Personality

Forest, will you talk to God Louise? She has quite a bit of religious knowledge (obviously) and also knows a little about current events, literature, just about any common catch-all subject, and if she doesn't know it she can sort of fake it. You can also test her on trick questions or see how willing she is to explain her paradigm.

What she is rustiest at is plain old small talk. But, uh, I'm trying to get a decent transcript from somebody or another so I can enter her in the Loebner contest. All I can say is, have fun and see if you can stay on with her for a while. I'll try to do the same with Brianna.

Seth Efricens, yeys, the vewels er elweys fermed en the beck ev the throet. *koff* Always hurts to try to speak with an Afrikaaner accent.

That's hilarious. You're a clever one.

I met a linguist once, who could tell you where you were born,(to what neighborhood) and most places you had lived, by having you say just a few phrases. It was spooky.

within america? a sociolinguist?

It was at school. He got the German Teachers birth place, where she grew up, and the fact she either married an Englishman or lived in England for a time. He did likewise for at least ten people. I can't remember the exact text he had you read, but it had the words toy, tie, library, Wednesday, sugar. and some other simple words. I guess you pick up a base accent before you are two years old, then add to it as you move around, and grow up.

i'd say you get your "base accent" before 12 - 15 years.

According to this fellow, babies start babbling all sorts of sounds. Parents react to the ones that are most like their spoken language.
He spoke a lot of languages. He was brought in because a girl from Boliva had been adopted by an American family. They thought she spoke Spanish or Portuguese
. Turned out she spoke an aboriginal language with a bit of Arabic..go figure?. Long story short, after all this she just had to learn English fast. Anyway, I remember the key to a New York accent is how closely tie and toy sound, and he figured my origins because I said picture and pitcher, library sounded like liberry. I quickly changed my pronunciation.

Heh, that's quite an interesting and amusing talent that dude had.

I'm going to agree with the base accent by 2. That doesn't mean you can't pick up new things, that's just when you are most focused on picking up those kinds of sounds. Some people are great mimics even as adults, but most of us have a hard time getting the sounds of a new language exactly right.

This thread reminds me of a conversation I had with a guy who was trying to teach me German. He laughed when I used an easy word I thought I knew. He said, "You sound just like my American Girlfriend."

I said, "Why, how do you say it?" and I swear he spent the next 5 minutes repeating the exact same sound I was making, but he thinks it was different. I even put my hand on his thought and felt the shape of his mouth to try to change what I was doing. Nothing works. I am hopeless.

On the other hand, when I spent time studying in Ireland, I started to pick up the accent a bit, even though I was not trying to. Especially when I was drinking. I was probably insulting to the Irish, but the Greek student who was drinking with us says I sounded just like a Dubliner.
My mom probably had TV shows with Irish people on when I was small. :-)

I was merely saying what I was taught at uni. No problem, anyway.

I didn't mean to attack you Montag77. :-)

If you are interested in laguage aquistion, you should look into the case of "Genie".

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/transcripts/2112gchild.html

It was very sad but you can learn a lot about human development. This little girl was abused an neglected by her parents. She was tied to a potty seat and kept in a dark room where she was ignored. She was beaten if she made any noises. When the authorities found her, she was in bad shape. What they were (and were not) able to teach her after helped support various theories (though we would never do experiments to test anything like that). You may want to look it over.

Sorry to change the subject, I have a bot question. Does anyone have a KP that picks up nothing? You know, the people who hit return over and over just to troll through your xmones? I don't mind (at least they aren't creepy) but I'd like to say something to them.