Why my English doesn’t sound French

How being a linguistic chameleon made little autistic me a hoot in the office

Since starting my first proper job as a software engineer, where English is the default language, I’ve had to field the same baffled reaction: people wondering how someone with my unmistakably French roots sounds like they were raised on Doctor Who and David Attenborough specials. And yet, you wouldn’t know I’m French from hearing me speak English.

Close your eyes, and you’d picture a middle-class Brit sipping tea, grumbling about the weather, and mispronouncing the word “aluminum.” My English is so British that it causes confusion, especially in a multinational workplace where accents are like name tags – something people expect to match your origins.

Let’s get one thing straight: I’m French. Born in France, raised in France (in the dead middle of it, for what it’s worth¹), and my daily bread consumption could² put Parisian bakeries out of business. My ancestry? Pure French cliché. My father’s family has been sipping wine in Bourgogne for five generations, and my mother’s side is so Breton that crêpes are basically a family tradition.

At that moment, I have two options. I could give a short, boring explanation (“I learned English at school”), but that’s neither fun nor true. Or I could tell the long, absurdly detailed version—the one about an 11-year-old girl, her autistic special interest, a beauty guru, and the unstoppable gravitational pull of One Direction.

Naturally, I’m here to tell you the long version.

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The linguistic bootcamp

Let me take you back to a freezing winter morning on a crowded school bus. I’m huddled in the back seat with my best friend, who’s clutching her precious iPod Nano like it contains state secrets. She hands me one earbud and presses play. Cue What Makes You Beautiful.

Within seconds, my life changes.

Who were these guys? Why did they sound so... magical? And most importantly, how could I get more of this in my life?

That bus ride was the beginning of what I can only describe as my personal linguistic enlightenment. By the time we got to school, I was a Directioner in the making. But being French meant I had some hurdles to clear. My middle-school English wasn’t good enough to decipher the slang-filled interviews or Tumblr memes. I needed to level up, fast.

So I did what any hyper-fixating autistic pre-teen would do: I threw myself into full immersion. Every One Direction interview, every YouTube vlog, every subtitled clip became part of my training regimen. Zoella’s videos were a godsend – not for makeup tips (i couldn’t care less about that), but for mastering that perfectly cozy British accent. I even practiced narrating my life as if I, too, were filming a haul video: “I just popped into town and picked up this super cute planner – it’s brilliant, don’t you think?”

Soon, my dedication paid off. By 13, I was tossing out words like “knackered” and “bloody hell” in chat rooms with the confidence of a Brighton-born girl. While my classmates wrestled with irregular verbs, I was perfecting the delicate art of pronouncing “scone” without offending anyone. And if you think I’m exaggerating, let me remind you: this was about Harry Styles. Dedication was the bare minimum.

I wasn’t just absorbing it all – I was contributing, too, making graphics for album releases, subtitling music videos, and even writing fanfiction. If there was a way to turn obsession into output, I found it. And my brain soaked it alllll up.

Looking back, I realize how lucky I was to hit my preteen years in the golden age of One Direction. Ten years earlier, I might’ve been obsessing over Prince William and killed my republican mom.³ Ten years later? I’d be trying to copy the accents of 5 Seconds of Summer, and sounding like I was auditioning for a Texan high school play (and there’s only so much “y’all” a French girl can handle).

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The autism-proof icebreaker (or as close as it’ll get to it)

Small talk is a battlefield, and for an autistic person like me, it’s one I usually enter woefully underprepared. But thanks to my accent and its improbable backstory, I’ve accidentally armed myself with the perfect icebreaker – a story so polished it could be its own sitcom pilot. And once I tell it, the reactions are delightfully predictable.

The women love it. They laugh, nod knowingly, and often launch into their own nostalgic confessions. Spice Girls, NSYNC, Taylor Swift – it doesn’t matter what their teenage obsession was; we’ve all been in the trenches of fangirl fervor. In these moments, I get to watch their professional masks slip just a little⁴, as they gleefully recount nights spent perfecting dance routines or rewatching Twilight. It’s a strange but genuine bonding ritual, like sharing a secret handshake that only those with teenage posters on their walls would understand.

The men? Let’s just say it’s more of a mixed bag. Some smile politely but look like they’d rather talk about quarterly reports than hear about 2010s YouTube culture. Others frown like I’ve just spoken in Klingon. And a brave few attempt to fake familiarity:“Oh, Harry Styles? The guy in the dress?” Yes, Brad. That’s him. He also happens to be a Grammy-winning global icon, but sure, reduce him to one outfit (and judge me in the process).

