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Melfka’s Birthday Week: Melfka’s Accent

Welcome to my Birthday Week during which I post random, interesting or embarrassing facts about myself. If you missed the introductory post, you can find it here. Today, I’ll be wrapping up the birthday week. I know it’s a bit of cheating, since it’s only day 5, but I hope today’s surprise will make up for it.

I was thinking about something special to put up here as a way of saying “thank you” to all my readers, and here it is: a video! If you ever wondered what Melfka’s accent sounds like or how it would be like to meet me in person, you can get the taste! I’m even slightly nervous as I would be in a real life meeting.

Since I’m not a Youtuber and I don’t usually record podcasts or videos, I couldn’t get anything decent when it comes to the quality. The video was shot on my old and cranky phone, so I didn’t get to edit it and the sound is quite bad. I apologize for that, but I had a choice: share this video with you or share nothing. As you can see, I chose the former.

So, I hope you’ll enjoy it!

Melfka’s accent

Since this topic is going to come up, let me talk a bit about my accent.
When I was studying English language back in Poland, the teachers would focus on the British accent, so-called Received Pronunciation (RP) standard. I haven’t picked up much of it, or rather—whatever I picked up, didn’t really stick, and I still had my partially Polish accent.

When I moved over to Ireland, I worked mostly with multinationals, so even though I was exposed to Irish accent from time to time and liked the sound of it, it felt artificial to try to adapt to it. Besides, shortly after my move, I met my future husband, Inq. He’s American and wasn’t shy of correcting my English grammar and vocabulary, helping me to get better. As we talked almost daily. I slowly adapted to his way of speaking. As you can hear, I still have a bit of a foreign accent, but that aside I’m definitely more in the American department than the British one.

Which, one day back in Ireland, led to an amusing conversation. A stranger asked me once where I was from. I did say “Poland” and he looked at me suspiciously. “Are you sure?” he inquired. “Not from the States or Canada?” Of course, I was sure where I was from, but that memory still makes me giggle.

This concludes Melfka’s Birthday Week. I hope you enjoyed the entries. If you missed some of them, here’s the full list:

Joanna Maciejewska

Joanna Maciejewska is a fantasy and science fiction author who enjoys all things SFF: books, movies, and video games. Her short stories appeared in magazines and anthologies in Polish and in English. Her epic fantasy adventure series, starting with By the Pact, is available in ebook and paperback at all major retailers.

This Post Has 11 Comments

  1. J.R.Bee

    XD I love those kinds of questions “are you sure where you’re from” would have been the ideal opportunity to go, oh no! I forgot, I’m actually Swedish

    1. Melfka

      Yeah. “I’m sorry, you’re right. I changed my mind. I’m not Polish, I’ll be… Irish.” 😉

  2. sjhigbee

    Oh what a joy to hear your voice! You sound lovely and I loved watching your face and your expression as you talked to us. I hope your birthday has been a wonderful one and this year really special:).

    1. Melfka

      I’m glad you enjoyed it! It’s not as good as meeting in person, but I thought it would be something different. I had to record it twice and was on the verge of not sharing it, since I couldn’t edit the video for the sound. Now I’m glad I did.

      1. sjhigbee

        I’m glad you did, too:)). I’ll have to do the same thing, one of these days!

        1. Melfka

          Please do! I’d be looking forward to it. 🙂

  3. saraletourneau

    I loved this! It was great to hear your voice, Joanna. 🙂

    Accents are funny things, aren’t they? We have a very distinct accent here in Massachusetts that’s known as the Bostonian accent (lots of substituting the “ah” sound for certain r’s, like “cah” / “car” and “yahd” / “yard”). But even though I’ve grown up with family who have that accent, I don’t have it myself. And I still haven’t figured out how that happened…

    1. Melfka

      I’m glad you liked it, Sara. 🙂 As I wrote below, I wasn’t sure if I wanted to post this one, so it’s good to see that people enjoyed it. 🙂

  4. portiabridget

    The shock of the evening – Melfka actually talks …

    1. Melfka

      Mostly to herself and when no one is looking… 😉

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