Does Learning A New Language As A Missionary Ever Alter One’s Accent For The Rest Of Their Life?

[Physics Guy]

I could imagine Peterson‘s accent being influenced, not by the German he learned in Switzerland, but by the English he heard there. It would likely have been a Swiss take on Received Pronunciation British English.

It’s a tic I have myself, not by any means (unfortunately) to learn good accents well in other languages, but to imitate foreign accents and phrasing in English when I hear them. It might not be fully unconscious but I find it hard to resist, even when I’m afraid people will think I’m making fun of them.

With me the effect wears off quickly if I stop hearing whatever accent or odd phrasing it was. But I could imagine that I might have held onto something if I had done it for two years in my late teens, and if I somehow thought it sounded good.

[Gadianton]

Your revelations are stunning as usual Symmachus. I had no idea Nibley's foreign speaking ability was so poor. Makes sense though.

If this new account is based on that older account, and that older account is BS, wow, that's stunning. It seems like the kind of myth that's in the air, a myth ready to be made, but the inspiration for the older account, should there be one, would be interesting to learn.

The differences in mythmaking between these two related but very different individuals is interesting. I wonder if there's any scholarly insights here that would help?

In the original, the apologist delivers a flawless performance and then goes on with his life as if nothing happened. In the later, the performance is flawless, but it leaves a mark. Why is that?

Is the scar an excuse to tell the story? Is it a way to put oneself lower than the master? Is it a superhero complex, where the power comes with a price?

[Chap]

If I was DCP, I'd want to resign from being me - unless, that is, I felt able to take the decision to give up reading this board for ever, and stick to that.

[latterdaytemplar]

Has anyone ever heard of such a thing happening to a missionary?

Speaking English, my parents told me that I had somewhat of a Mexican accent about three-quarters of the way through my mission (2nd Christmas). I did not believe them until I got transferred to another area and was given a similar remark by my new, American companion.

When I got home, I needed my Dad to translate what I said for other people for about a week-and-a-half because I had a hard time coming up with the words in English.

Within about a month-and-a-half of getting home, however, I was speaking English normally. My accent certainly is not affected by my mission now (a decade later).

[Gadianton]

Keep forgetting to ask this. Assuming a person has this astounding ability to learn languages and in a short time and becomes a world-class German speaker for nearly two years, why wouldn't the person be able to return to their home country and relearn their home language at least as well as they'd learned German?

One answer to this is that learning German was a gift of God.

[Wonhyo]

The origin story of Dan's idiosyncratic speech pattern makes about as much sense as the origin story of Spider-Man's superpowers. Dan isn't the only multilingual person in the world. There are many multilinguists here on this board, many in Mopologetics and in legitimate academia, and all round the planet. I know many of them. But I don't know a single one, besides Dan, whose native accent has been permanently altered by their learning a foreign language really well.

Dan's ersatz Mid-Atlantic accent is something he consciously created. Perhaps it was to set him apart from his peers in academia and in Mormonism. In Mopologetics, perhaps Dan wearied long ago of listening to the Rocky Mountain speech habits of his colleagues and wanted to sound more urbane than Bill Hamblin. Or, perhaps because Dan's academic output is certainly unremarkable, he endeavored to set himself apart from his associates through his sophisticated speech.

Who knows? In any case, Dan's peculiar speech isn't because he learned German as missionary more than four decades ago.

[Alphus and Omegus]

Has anyone ever heard of such a thing happening to a missionary? Call me skeptical. I think the better explanation is that DCP is lying and his accent is completely fake. DCP fakes his accent to sound more intellectual — a sort of cheap imitation of his racist hero, William F. Buckley.

For people who came of age in the 1970s, as Peterson did, Buckley was an inescapable media presence. Despite claims of "liberal media bias," he had a weekly PBS debate show, "Firing Line," and was regularly paid enormous sums of money by ABC News to commentate on political events. He was also routinely given publishing deals for his mediocre fiction. Publishers would even print books filled with nothing more than old versions of his columns.

Buckley's contrived pseudo-intellectualism was easily exposed whenever he had to tangle with smarter people like James Baldwin, but nonetheless, he was so omnipresent that he became a meme used in the 1992 film "Aladdin."

https://www.bustle.com/articles/100968- ... tdated-now

I never listen or watch anything Mopologists do except for Gee (whose cringe stylings are just too hilarious to miss), so I can't say whether Peterson was trying to copy Buckley, but it definitely is the case that more than a few Republican talking heads of the 1980s and 1990s trying to copy Buckley's fashion sense.

[Moksha]

I could see Dr. Peterson dropping his Relief Society when it came to General von Wibbentwop.

[msnobody]

Has anyone ever heard of such a thing happening to a missionary?

Speaking English, my parents told me that I had somewhat of a Mexican accent about three-quarters of the way through my mission (2nd Christmas). I did not believe them until I got transferred to another area and was given a similar remark by my new, American companion.

When I got home, I needed my Dad to translate what I said for other people for about a week-and-a-half because I had a hard time coming up with the words in English.

Within about a month-and-a-half of getting home, however, I was speaking English normally. My accent certainly is not affected by my mission now (a decade later).

My daughter served a mission to a South American country and also has trouble transitioning back to English after speaking Spanish.

[Kishkumen]

I encountered more phony or affected accents in academia than I would have ever dreamed before I got into it.

One reason I think this happens is that one learns, sooner or later, that being a professor can be a kind of performance. I am conscious of having a professorial mode that does not really represent my core personality. I can feel myself switch into it in certain circumstances.

The degree to which one does this and the form that it takes depend on disciplinary culture and personal preference. Some people are just unaffected. Others revel in performing. Others do it as a survival or coping skill.