A few people may remember, several years back, some road work being done in Agua Dulce, California. The road work isn’t really memorable, but it did offer us a nice lesson in chameleolinguistics. The road work had caused the traffic to stop (and my traffic I mean the car that contained my family), and my father rolled down the window. One of the road workers was outside the car, and my father asked the Hispanic gentleman what sort of work they were doing and how long we could expect the wait to be. The gentleman responded, we waited, and we were soon on our way. The reason it was memorable is that, upon rolling his window back up, the entire car burst out laughing at what we had just witnessed. Father, when he addressed the roadworker, had instantly adapted his accent to almost-but-not-quite-subtly mimic that of the worker. Fantastic. Over the years, I witnessed Father do it again a few times, most often at Boy Scouts camping events where the accent that held the most prestige was more Southern/Texan, and have even noticed the same peculiar quality in myself a few times over the years. It most often occurs to me when I go back to Texas and, to increase the sense of being home, I Texify my voice a bit.

I hadn’t thought much at all about this until this morning, when it came to my attention that both Father and I have this trait in common with one of our times greatest politicians and orators. Can you guess who it is? Write your guess on the back of your hand, then proceed here.

UPDATE: Barack Obama does it too!