This is something that I meant to post about long ago but never did due to my site not being in a good state. I had actually written a rough draft but I never did post it; looking back now, it's kind of funny because at the time I had made little progress. That version of the post would've been more about what measures I was planning to take at the time; this post will be reflecting on what i've done.
Approximately 5 months ago, nearly half a year ago now, I embarked on a journey to start speaking in my native tongue. Throughout my life, I've always had a strong Southern accent. I'd garner positive attention for it, i'd garner negative attention for it, but regardless it was undeniably apart of me. It was something that I'd come to associate with my digital identity so to speak, because if anyone heard my voice in a VC it'd almost always receive some sort of remark.
There's one online friend of mine who I've known for about 7 years now. When we first met, he (along with some others) were in a VC with me. So this guy remembered my voice, he knew what I sounded like. Well in essence, earlier this year I once again joined a VC with this person. I spoke, and this was the comment I received;
"Your accent is fading."
That really, really stuck with me. It bothered me a lot to be quite frank. Because on some subconscious level, I was aware of this too. To hear someone who used to talk all the time about how I sounded say something like that was... harrowing. At the time, I just denied it and moved on.
Yet day after day, that quote just keep worming it's way back into my mind. I couldn't shake it. After going back and listening to my voice from old recordings; some from about 6 years ago, others from 12 years ago, it was apparent that my accent had indeed faded. I sounded much more "General American" than anything.
This is far from an uncommon occurance. Across the United States, regional accents are dying out at a most disturbing rate, including the Southern accent. For a bit more context, earlier this year I looked into my ancestry. In short, I discovered a lot of things about my lineage that I found cool. Not only did I discover this after not really knowing exactly what I was for many years, but as someone with a strong interest in history, this naturally spoke to me.
I began to immerse myself in Southern culture, history, art, music, all of that jazz. To realize that all of this time I had such a strong accent, one so indictative of who I am and where I come from, and yet I had never appreciated it nor had I properly appreciated my people was somewhat upsetting.
In what may have been a subconscious reaction on the part of this "incident" with my friend as well all of the other pretexts listed earlier, I ended up reaching out to and befriending another person who had a Southern accent. This person started to talk to me about how his too had been partially ruined by mass media consumption. As well as how he had in fact begun training his voice to make up for it. Upon hearing of this, I quickly resolved myself to begin doing the same. I was at first stumped on what measures I should employ, but after some deliberation I came to some criteria I would abide by.
While I have not been flawless in the execution of all of these measures, I believe that I've done a pretty good job overall. On the part of the first bullet point, I've watched about 1050 episodes of anime since June. So uh, yeah, mission complete there. The reason I chose anime is because it's generally best experienced with subtitles anyways, and obviously the quirks of a foreign language will not influence my voice.
I'd also just been meaning to watch more anime in general. As opposed to watching YouTube, where dang near every content creator has that radio commentator voice that I am trying to avoid. By watching so many hours of YouTube content per day as I was, I am 100% sure it was playing a huge part in the decay of my accent.
The second point has also been largely successful. When I made my last.fm back in March, I listened to an absurd amount of music. I was averaging like 128 scrobbles per day, and nearly all of it was rock. Not of the Southern variety, either. My average scrobble count has dropped like a rock since then, and I rarely go above 500 scrobbles in a week nowadays.Not only is my overall scrobble count lower, but much more of it is country than before. I've immersed myself in Southern folk tunes, bluegrass, gotten back into country, and I've also started looking into country with more funk touches to it.
On the third and fourth points, I believe I've done a good job when it's in private and I'm just talking to myself. That said, sometimes it does slip my mind to correct myself when I'm talking to people in the real world. Mentally, I mean, since I'm not going to repeat the same sentence like a psycho to someone I'm talking to IRL. That is something that I need to improve upon moving forward.
On the fifth point, I have done well. After recording my voice to another buddy, he remarked that I sounded exactly the same as I did years ago when we last talked, which was essentially the best thing I could hear. As did the one from earlier. So yeah, overall, I am happy to report that the measures I've implemented have worked dividends. I sound very similar to how I did many years ago and I couldn't be happier about it.
I will continue to use YouTube for videos that don't contain speech, such as AMVs, random clips, gameplay videos, etc. The key goal is to cut down on the 20+ minute essays of nonstop speech from general American speakers. Finally, as I said earlier, I want to make sure that I do better at the fourth point as it's probably the one I've done the worst on out of the five.
Overall, I've largely achieved this little goal of mine. I've thought about modifying my speech all together, to speak in a more old timey manner. But honestly, I just can't get past how fake and inauthentic it feels. So I doubt I'll end up doing that. Maybe if I do truly pivot to modifying my accent in that way I'll write a followup post about it. But for now at least, I think I'll just stick to what I know best.
1/7/2025 Update: As apart of one of my two New Years resolutions, the other being to complete 15 books/vns/manga, I've decided to drop cursing from my lexicon to the best of my ability. I'll still use the words every once in a while, but I feel casual cursing makes my speech sound juvenile and I'd like to change this.