“I’ll get a terrace apartment!” “Better gid rid of your accent!”

I’ve been a fan of accents since I was a wee girl.  I’m not sure how it happened, but I feel as though I’ve always been enamored of them.  A thick brogue will stop me in my tracks.  A dusty twang will bring a smile to my lips. A silky patois from most of the characters in True Blood will seep into my head.  Growing up, I was exposed to two accents:  the sing-songy lilt of my parents’ desi accents and the southern drawl of my teachers and classmates.  Somehow, I did not pick up either of them.  I won’t say that I didn’t have an accent because I’m sure our Pakistani and French fans would say otherwise; but I ended up with a pretty neutral American accent.  In college and thereafter, nobody could really tell where I grew up based on my accent.  The invariable question of “so, where are you from?” always led to the awkward pause when I had to decide whether or not I’d respond with an answer (“My parents are from Pakistan”) or a question (“Do you mean where was I born (Wales) or where did I grow up (Southern Indiana/Louisville, KY)?” — neither of which is what they really wanted to know).

I can remember entertaining my parents (and later, other family members and friends) with my faux British accent.  I’d be pretty tickled myself if I saw a skinny, brown eight-year-old chattering away like she was delivering the news on the BBC.  It’s not ego talking when I say I was good.  I tested my accent out on some British schoolchildren on one visit with my cousins when their family was stationed in Birmingham, England.  I went to class with my cousin one day and when some gangly pre-teen got all up in my face to ask me who I was and where I was from, I told him I was a cousin visiting from London and he and his cronies totally bought it.  Suckahs!

To amuse myself, I tried my hand, or vocal chords as the case may be, at different accents.  Thanks to my smattering of Urdu, I could trill my “r”s with the best of them.  My adoration of movies exposed me to a plethora of accents: the sexy French, the (back then) evil Russians, the “that’s not a knife; this is a knife” Australians.  That was before I was exposed to my most favorite accent in the world: the Scottish accent.  If I ever come down with foreign accent syndrome, I guarantee you that I will emerge with the thickest brogue you’ve ever encountered west of Ednbrah.  If ye want to join me, I’d suggest ye start here.

At a friend’s behest, I contributed my version of Joss Whedon’s Ballad of Serenity in a Scottish accent.  My goal is to brush up on my brogue and give “To a Mouse” by Robert Burns a shot.   As my first homework assignment, I will revel in … I mean study this:

Fave: minute 9′s clip of the guys’ attempts to come up with good slogan about scones.