So do I, I was watching Harry Potter (all 3 of them) and it took like 7 hours or whatever 'cause I watched all the bonus shit too, anyway by the time I was done watching it I had a British accent, my 'rents made fun of me for it.

When I sing I usually have a North Carolina accent because I spent 3/4 of my life there. Sometimes when I say words I sound like I'm from there, I love it!


And yes, I really do have nothing better to do then sit in front of the TV for 7 hours.

I don't. I lived in the USA for 6 months when I was 6 years old and apparently I didn't have a trace of a US accent when I came back to Aus, on the other hand my parents and brother had pretty strong US accents when they came back. Weird.

Well I like being able to pick up accents quickly, it makes it easier to do impersonations of accents. I plan on going to Europe after I graduate HS, if I get to hopefully I can pick up so accents while there.

^ That sounds great! I'd love to go to Europe. I've been thinking of going over there too, since my grandparents are British I can get a 4 year working visa straight away. I'll probably finish my degree in June next year, then I'll work for a bit and go off and travel. I can't wait!
I'd love to be able to pick up an accent, but I don't think I'll be able to. I think I'm going to be stuck with an Aussie accent my entire life, not that there's anything wrong with Australian accents. I just prefer British .

I wish I had an Aussie accent.

I am from the south of France (Provence) and people from the north make fun of the Marseilles' accent (above all Parisians, who think the only good French accent is the Paris' one...)

I've been studying in Spain for 7 months, and as I can adapt quite easily to an accent, now I speak Spanish with the Andalusian accent, it's great! People often think I'm a native. The same thing occurs when I speak italian.


It's not the same thing when I speak English though, I've got a horrible French accent, I hate that...

But I love listening to English speakers speaking French, that's so cuuute!!

I think I read somewhere that people with AS have very affected speech patterns which can include the formation of one's own accent. Journalists have made comments about Craig's apparent "made-up accent" for years.

But one also described it as "Australian fused with too much time in LA".

Yeah I think I remember reading somewhere that AS can effect accent now you mention it, I'll go see if I can find anything.

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This is a lame example but there was one time craig said, "loff" it turns out he meant love. heehee

sometimes when i speak people don't understand what i've just said, especially when i' bored or sleepy and even words that have nothing to do with the thing we're speaking about come out of my mouth and after a few minutes i realize it...

My dad and I do that, we mumble back and forth to eachother and me mum and me sis can't tell what we're saying. It's great!

wow, it is really nice. well, when i don't want my dad and mom to know what i'm saying, i just have to speak in english, usually with my sister. i've just remembered that today when i wanted to say 'i wanna drink some coke' it came out ' i wanna drink some schoolbag' and my friend didn't say anything. after several minutes, when i realized it i asked her if i said 'schoolbag' instead of 'coke' and she looked at me with a kind smile on her face 'yeah, you did'

I looked around in medline and science direct (journal article databases) and couldn't really find anything about language. Although I did find a paper that said "These results indicate that auditory sensory processing is deficient in children with AS, and that these deficits might be implicated in the perceptual problems encountered by children with AS." (Jansson-Verkasalo et al, 2003)
So if they can't process auditory sensations properly I guess that could mean that they perceive accents differently and so form their own??? That's a complete guess.
So yeah, AS may not have anything to do with Craigs accent, then again it could (although I couldn't find anything specific). Sorry that wasn't much help .

This is a bit off topic, but you know how Craig is always claiming to forget things? I always put it down to him using forgetfulness to get out of answering questions, but I found this article when I was looking around for accent formation and aspergers. They found that people with AS have memory impairments, especially poor short term memory. So it might not just be avoidance all the time:

"The adults with Asperger's syndrome were more likely to falsely recall words that had not actually been studied. These findings further delimit the nature of memory impairments in adults with Asperger's syndrome, which seem restricted to certain aspects of episodic memory that include the tendency to make more intrusion errors in recall." (Gardener et al, 2003)

I also found this about a woman who grew up with undiagnosed aspergers (it was only discovered after she had a nervous breakdown when she was 29, at least Craig's was found before it got to that point) if you're interested:

http://www.nas.org.uk/nas/jsp/polopoly.jsp?d=120&a=2200

Sorry that was and long. Oh well .

