{"id":405,"date":"2008-11-02T12:00:16","date_gmt":"2008-11-02T18:00:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.kirkmahoney.com\/blog\/2008\/11\/changing-ones-accent-1\/"},"modified":"2015-12-10T13:24:03","modified_gmt":"2015-12-10T19:24:03","slug":"changing-ones-accent-1","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.kirkmahoney.com\/wordpress\/blog\/2008\/11\/changing-ones-accent-1\/","title":{"rendered":"Changing One&#8217;s Accent, #1"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>When I was in graduate school in Los Angeles, California, I met a young man who worked as an administrative assistant in my graduate department.<\/p>\n<p>His name was Angus, and he had a Scottish accent.<\/p>\n<p>I finally asked the department&#8217;s secretary about his accent, and she said that Angus was from the Valley &#8212; as in the San Fernando Valley, north of L.A.<\/p>\n<p>I asked whether Angus originally was from Scotland. The response: &#8220;Oh, no. He simply decided to adopt a Scottish accent.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>And, as far as I know, he never broke his Scottish accent for what is called &#8220;Valley Talk&#8221;, which is a manner of speaking that is characteristic of those from the Valley.<\/p>\n<p>That ability &#8212; to change one&#8217;s accent permanently &#8212; continues to fascinate me today.<\/p>\n<p>To me, it is akin to changing one&#8217;s signature, which is difficult but can be done (I know because I did it.), or changing one&#8217;s handwriting style, which must be very difficult.<\/p>\n<p>Put simply, changing one&#8217;s accent permanently must take a lot of practice, self-awareness, and effort.<\/p>\n<p>What is your favorite story about changing one&#8217;s accent? <a target=\"_contact\" href=\"http:\/\/www.kirkmahoney.com\/contact\/\">Let me know!<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>When I was in graduate school in Los Angeles, California, I met a young man who worked as an administrative assistant in my graduate department. His name was Angus, and he had a Scottish accent. I finally asked the department&#8217;s secretary about his accent, and she said that Angus was from the Valley &#8212; as&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[20,30],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-405","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-foreign-languages","category-outsiders-perspective"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.2 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Changing One&#039;s Accent, #1 - Kirk Mahoney . com<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.kirkmahoney.com\/wordpress\/blog\/2008\/11\/changing-ones-accent-1\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Changing One&#039;s Accent, #1 - Kirk Mahoney . com\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"When I was in graduate school in Los Angeles, California, I met a young man who worked as an administrative assistant in my graduate department. 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