There are always a few who can’t hide their disdain, like I’ve just admitted to worshipping the devil instead of Harry Styles. There’s an unspoken societal rule: if teenage girls like something, it must be mocked until it dies. If you’re a man yelling at a screen for hours over a goal, you’re passionate. If you’re a woman who spent hours learning Harry Styles’ songs, you’re obsessive. For years, I bought into the shame. I treated my One Direction phase like a dark secret, hidden away where no one could roll their eyes at it.

Nowadays, I’ve learnt to appreciate the little magic in it, and this technique has become the reliable cornerstone of my social life. Small talk doesn’t come naturally to me, but this? This is a script I’ve memorized, a perfect opener for every awkward introduction or dreaded networking event. It’s my fun fact, my “introduce yourself in one minute”, my secret weapon. Instead of scrambling for a witty comment or pretending I care about the weather, I get to hit play on my accent’s origin story and coast through the hardest part of the conversation.

It’s reassuring, really, to have something like this in my back pocket. A built-in conversation starter that lets me be approachable without trying too hard. In a way, my autistic masking removes their professional mask, and allows me to connect on an emotional level with people who would have stayed work acquaintances otherwise. Turns out, it’s so much easier to work with people who like you!

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Merit Badges in Commitment

Here’s the thing nobody tells you about fangirling: it’s basically a bootcamp for life skills. Hunting down obscure concert footage? That’s just research. Coordinating group orders for fan merch? Logistics and project management. Making Tumblr edits? Graphic design. Writing fanfiction? Storytelling and emotional intelligence⁵. And don’t even get me started on how many accents I can now decipher thanks to years of watching interviews from around the world.

All those skills translate surprisingly well to the workplace. I can write, edit, organize, and decode cryptic Slack messages with terrifying efficiency.⁶ I’m as good as it gets at obscure internet searches and critical thinking (was that a leaked song lyric from the next album or just a fan-made lie?), and timezones have no secret for me⁷. Fandom was my training ground, and the workplace is just a less sparkly version of the same game.

And for me, fangirling wasn’t just passion—it was survival. As an autistic teenager, fandom gave me a way to belong. It let me channel my special interest into a community where my awkwardness didn’t matter. Nobody cared if I stumbled over my words or hyper-focused on tiny details; in fandom, that was the whole point. Obsession wasn’t just allowed—it was mandatory.

So what started as an innocent obsession with British YouTubers and Harry Styles interviews turned into a superpower I never anticipated: I have turned into a language chameleon. Years of listening to fangirls from every corner of the globe gave me an ear for accents and a fluency that transcends borders. I can walk into a meeting with colleagues from five different countries and understand everyone well enough to keep things running smoothly.

At my French office, this skill has made me indispensable. When our Indian project manager needs something coordinated, I’m the one they call. My ability to bridge linguistic and cultural gaps means I’m trusted with bigger responsibilities—not because I’m necessarily the best (I’m a new grad junior), but because I’m the easiest to work with. And in any workplace, that’s half the battle.

my colleagues in Paris, when i translate the corporate speech acronyms from over the Pond

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Linguistic camouflage

But my accent does more than smooth over international communication. It shapes how I’m perceived, and, let’s be honest, in a corporate world built on snap judgments, perception is everything. Unlike most French people, I don’t “sound French.” Americans have this unfortunate stereotype that we’re lazy, wine-drunk intellectuals who only work a 35-hour week and strike for sport.⁸ My vaguely British, upper-class accent bypasses all that. It lets me step into meetings without carrying the weight of those assumptions.

And then there’s the class factor. My RP accent – courtesy the countless other posh YouTubers who spent their entire allowances at Harrods – lends me an air of sophistication I didn’t exactly earn. People hear it and assume I come from wealth, private schools, and a network of well-heeled connections. The truth is more modest: my family is comfortably middle-class, full of teachers (and one doctor), left-wing and careful about consumption. I had plenty of cultural capital, sure, but it wasn’t exactly yachts and summer homes in the Hamptons.

Still, that accent has opened doors. It’s introduced me to people I never would’ve met otherwise and helped me land my job. For example, when I go to tech meetups in Paris, I’m assumed to be a British expat⁹, and then invited to various casual meetings. As I’ve said, I always share this story so that I don’t mislead people, but I find that the invitation is never rescinded. At one of those breakfasts, I met a recruiter who gave me my first internship – right after the end of lockdowns, in a world where companies weren’t taking any French interns¹⁰ — which set my CV up to land my mandatory end-of-studies internship, and subsequently my current job.