I actually had to do Craig's accent for a monologue in drama one time....it was difficult! I started off doing mainly american mixed in with some british and aussie because I thought it would be WAY TOO HARD to do him, but then i naturally flowed into the same speech pattern/accent as he has. It was so weird! I was really surprised at myself.

Of course I said "ommm" all the time

That was a really great link you posted. Wow. I can relate to a lot of what she is talking about because I have severe ADD and I do know that ADD often accompanies Asperger's Syndrome as well as other neurological disorders. I can't imagine however, what it must be like to be completely unable to read others and know it. It must be so stressful. I luckily can read other people most of the time and I enjoy the occasional party or big social event. I do tend to be rather reclusive as I am often tired (my mind tires me out sometimes, it goes so fast) and I prefer my own company and listening to music. My mind is filled enough as it is without other people adding to it. I can totally relate to the mild neurosis and list making. I try endlessly to organise myself and I have a very hard time focusing. I also have a hard time remembering what people say to me and they get frustrated beacuse they think I don't listen. They also don't like that I get so distracted all the time. I have a hard time maintaining eye contact if there is a lot of activity around me. I also have that tendency to talk at people because my brain just starts going so fast that I start to ramble about things. I also do that if I get nervous. I take a high dose of Ritalin to help me get through school but my marks are only average because I have such a hard time concentrating. I rely on social/work skills to keep me ahead. And I have good social skills for the most part as long as the atmosphere isn't too hectic, the problems I just described are most often apparent when there is a lot of activity around me. I can't imagine how difficult it would be if I were unable to cope with interacting at all. I wish these disorders were better understood so people don't have to suffer with the ignorance of others. It can be very hurtful.

I went off on a tangent there, but oh well.

I think of all the celebrities I've tried to impersonate Craig's been the easiest
I don't know why, his accent just seems very natural

i think the lack of auditory sensory processing mentioned in that article means more in the way of voice inflections than pronunciation of words

I think the reason people with AS tend to create their own accent is because they keep themselves in their own world really
when you dissconnect yourself from the outside world there aren't going to be those influences that mold your accent and such in a conventional way

I really wouldn't be surprised if he formed his accent more on accents he heard in music and on TV more than anything

Aww, I just wanna hug Craig everytime he talks. It's funny most of the time, I was watching an interview with him and Patrick on AOL or whatever. Mostly Craig did all the talking but it seemed to me like his accent was rather British, and then he switched an Aussie accent with a little American in there, I had to listen to the interview several times over to really understand what he was saying.

It also does not help that I am really horrible when it comes to accents, I can't really understand them most of the time. Ah well.

Don't apologize. I think what you posted was really interesting. Thanks for the research. It really helps us to understand him better.
I think everyone who's always bitching about Craig's so called weirdness (like journalists and all that) should also do a little research on AS, so they'd stop making those retarded comments.

And i don't get why he's being mocked for his accent all the time cuz i think it's part of his charm, and it doesn't sound THAT weird. He just doesn't always enunciate (sp?) too well, but apart from that i don't see how he sounds any different from other australians.
I love the way he pronounces words like "important" ("imporden" he says i think), or cd's ("saydays" is what it sounds like). It's just adorable, but it's not just him who does that.

I find his accent sounds a bit Irish sometimes.

It always sounds like he has allergies. And it is sort of americanized, now that you mention it.

Actually I'm studying to be a speech language pathologists and in one of my classes we focued a lot on kids with Asperger's Syndrome. These children develop language very late, and often do have trouble with language and tend to make up their own "accent." so I think I learned that and it is quite possible. Also I think they get very confused becuase when they talk they tend to be thinking about or observing other things.

back in middle school we had a week in social studies where we just studied accents and we had a linguistics expert come in and talk to us about different accents and slang use in English speaking countries and he said the Australian accents are basically different combinations of Irish and British accents.

Craig's accent is nothing to my awesome east coast fisherman accent......

It must be so awesome to have a class just on that even if it was just a week. I like leaning about different accents and slang use. I guess the reason why he sounds irish is coz he has a mix of american and british so it kind of adds to that.

I have a aussie accent but seriously i dont think aussies have accents.

huh? I don't understand. Everyone has an accent...but that's just the way you speak so you don't feel that you have an "accent."

You do, its shmexay, my accent sucks!

