I'm a verbal mess.

So today someone asked me if I am from Tennessee.  I wasn't that insulted just concerned because he asked on the bases of my accent when we were talking.  I have never been asked if I'm from farther south then Kentucky before.  This only means one thing, I'm beginning to lapse into mimicking the speech of some of the ladies that currently live in the house.  We have 2 ladies from Tennessee, only one of them has a heavy accent and I must be picking it up from being around her.  For most people it's not that big of a deal, but for me it's huge.

My first summer in college I worked at a camp in Michigan and when I realized that my students were struggling to understand my accent I began to alter it so that I spoke more like them.  I was only there for 9 weeks.  Three years later I still had people asking me what part of Michigan I was from.  I keep the accents I pick up for far to long.  Being able to change how I speak is a fun game (that I am really bad at.  Any international accents I try all end up Hispanic or some indescribable mess of words and sounds) but a dangerous one for me.  I went through a phase where I would speak with a fake lisp, three months later I had a problem in the form of a real lisp.  So, right now I guess I sound like I'm from Tennessee ya'll.  (hehe, this may not be that bad.)  We'll see how bad this gets before it starts to get better.

Dialect drop-out,

Mel C