How do you tell if someone is talking with a fake accent?

Question

How do you tell if someone is talking with a fake accent?

Answer 1

1. Look for any physical indication that she/he is focused on using that accent.  Faking requires energy, although it may not be obvious. If the person appears to be faking, be suspicious.

2.  Listen for verbal fillers like umm or uhh.  They differ between dialects and languages.  

3.  Call them out on the accent. Trip 'em up if you have to.  Pay attention to the way they respond.  If he/she does not look you in the eye, is insistent, keeps talking, or other things, it could mean a fake.

4.  It may also help if you have some brief knowledge of the accent.  It's usage, region, words associated with it can make a difference.

Answer 2

Ello. I erd you was asking bout some fake accents ere.

No, seriously. Ask for a birth certificate. At gunpoint if necessary. Criminals use fake accents all the time to cover their tracks. Also, Madonna used one for a while for some reason that nobody ever understood.

Answer 3

If it sounds fake, and if they seem like a very fake person. I had a "friend" one time who talked with a fake accent but sometimes it went away. Somehow just disappeared and then he started talking with it again. :P

Answer 4

If you know the real accent, it shouldn't be hard to tell.  But if somebody's a good faker, dunno.  Like, if they have all the lingo and pronunciations and intonation of a certain dialect, it could be nearly impossible to tell.  But usually, there's one or two words that they get hung up on.

Like English actors who try to do American accents.  Did you see that movie, oh, what was it...the one with George Clooney and Tilda Swinton and that guy from The Full Monty?  Bob something-or-other?  Anyway, George Clooney is from the States and the other two aren't.  See if you can tell when they slip up.

Or, for something closer to home:  Martha Stewart has a TERRIBLE fake Connecticut accent.  Nobody talks like that, not even the poshest person from Connecticut.  She hits her "t"s too hard, like in the word, "pretty," which nobody pronounces, "pri-TTee"--anybody else would say something more like "priddee."  The "t" sound is actually a "flap" (in linguistic parlance)--kinda halfway between a "t" and a "d."

She grew up in New Jersey and her dialect was so thick, they made her a Breck Girl on a TV commercial but used somebody else to do the voiceover.  But she married a guy from Connecticut, moved there, and "poshed up" her accent.

But she's not fooling me!  

(My linguistics degree helps, but it's mainly about listening for the slip-ups, because people love their dialects and don't want to lose them unless it's for work or something.  They tend to go back to their original dialects every now and then when they're not paying much attention to their speech.)

Like English people pronouncing "bean" instead of "bin" when they read the word "been."  It's not a long "e" sound in the States, but it's very hard for them to drop that English pronunciation.  So it's a "tell" for many British actors.  Bean this, bean that.  In the States, a bean is a thing you eat, not the past perfect tense of "to be."

Listen for the tells.

Answer 5

Call there cellphone from a blocked number and start a fight with them.

It'll be just like on Flavor of love when Buck Wild lost her accent when she was yelling.

Answer 6

Get them really really drunk.

Answer 7

ask them questions about the place that they are so called from

Answer 8

Well, I;m australian, and when someone is faking an aussie accent i can tell, because usually they dont say words right, or they really push the accent, so its like talking like a southerner in america, not all americans talk like that, and they says "a" and "r" wrong.

THEY USUALLY EMPHASIZE THE ACCENT which is how you tell

Answer 9

it sounds fake

Answer 10

easy, meet their family. if they dont have it, then its fake(:

britney spears talks with a british accent sometimes x.x its weird.

i dont like accents, but 'accented-people' (lmfao) tell me that i have a 'california' accent. ill never figure that one out ...