The Many Accents of Hillary Clinton

This is fascinating.  Bloomberg posted a collection of YouTube clips featuring the various accents of Hillary Clinton. We've all heard that one where she is in a black church trying to affect the accent, but have you heard her employing a pretty good (and creepy) syrupy sweet, southern accent while talking in a normal, conversational tone?

I'm not doing this just to make fun of Hillary. The article explains how people's speech patterns, dialects and accents can shift and change depending on circumstances, and being in the military I've experienced it, in myself and others.

I started my young adult life in the Air Force with a lazy-tongued, mumbly, snort through your nose hayseed accent that I still sometimes lapse into, to the point I have to stop and purposely enunciate clearly so my wife and kids can understand what I am saying.

When I lived in Latin America, all that cleared up, and my speech became sharp and staccato because I spoke more Spanish than English while there.

I even spoke a pretty good Jamaican patois back then. When my Jamaican buddies and I ran into friends of theirs from the island they would demand I demonstrate my linguistic abilities, and it would crack them up every time to hear a white boy be able to converse like that. I didn't just have the speech patterns, I had all the dat tings, jumblats and bloodclots down as well.

Anyway, here's the Hillary article. Enjoy!

And for you Hillary fans, here's an entertaining piece on the GOP candidates pandering to Hispanics by speaking Spanish on the campaign trail.