Any good at mimicking people?

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http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/20 ... 161826.htm

So this article is kind of about people involuntarily imitating others to feel more comfortable with them.
Where I am am different is I completely clone the accent. I also seem to overdo it. No middle ground for me with anything.
If I'd had a few drinks I will put on a welsh accent involuntarily and I'd like to think because the only person that means anything to me is a welsh man.
I'm really good at picking up accents and if someone was walking slower in front of me I'd imitate that too.
I usually have an accent like Daniel Radcliffe and the clothes of Harry Potter. I draw the line at wizard robes.
But I can just put on accents out of nowhere and have no real control over it. I don't even know what my real accent should sound like.
Those accents that I put on usually the person means a great deal to me. And I have a really good memory for people's accents even if I don't put them on.

Is anyone else like this? Or is this just something very few people like me do?

Yes I do that sometimes, and am not bad at it. Usually for me its just because I enjoy doing this, but there is also times where I had to refrain from naturally imitating an accent from a new area when we moved.

I mentioned in another thread how I used to tease a coworker imitating his accent, and I am lucky that he knew I wasn't being mean at all, I liked him and we were friendly.

And about a week ago I read that it is a characteristic of Asperger found more often in girls, I had no idea http://autism.lovetoknow.com/Symptoms_o ... r_Syndrome (under the title Asperger Symptoms in Girls)

I did this unintentionally too sometimes. I remember one time it was particularly funny (to me lol). It was at work and a guy came over to our department (we had to do some work for him), he was a scary and rigid type of guy (army general scary type), and I unintentionally started imitating his accent when I replied to him, then he had to go away for a minute and a girl who worked with me saw that and she was giggling and said "omg what are you doing, he's going to be so mad at you", and it is then that I realised I had been imitating his accent (italian accent I think but its been so long I'm not sure, but I remember it was a very strong accent), so when he came back I just continued imitating his accent so he never knew it wasn't my normal accent. Still makes me smile when I think about that one lol.

I do this fairly often, and I think it's just who I am, not a lack of being myself.

i totally lack this ability.

Oh yeah, I don't think it's a lack of being's oneself. I'm kind of glad I don't have an Aussie accent because of it too. But I definitely do have my own personality. I may mimic people but I shape into something that is me.
It's an interesting character trait to have and I've not seen it in anyone else.
I suppose I listen to accents more than the actual subject someone is talking about. And I remember people more by what they sounded like than what they look like.

I relate to many traits in that article, except the lack of motors skills and wanting to do girly things.
I used to copy people's clothes to better fit in but it became so hard to keep up, so I now dress for comfort especially on those tactile sensitive days.

I'm really talented with accents-whenever I go to another country,I end up talking with the accent there but in English. Good at imitating people as well...just must force myself not to do it!

Both my sister, who has Aspergers, and I do this; not a conscious process, just seems to automatically happen; I particulary notice it with people with foreign accents. Now that I think about it, it does give me some kind of connection/comfort with the other person.

I don't think it made anyone angry; or feel patronized. If it did, they didn't tell me. I'm sure they thought it was odd.

I can't remember anyone mimicking me, but maybe that was because I have always been mimicking others, in someway; not fully aware.

My voice has always sounded the same to me, internally, when I am typing. When I am reading a message from someone I know, I hear their voice internally. If I am reading a message from someone I don't know the voice changes to a different internal voice with each message. I asked my wife this question, who is very NT, extremely empathetic, emotional, etc. She told me it is the same for her, except when she is reading a message from someone she doesn't know, she hears her voice internally.

I love hearing the voice of the person who wrote the message internally. If I don't know their accent I hear the same accent and I'm not real sure where it came from. Actually it sounds like a classmate in school when I was like 9.
There is an Irish man who works at the bookstore I go to a lot and I pick up that accent so quickly. I pick up Irish, Welsh and British accents a lot. Although today I sound like Malcolm from Malcolm in the Middle.

oh yeah I do this. I realized it when I had a buddy who was from Georgia and moved to Hawaii to go to my high school. When I was around him I noticed that I had a slight southern drawl and used the word "ya'll". There is nowhere in Hawaii where I could ever pick up either naturally, it was just around him.

are you a copy cat? yes.

OMFG I do this all the damn time. It gets so annoying and I catch myself doing it whenever I'm with a friend. Then I think,"Oh, Crap! Does he notice?"
I brought it up with my friends a while back and they said they never noticed, but I think they're lying cuz you'd have to be an idiot to not notice that I laughed 12 different ways in the past hour. You'd have to be deaf not to notice the change in the timbre of my voice when I notice the mimicking myself and stop.
lol
I'd hate to see myself from their perspective:
facepalm.jpg

Yeah I do this. It's a bit of a gift and a curse to be honest (sorry to Monk for nicking your phrase...). It's a gift because it gives me the ability to pull off different accents, plus whenever I learn a new language and speak it to a native speaker of that language (i.e German, French or Polish), they have always praised me on my accent. Some have even said they wouldn't know I was English when I speak the other languages (apart from the fact that I can only say about 3 phrases in Polish!).

It's a bit of a curse too though because people find it weird when your accent changes and start assuming you're nuts. Psychiatrists/psychologists start assuming that you've got multiple personality disorder or something even though you don't... (I don't know if this is a common accusation) Some people get offended when you 'pick up' their accent. But other people find it quite funny. It does make it difficult at times to know who 'you' are because you end up feeling like you are constantly acting...

Yeah I also knew this was a girl thing. I read it in a very good book called 'Aspergirls', plus it came up in 'Asparagus dreams' as well. I also have Tourettes and 'mimicking' accents is often part of that too... I've got no hope

Not really. I'm my own person.

I mimick accents really fast. I've noticed that when I travel in the South it start picking up the intonations of the locals really quick. I have to be careful because the sounds are only part of the dialect. The idioms are more important and sounding like a Southerner without also using the correct idioms and slang can be seen as offensive.

I'm terrible at mimicking accents. I never even managed to develop a Texan accent. It would stick around until I learned how to pronounce a word correctly and from there on out I couldn't even fake an accent.

I sometimes find myself using phrases I heard from someone, from a movie, from a song, etc. I don't mean to, but it happens. I don't know if that counts as mimicking?