From AVweb reader Ol’ Russ Walker:
One Sunday afternoon Sacramento Executive Ground was apparently having a receiver problem. I had to repeat my request a couple of times. Other people were getting “say agains” that I could hear loud and clear. One fellow came up with an accent, not British, not Aussie, I’m not sure what. He had a good speaking voice and was quite understandable. Nevertheless, he got the same “say again” the rest of us had been getting.
After finally being cleared to taxi, he came up with a smile in his voice and said, “I suppose you had a hard time understanding my accent.” The controller responded, “Oh no, sir! It’s just that your transmissions are a little fuzzy.” With an even bigger smile in his voice, he replied, “Oh. That would have been my mustache.”
Send controller to an audiologist. :-o)
South African and some NZ accents sound British. (NZ accents vary from nice like some areas of London England to rough. I blew it one day, asked two young ladies at hotel checkin in Toronto what part of London they were from. New Zealand!, different from lady I worked with.
Of course accents in Britain vary, the hotel clerks were not Cockney, nor Scotch nor Welsh.
I’ve always had a knack for imitating accents, even having done a few for commercials on radio. Many years ago, while flying across the U.S. from south-east to north-west in our Aerostar, my partner and I needed something to break the tedium. As I was right seat on a 4 hour leg and in charge of the radio, I decided to use a different accent on each call to ATC. Forgetting that in some areas, even though I was being handed off to another frequency, it was the same controller. After three consecutive frequency hand offs using three different accents checking out and checking in, ATC acknowledged my last transmission with “NXXX radar identified, (pause)… and hey, just how many of you guys are flying that thing anyway?”
Mission accomplished - tedium broken.