An International Office

I work with a bunch of lawyers from all over the world on my current project. Some of the countries that are represented in my room alone include:

Los Angeles, USA (of course!)
Boston, USA
Birmingham, UK
Bournemouth, UK
London, UK
Kyoto, Japan
Melbourne, Australia
Sydney, Australia
Tasmania, Australia
Capetown, South Africa
Italy
Madrid, Spain
Stockholm, Sweden
Auckland, New Zealand

And those are only the people whose origin I know! Some of the cool things that happen as a result of working in such an international office is learning a lot about their native country and trying some of the food! For example, I've had bread baked by a Spaniard (in Spain, no less), dolmas made by a Greek, and chickpea curry made by a Punjabi.  All prepared by my co-workers' mothers. =)

The other thing we like to do is try on each other's accents. I can now do a fair imitation of an Afrikaans accent from Capetown, but I refuse to try any of the others, including a British accent - they're too hard! In any case, we have a new project manager who's from New York, and he's heard that there is an American girl on the project. Luckily, he doesn't know who it is yet, and I've been trying to coach one of my British friends in their American accent to try to prank the new guy. Result - epic fail! I never would've thought that an American accent would be so hard!

Accents

When we first arrived, I tried to keep pretty quiet and not talk too much in public since I didn't want people to notice me and my accent. The problem wasn't the American accent, but that people would notice me, which give me the willies. Let's not play "Which of these things don't belong?" I much prefer to blend in rather than stick out, and the fact that I'm slightly larger than a good-sized guinea pig usually works to my advantage in that regard. But I figured an accent would make people's ears perk up even though there are scads of Americans in my neck of the woods so I became an avid fan of the much maligned mumble.

Anyway, I gave up on the not talking in public thing pretty quick because anyone who knows me knows that I can't keep quiet to save my life. I decided to compromise by talking as much as I'd like, but trying to keep the volume down. So far it's worked like a charm - no one has noticed, yay!

Turns out, I need not have worried. The phone engineer showed up at our flat yesterday to install our phone line, and we had a nice chat while he was doing his thing. After he finished, I sighed and said, "Damn, now I have to learn how to use my new phone." That earned me a strange look, and I quickly explained that it was my first UK phone, but that earned me an even stranger look. He asked me where I was from, and I told him that I was from the States, and then he asked me where I lived before the States. I'm from the States, end of story. Then he asked me where my parents were from. Um, from somewhere else.

After all these questions, he explained that he was surprised that I wasn't from the UK and he wouldn't have known that I wasn't from around here until I said so. I accused him of "yanking my chain" (because that's how I talk to all my service providers), but he was completely earnest. Needless to say, I was astonished, and I tried to explain about my Valley accent (which becomes much more pronounced when I get excited) and pointed out my frequent use of "like." I'm the girl that had a boss sit her down and tell her that she can't call him "dude" any more.

Instead of agreeing with me, he got into this whole explanation of how Americans sound to the British ear. It was pretty fascinating to hear about how we sound to the natives. Apparently, he had come across a lot of Americans in London, and Americans have a bit of a twang in their speech. He assured me that I didn't sound "posh" but that my speech was much more clear and therefore, local. Wow, what a relief that I don't sound posh. ;)

I don't know exactly how to take this. J and I had a good laugh about it, and we figure it's because we're from California, the land of no accents. Did you know that people from California get the most media jobs across the US because of that fact? They must not get a lot of Californians here... that's about the best I can figure, because I'm not one of those freaks that adopt a British accent after living here for a few months. Who does that, by the way, and why? It's not like you're fooling anyone, and probably pissing someone off instead. And I'd hate to come across a pissed off Brit. Just imagine the indignant sniffing you're in for.