I have this friend from New York who, most of the time, speaks in a normal (that is to say, southern) accent that she's acquired as a result of being surrounded for so long by people who speak the King's English ('cause Elvis was a southerner). Occasionally, though, usually after she's been talking to someone back home, she slips into her old Jamaica Queens accent, and when she does, I spend the first thirty seconds or so just trying to figure out whether she's speaking English, and I don't even bother trying to understand the meaning of those strangely accented words she's uttering. After that period of complete incomprehension, though, I seem to get used to her relapsed accent, and suddenly I can understand her perfectly well. Of course, by this time, I've missed enough of what she's saying that I have no idea what she's talking about, but at least the words now make sense.

I'd noticed this happen several times, but never really thought about it, partly because I'm not a psycholinguist, so that sort of thing doesn't interest me enough to think that deeply about it, and partly because I figure everyone should speak with a southern accent, and if they don't, it's not my fault I can't understand them. But earlier this week, I read a paper by Maye et al. titled "The Weckud Wetch of the Wast: Lexical Adaptation to a Novel Accent" (1), because the title sucked me in, and learned a bit about how I adopt to my friends' crazy Queens accent. And I thought I'd share what I learned with you.