Genuinely don't hear it with Ricky.

Hear it with Katie because she's lived there for a few years and is bound to have picked up an accent.

I never hear an American accent from Ricky.

I kind of hear it from Katie but when some of my closest friends have spent a full week with me, they start saying words the way I do. So I get it.

Chloe has been in America for a while too though right? She sounded purely North English to me.

It's called subconscious accent mimicry. The brain involuntarily makes it happen as a way to "bond" with the other speaker. Researchers have studied it; it's not all about trying to be fake.

I speak American English, and I haven't heard Ricky speak that way, but I have heard him use some phrases that he may have heard from Katie and the Americans. But who cares, really? When I am in England, I don't say that I want to "order takeout," I tell my friends that we'll "get a takeaway." I'm not being disingenuous, though. My own Mid-Atlantic accent softens, but it's not something I concentrate on doing.

It's more 'Americanisms' than American accent with Ricky

For instance, Renee will be coming out with some garbled nonsense like. "When you borrn a bridge you caint cross it no more, cos it ain't f*****g there no more"

And Ricky will nod, knowingly, and say, *I get ya Mama ... I hear ya"

That sort of thing

Usually the reason is to "fit in" with a certain group. When Katie's accent turned American halfway through a sentence when she was shouting at Heavy D, it was because she knows Renee/Aubrey dislike Heavy D and wants to show she is on their side.

Same with Ricky. He put on an American "twang" only when he was with Renee, because he wanted to sound familiar to her.

It's a common technique to gain trust - mimicking words/gestures etc.

Absolutely people here still not getting the fact it happens and convinced it's fake ! Deary me

Shock horror, Katie lived for years in a country and has picked up some vocal traits of that country's accent. Shock horror!!

You start to speak like that so the Americans can understand you.

I'm in the States from time to time, after a few weeks you start your adapting your speech so as to ensure you don't have to repeat yourself.

So when Katie said to Heavy, "Put that God-damn cigarette down" , instead of, "Put that fkn fag out" ... it was the Americans 'getting her' that she was actually concerned about, rather than the guy she was addressing ?

So, assuming she spoke to him a lot, visited him then it is an influence she'd have had her whole life.

My Mother was from the Northeast of England but was actually RP from University in London (it was considered part of the education back in the 1950s to get rid of regional accents). Her parents however, never lost their durham accents, even after moving down to Essex, which is where I was born and brought up. Their influence (my Granddad lived till I was 25) along with contact with my other relatives from that area means that i have a slightly hybrid accent which many find impossible to place. As others have said, it is more certain words or expressions which are Northern and inflections. This gets more pronounced when i go back up there for a visit or am in conversation with somebody from that area.

So, if I were in that House, in all probability, it would increase because of Marnie who is from a very similar area, maybe 15 miles further North. Even though I actually live fairly close to Lewis, I don't sound like him, i don't have that TOWIE accent and that is because of my familys influence growing up.

Some people do just have a good 'ear' and will pick accents up really easily, whether they want to or not.

Its very easy to pick up accents, and more often than not its not a choice. I grew up down south and obviously had a "southern" accent. In my early twenties I moved to Newcastle and without realising it I picked up the Geordie accent (for my sins) In my thirties I moved to Yorkshire, I didn't pick up the Yorkshire accent but surprisingly lost my Geordie twang and regained my southern accent

Katie sounded ridiculous shouting at Boom last night, like she was reciting a scrip from The Hills or something.

I assumed he was a Richard Blackwood fan, which is far more embarrassing than just faking a US accent

That's as likely to be the influence of MLE. Where is he from and where does he live now? The pattern of speech among young people in the South East has been influenced among other things, by a sort of US style gangsta register for some time.

What in blazes are you even talking about?

What show they are on doesn't change HABIT based on where they lived or who they are talking to at the time.

People bang on about when someone is "fake" on Big Brother. Well if they were constantly parsing their speech that would be pretty fake wouldn't it? The adjustments they make to talk to the Americans would be habit, not even conscious, for the most part. Changing it back out of some bizarre awareness that they are on TV is what would be fake.

You've been to every country? Sounds like a mammoth supposition to me.

I was about to say the same thing.
It sounded like she was joking by putting on a mock American accent. You know, that thing you do when you're messing about with a mate?
But weirdly, she wasn't joking.

It didn't sound that way to me at all. Like I said in this thread (I think) it sounded a bit like Kelly Osbourne whose accent sounds a bit American at time because she has spent a large part of her life there like Katie

What a stupid comment.

Well, to give an example of "what the blazes" I'm talking about I'll give you anecdote from Catherine Zeta Jones

She's lived and worked in America for decades, and, as an actress has been 'obliged' to speak an American accent in most of her movies

Yet she says she only has to be back in Swansea for a couple of days and she slips back into a Welsh accent like she'd never been away

That's why it is surprising that Katie hasn't reverted to her 'natural' accent now that she is 'back home'

I can only think that what she is actually doing is 'mirroring' the American contingent in the house as a way of further aligning herself in their group

I've been to many, and more than most on this forum - and that's not a mammoth supposition. England is the only place where people will call me a Yankee and when I point out I'm Canadian and my "accent" is a general pan-midwestern one, I get a shrug of the shoulders and get told "same thing" (no it isn't) or an argument that im lying and actually an American on multiple occasions daily when I visit England. The obsession is really bizarre (who cares if you have an accent - you ALL have accents to me) and a blight on your nation.

I think this is what is happening. Both Ricky and Katie mimic slightly depending on who they talk to. I don't think they are even aware of it, so they are not necessarily being fake. I do this all the time, especially on the telephone, but am totally unaware that I do it. It's not just accents, I also mimic intonation - so if someone has a particularly whiny voice, I mimic that too. My daughter thinks I am a complete embarrassment.

So you project your one personal anecdote, regarding how your accent was received, as evidence of England's inherent xenophobia and racism? Laughable.

I moved to Canada as a child. When I came back to England with a Canadian accent years later, I was teased, called yank, imitated, etc. I regained my English accent slowly.

When I returned again to live in Canada with an English accent I was mocked and taken the piss out of even more so. The girls were into it however.

I've spent half my life on either side of the Atlantic and there are annoying, insufferable fools on both sides.

I have to say I do this all the time. I can't help it, my accent just changes depending who I'm talking to!! Sometimes I can hear myself doing it but I just can't stop it!!!

No you just have to look on this forum for the xenophobia and racism. I don't believe you at all unless you lived in Montreal/Quebec where they have a disdain for english speaking people (not Brits in particular) otherwise it sounds like complete BS. No one cares about accents like the English and no one can justify the obsession. Are all Brits this stupid? Not at all! You just have a very high proportion.