I’ve also been invited to casual ski trips, or English countryside vacations – my horse riding skills come from moving old gentle Cookie around to move Grandma’s cows to the next field, but it’s enough to pretend I’ve had a classical education. And more importantly, it’s expanded my social circle to a bunch of wealthy young people, on whom I can count on to give me referrals next time I want to switch jobs. The corporate world runs on connections, and having a voice that fits the mold — even when my bank account doesn’t—lets me blend in just enough to access those networks.¹¹

camping trip vibes be (not) like

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It’s about being “just foreign enough”

But the beauty of my linguistic camouflage isn’t just in fitting in; it’s also in being just foreign enough. When I make mistakes—missing a social cue, misunderstanding a joke—I can blame it on being non-native. “Oh, sorry! Must be a cultural thing.” Nobody questions it, and nobody looks deeper. That little out I get from being “the French girl” helps mask my autism in ways I didn’t realize I needed. It gives me space to exist without having to explain every quirk or slip-up.

It’s exceptionally ironic to me that my teenage special interest¹² ended up being such a boon for communicating. The stereotype of autistic people is that we struggle to communicate, that we’re trapped behind glass, forever one step behind in a conversation, missing all the social cues that are natural to others. A lot of us try to make up little scripts to work around our limitations, but they often come out stilted and ever so slightly out of place. I’m so lucky that I’ve been able to develop mine into a tool that works so well.

I’ve been at my job for a year now, and I’ve started to dread meeting French people. In French, I have no pre-programmed banter, no convenient self-deprecating jokes to smooth over the gaps. Worse, I have to mask¹³ twice as hard. My mistakes aren’t as easily forgiven—no one assumes I just didn’t know that social cue. There’s an expectation that I should already understand, that I should already be “normal.”¹⁴

In English, my misunderstanding of common phrases¹⁵ is cute; in French, it’s just wrong. And since I can’t use my accent as a conversational shortcut, I’m stuck floundering through the standard, unbearable process of social interaction without any of my usual cheat codes. It’s exhausting.

My own parents poke fun at my “weird English mouth,” and every time I slip up on a French word order, I get met with a smirk and a “tu perds ton français.¹⁶” But what am I supposed to do? Switch accents like a multilingual chameleon?

Maybe. Maybe that’s exactly what I’ll do. After all, if fandom taught me anything, it’s that reinvention is just a matter of practice.

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Endnotes

French internet thing of the day: mdr is the equivalent of lol, except it literally means dying of laughter (mort.e de rire). Ironically, ptdr, which is one level up from mdr, only means exploding of laughter (pété.e de rire).

English internet thing of the day: the ptdr wikipedia page redirected me to the English pmsl for pissing myself laughing which i’d never heard of, but was apparently the equivalent at some point.

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Did you have a similar experience with accents? Have you ever been the accent person in your office? Or, if autistic, what is your ice breaker story? Btw you can borrow mine if enough details apply ;)

(you can also reply to this email to let me know what you think, only i can see replies, and i promise i respond to all!)

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Finally, thank you to everyone who helped me with the idea and the editing <3 Tracy Durnell,

Nat Lee

,

Gairik Sachdeva

,

Lily

,

Claire Coley

Image credits:
- all pictures (including from the collage) come from my little (big) fangirl folder from back in the day, probably originally from Tumblr users :))
- i made that collage at the top <3

1. Literally called the “diagonal of nothingness”, because everyone left for the city a long time ago

2. does, actually

3. Republican as in royalty-beheading Republic lover, not Trump and Sarkozy!

4. The irony isn’t lost on me that by upping my autistic masking (the act of pretending to be “normal”), i’m making them (the “normals”) remove theirs

5. I didn’t necessarily do well on that side, but I tried very hard and I credit it for helping me understand humans better

6. So long as they’re written by people my generation – turns out the enigmatic social codes change over time and I had to learn an entire new set of them :,(

7. If Lily starts the new album support campaign at 5pm India, and Maria at 12:30 Spain, then Joana from New York can send hers before going to school!

8. Okay, the hours and strikes are accurate, but the laziness isn’t. (And that’s the only reason why my on-call shifts are paid are theirs aren’t so I’ll take the stereotype after all!)

9. and not immigrants of course…

10. Because we have to be paid and treated fairly, with actual oversight from teachers – so students from other countries, with other kinds of internship contracts got the upper-hand (but I don’t envy them)

11. To be completely honest, I don’t like all of them, and I wouldn’t call most of those women my friends, but I recognize how useful and important it is so I make an effort.

12. A “special interest” is a highly focused interest common in autistic people. It’s much more intense than a normal hobby, and can make up most of our free time (the stereotype is that of trains for little boys). See more on wikipedia

13. “Autistic masking” is the act of hiding and compensating for autistic traits, with the goal of being perceived as a “normal” person, to reduce the chance of being stigmatized and discriminated against. See more on wikipedia

14. In quotes because i’m just as normal as everyone else. The current stats say that around 1% of the population is autistic, but that number is likely higher seeing how hard it is to get a diagnosis, even more so for women.

15. what do you mean “it rains cats and dogs”? At least the French idiom is “it’s raining ropes” because that’s what big raindrops going really fast look like.

16. “You’re losing your French”