Improve Your English: English in Everyday Life

Th
e Us
e of L
anguage
: Par
t I
95
I’ve worked on that, too, and really listened to understand 
why my pronunciation is diff erent from my mother’s or 
diff erent from my aunt’s, and as a result, I think actually 
my-my accent has improved as I’ve gotten older, but now 
they identify me with a much older cohort, I sound like 
I’m about fi fty or sixty 
’cause
those are my models that 
I’ve, I-I speak like, um, but, yeah, all my life I’ve really 
tried to, I’ve been very aware of my accent and tried to 
modify it, um, not always successfully, with-with vary-
ing success depending on which language we’re talking 
about, but that is always been something that’s been very 
much at the front of my mind, so I’m very aware of that.
2. 
LINGUISTIC CHAMELEON
Considering that, as a, I grew up as a, as I said, as 
Navy 
brat
and I lived in many diff erent regions of the country 
growing up. Uh, sure, there’re-there’re defi nitely diff erent 
accents. And a funny thing that I’ve noticed about myself, 
and I’m—somebody else observed it in me, I wasn’t 
even consciously aware of it until somebody pointed it 
out—but I’m somewhat of a linguistic chameleon in that 
whatever accent I’m speaking with is usually, I-I’ll gravi-
tate towards the person that I’m speaking with, because 
I lived in so many diff erent places and have adopted so 
many diff erent accents, you know. If-if I’m speaking to 
somebody from the South, I’ll—without even being con-
sciously aware of it—I’ll slide into a little bit of a 
drawl 
and-and-and it-it just is-is a very natural thing for me, 
whereas if I’m speaking to somebody from a more urban 
area, uh, or-or the West Coast, there’s a li-little bit of an 
Oregon accent. It’s hard for me to put my fi nger on but, 
uh, there’re defi nitely regional diff erences, and because 
I’ve lived in so many diff erent regions, I-I’ll just kind of 

---