My accent is boring. There is absolutely nothign special about it. Except sometimes hwen I'm pissed or if I'm arguing I have an italian accent

^^you are going to laugh so hard, because I don't know if the french speaking people have any impact on the english speakers, but do you have a little bit of a french accent?

lol. Actually I don't. To be honest, I suck terribly in french.

I'm glad French is my 1st language, it's so hard to learn for foreigners! It's such a stupid language, you have millions of spelling for the same sound; like "o", "au", "eau", "ot", "ho"... all this to make the sound O!!! Other latine languages are so much easier!

Sometimes I can only think of a word in french and not in english and then other times i can only think of a certain word in english and not in french. I hate it. And I feel like such a loser when i end up saying "sorry i don't know the word in english but..." cause french's my second language and no one here speaks it much (except for younger people)

The same thing happens with me coz french is my second language too.. There will be words that I just can't think of in english, but I can in french. Like to say 'comma'..I always call' it a 'virgule' in french instead coz that words seems to pop up right in away in my head more than 'comma'. But I can't speak french just like that. I'd have to really trhink about what I'm saying before and sort of plan it out like when doing an oral at school or something. Otherwise, just talking to someone like that, my french is bad because I never went to a french school. All the schools I've went to were bilingual, but I speak english at home so it wasn't enough. But some things just come naturally. I agree though, Guilieta, french is really hard coz they have all these excpetions and a million spellings for one sound. Especially verbs..Oh man, verbs are terrible.

I HATE FRENCH VERBS!!! It's all just memorization basically. We have to know like every different time or whatever you call it for the year end exam which is in like a month and i've forgotton a lot of them except for present and passe composer, conditionel, and imperatif. There's so many more i have to revise. I hate it because i can speak the right verb at the right time i just don't know all the fancy writing it out stuff. I HATE THEM SO MUCH!!! Plus my french teacher pretty much sucks, she can be a real bitch sometimes.

We recently had this student teacher that taught us all our lessons for the past month. It was all pretty pointless stuff, it's was grade 8 french, so everyone there's been taking it for 9 years. And it was just a lot of talking, we wasted verb revision time!!!

I'm sorry, I know i'm ranting, i'm cutting myself off now.

It's easy to read and speak if you have a large vocabulary, though. I think it's mostly due to all the syllables (probably not the right word, but you know.) in large words and whatnot. I like being able to speak several languages. I have deep voice (think Bea Arthur or Kathleen Turner) that has a little french accent left in it still.

the french confuse me becuase they always blow off letters at the end of words. for that reason I had a very very difficult time attempting to pronounce words in french class.

Yeah! All those spellings at the end. I hate that. Right now we're learning passé simple in french class. But it's pointless coz passé simple is only used say if you're writing a fairy tale. Coz you can't speak passé simple or else it sounds really ugly. Present, passé composé and imparfait are the easiest in my opinion. But that's probably because I've been learning those every year since grade four. It's the same thing every year with that. But then there are the exceptions and that just pisses the shit out of me. I fuck up so bad with those.
My teacher is okay though. She's really nice and I'm used to her because in grade 7 I had her for geography (and geography is in french too) so yeah. Sometimes she decides that she's too tired to teach so she gives us a free period lol.

i remember that too!!!!

See? I'm not crazy.....just a little loony.

I always add in czech and bosian words into my speech. I have french as a second language and that's usually my main source for the slang I make up

So do I, I miss taking Spanish, I miss everything about NC even my mortal enemy!

mmm....czech.

wat up

nothing much, how are you?

If u want a aussie accent all you gotta do it say "ay" at the end of every sentence
Say alot of "mate" "oi" and so on and there you go your aussie accent is there...

they reckon the aussie accent is one of the most hardest accents to impersonate.

i dunno how to speak in french dudes
im argentinian and here we speak spanish
i have a terrible fuckin accent in english
i dont pronunciate it correctly
ive never learn to do it
ohhh whateverrr

I like the french language but it's hard to learn. I don't really know what Craigs accent sounds like to me, but it's nice.

Australians have one of the thickest accents i've ever heard.
They stretch certain syllables, they don't always pronounce the "r"'s in words and they say "oi" a lot instead of "i", fine (foine), wine (woine)...

i guess i would like french too if i could speak it well!

but i sucked at it so i voted it out! i'm not that talented in laguages!

i also like the laguage of scandinavians! and their accent when they speak german . It is so lovely