Did they ever explain why Sheldon doesn't have a Southern accent when he grew up in Texas? I don't think his father did either.
He does have some touches of one. Presumably he went to school outside Texas and lost most of it.
shareI figured he was already a pretty big outsider it makes sense that he even speaks differently.
shareHe said in an episode, a week or two before, that he'd taught himself out of it. Can't remember the context.
shareAsperger's is a pretty good explanation. Most people with Asperger's sound robotic and rarely pick up a regional accent.
share I always wondered about that myself. I just chalked it up to Sheldon being a non-conformist. Or else he spent a lot of time listening to Richard Feynman lectures and he tried to emulate his science heroes.
A few weeks ago on 'Young Sheldon', he explained his lack of a Texas accent. They were eating dinner and his older brother George was complaining that their mom didn't serve tater tots. He asked if they could have "taaaa-ter tots" tomorrow in that twang of his.
The voiceover has Sheldon saying that dinners like that made him develop a Mid-Atlantic accent. "Nobel prize winners ought not to be ordering taaaa-ter tots."
I attended a major university years ago and my roommate from junior year lost his Southern accent in less than a semester from what he told me. I also knew people from ethnic households such as Italian and German and the tendency to reach for the mother tongue was also lost within a couple of months. Why some can "flatten out" their speech patterns and others cannot I have no explanation for it.
shareInteresting. I also wonder why some people acquire an accent in later years.
I have a longtime penpal who lives in Texas. We used to write long letters but then she started to send me tapes. It was easier to tape a letter. I wasn't surprised to hear her speak with a very heavy Texas twang. But I was surprised when I found out that she was originally from Illinois! Her family moved to Arizona when she was about twelve. They didn't move to Texas until she was in high school.
I've never known someone who was practically an adult who picked up an accent. From what I have read, speech patterns are usually set by about the age of twelve. Some people do work at losing a regional accent but I never knew anyone who acquired a new accent in adulthood. Maybe some people are just easily influenced.
He does have a southern accent.. it just isn't super pronounced.. sometimes southern accents are exaggerated on tv.. I am from the South so I can hear it in his voice..
shareDid you ever hear the late Linda McCartney speaking in any TV interviews, before she passed away, and after living for 30 years or more in England with husband Paul McCartney?
She was an American who wound up with quite a loss of most of her American sounding way of speaking, and almost at times sounded a bit Liverpudlian, like a paler version of Paul's accent -- which also flattened out, by the way, after decades of living mostly in the south of England rather than staying around Liverpool in the north.
Adult accents can and do change, if not dramatically then at least quite altered and inflected with the accent of their adopted place.
It also happened to my accent after having lived half my adult life for two decades in another country.
It's not necessarily about being "easily influenced" -- I'm not easily influenced about anything. But you don't know until it happens to you, what it's like to wake up every day of your life surrounded by people speaking NOT the way you speak. Turn on the radio: their accent. TV: their accent, not yours. Leave the house and go to work, go to the store -- surrounded by the voices of THAT accent, not yours. Talk to local friends: their accent.
By which I'm trying to illustrate that when that is ALL you hear, all the time, all around you, every day of your life year upon year.....it's very easy to start mirroring the inflections, and that's no reflection on you being a weak willed or "easily influenced" person. Or for that matter, being pretentious or affected and doing it deliberately. It comes on like a subtle cloud of osmosis.
By the way, not everyone in Texas talks with an exaggerated Texas twang. There are tons of native Texans who were born and grew up there sounding almost completely generic, like any national news anchor.
I don't remember the details, but I seem to recall my older sister spent a short time in some New England environment when we were around Jr. and High School age. When she came home, she started talking in this funny manner, and it was totally annoying, like it was completely put on. I figured it was a silly affectation, but apparently the allure is there.
It's like going to England and suddenly wanting to sound English. Sure, certain things might creep in, but to suddenly start chattering away with this funny accent -- give me a break !
Unfortunately, my Sister has passed, so I shouldn't speak ill of her. She was a good gal, in her own way.
The brother of Henry Kissinger, the 1970s Secretary of State and Eminence Grise, was once asked why his famous brother still had a German accent and he did not.
The brother said "Because *I* listen to other people!".