I find myself picking up accents very easily, to the point where people sometimes think I am mimicking them. I’m not; it just happens. The worst situation I was ever in related to this was a phone call I received while working for a government agency. I stuttered terribly as a child, and sometimes I was barely able to speak. Sometimes, especially when I am under considerable stress, this speech, with its blocks and sound repetition, will return, though to a lesser degree, fortunately. This particular phone call came from a young man who also stuttered, and I picked up on that and began stuttering again myself. He naturally thought I was mocking him. Though I apologized profusely and briefly explained my past speech difficulties, he simply would not believe I was just making fun of him. He hung up in frustration, and I felt horrible, but I could no more keep from stuttering during that call than could he.

Now if I could just converse briefly with a speaker of one the languages I studied so long ago, perhaps I would suddenly become very fluent in that language! (wishful thinking)