Accents

I have always considered myself to be fairly good with accents. I like to, okay love to, mimic accents - my favorite one to mimic is the British accent - and I have a tendency to eavesdrop of people when they have interesting ones. While I was in Europe I had no real problems understanding people speaking English to me with accents...except for this one time when we were in France at a Christmas Market and a lady selling soap spoke to me. I responded with an "I'm sorry I don't speak French" only to get laughed at by my mom when she told me that the soap lady had been speaking to me in English...whoops! I think a part of it is that when you expect someone to talk to you in one language, but they actually speak to you in another, your brain takes a little bit to adjust to reality from what you had anticipated.

Here in the United States I have had a much harder time understanding people! Some of these Southern, country accents are just messing me up. I'm okay if I am looking at the person; then I can do a bit of lip reading if I need to. But there have been two instances when I have been listening to two people have a conversation and I completely believe that they are speaking a different language. The first time was a few weeks after college started and I was in the elevator with two of our building's maintenance men. They came in and started a conversation, and my brain automatically told me that they were speaking German. There was an instance between me hearing people speak and not understanding them, and me realizing that German was not a language commonly spoken here, that I completely believed that those two men were speaking German. That was instance number one. Number two was about a month ago, as I was walking to class behind an adorable couple who were talking, no, it was more like cooing at each other. They were just so precious, and I was walking close enough to hear their conversation. But I wasn't able to understand their conversation. I spent a minute trying to figure out what language they were speaking, and my brain and I finally decided on French. Then just as I was about to pick up my pace to pass the cute couple so I wouldn't be late for class, I heard it. Not that French accent. The heavy Southern accent. The accent that once again threw me for a loop, because my brain still thinks that when I don't understand someone talking, they are speaking a foreign language. But this "foreign language" isn't suppose to be foreign, even though it is clearly still giving me some trouble!