up other people's accents.

One day at work, a customer asked me what part of the South I was from. I'm from LA, but had just spent the weekend with a cousin from North Carolina.

Also, I had a teacher when I was a kid who thought I was making fun of her when I'd mimic her thick Boston accent. Thankfully, she thought it was funny and didn't get offended.

And my gf has pointed out that I sound a little British when I talk to her while watching Top Gear (a British show).

I think I'm particularly good at distinguishing accents. However, for some reason I'm unable to distinguish which part of Scotland someone might come from, other than West / East/ North/ South (and that's doubtful too). Whereas, I could be much more specific about where an English person was from (at least down to the county). Maybe it's because English accents are much more common on TV.

My husband and I encountered this girl in a coffee shop in Rhode Island. When my husband started to order, the server jumped up and down and ran into the back shop screeching. Her colleague told us that she she loved accents and thought it was cute. I've never heard Glaswegian being described as that before.

Wow, I always thought this was just something I did... definitely have a hard time myself with not imitating accents or modes of speech when I'm around them, and even deal with a bit of echolia as well, repeating things for the sake of repeating them, and because I enjoy the sound of certain pronunciations

Luckily I have yet to knowingly have problems from this other than people just finding it odd/weird, though I have caught the "are you mocking me" vibe before.

Even when I'm in Canada for just a few days, I notice my speech changing, its really kind of odd when I notice myself doing it, or repeating certain things over and over

This site continues to amaze me.

Yes, I pick up the accents of those around me, even British ones. On the other hand, I live in the South and people frequently ask me where I'm from, because I don't sound like the people around me.

I think this is extremely common in the AS population. A great portion of the people I have met with AS have unusual speech characteristics, and as a kid I had a monotonous voice (although I read with emotion and inflection).

Sometimes I speak in a slight russian accent, because I used to have a friend that moved to my school from Russia. There were sleep-overs galore, and he turned out to have High Functioning Autism too. So much in common.

My German-as-a-second-language teacher said I sound like I'm talking with a potato in my mouth when I practice my German.