Do you have a strong regional accent?
 

I don't have a southern accent, even though I grew up in the suburbs outside of Atlanta. This may be because my parents are from Argentina, though. Conversations at home were frequently in Spanglish, although in recent years my parents speak Spanish with me very rarely. I think they try to practice their English as much as possible when I'm with them.

So...do ya'll have accents? :D

I have a soft southen drawl even though I grew up north of the Mason-Dixon line. My parents were from the south and their language is my langauge.

(I work hard not to code switch because I suspect unhealthy subconscious signals are sent. I have no evidence of yhis, it's just a sneaky suspicion.)

Interesting...it seems there are a lot of native Southerners here. :) People often do seem surprised to find out you're from the south if you have no detectable accent, at least based on my experience in Jersey City.

No matter where I go people ask about my accent.

I grew up in Detroit :|

Naaa, no accent....

Now I think I will eat some chowdaa in my caa

lol

I have a really strong accent. It's a mixture of Rhode Island and Boston. I drop my r's but I don't pronounce cot and caught the same way. A RI accent sounds a bit like a NY (Brooklyn) type accent. Anyway it is thick and I have never been able to lose it. I have lived in Montreal for 12 years and it is as thick as it ever was. It makes my French almost incomprehensible. Not that it is very good anyway. But the accent made me stop trying to speak French. I wish I didn't have an accent. My wife loves it though, so that's something.

Stong? no. I tend to pick up the regional accents pretty quickly. Being born in New York, sometimes that accent will come out, especially lately since my ex was also originally from New York and her accent was thick. I've also had a Texas/Oklahoma drawlll and MN ya sure, you betcha! Now that I'm back in Oklahoma, I may have a slight drawl back but still, the others will come out and play with certain words or situations I suppose.

I didn't used to have anything but a city accent which is lack of an accent in TX. lmao However, I live in East TX, and hour from Dallas and 2.5 hrs West of Louisiana, and the Tx accent here is a bit of a drawl for sure. I do have that now, and when I'm around other family members that are just outside of Austin, the accent isn't the same there as mine here, so it kinda rubs off on me when I'm in a different area of TX. Texas has a few different drawls or some lack there of in the larger cities like Dallas and Houston. It's interesting to me how many of my family members talk with a different accent. lol
But if you talk to me, you know I'm from the south and have a Texas drawl in my lingo. I say yes ma'am and no ma'am in my mannerisms and stuff. When I lived just outside Detroit MI and worked in that area, peeps knew I was from Tx cause of the yes ma'am no ma'am lingo and the drawl. If they didn't think it was Texan they knew it was from the south.

I do NOT have a strong regional accent although I suppose I do have an accent of sorts... I am Canadian and as such, speak like one. Having grown up with a stay at home mum who has a Scottish accent, I started Kindergarten with a bit of a Scottish accent... I lost it though and began speaking like all my Canadian counterparts! ;) (kids can be so mean!)
Interesting thread!

I very much do have a strong Appalachian accent .
I was born and raised 5 minutes away from both West Virginia and Kentucky so I definitely sound Appalachian .

Born, raised, and still live in California.

No accent

Just an American one :raspberry:

Right...we tend to forget that, here in the States. :D I also have a "generic" American accent.

Can you usually detect regional accents on Americans? I can't distinguish between different types of British accents. Sometimes it takes me a little while to tell whether it's Australian, South African or British. :blush:

I have that Houston accent! When I used to attempt LDRs, people I would talk to from the Northeast or PNW were always disappointed that I didn't sound more Southern.

However, if you get me around my country cousins (Grimes Co., DeWitt Co.) i do have a twang that will come out real quick. And "ma'am," "sir," and "ya'll" are standard in my speech

I grew up in Ohio, now live in Arkansas for several years. I get people guessing I'm from Michigan or Wisconsin, never the South. I did one of those linguistic tests once and obviously came out "Upper Midwest". However, if I'm very tired, a few picked-up Southernisms come out and I sound like a muted Scarlett O'Hara from Cleveland.

I have a good friend who is from California and he most definitely has an accent to me. :)

That's an interesting question. I know here in Montreal, Anglophones can tell immediately I'm from Boston while Francophones mostly cannot.

Scarlett O'Hara from Cleveland... :cheesy: hah

I'm going to look up linguistic tests - good idea!

i guess it would make sense that a native English speaker of any kind would be better at distinguishing differences, although perhaps that's not the reason...who knows?! I can always tell when someone speaking Spanish has an Argentinian accent (they sound like my parents!), although I'm a little lost at picking up Cuban vs. Puerto Rican, for example.

Living in California but...made, born and raised in Puerto Rico...hmmm yes I definitively have an accent! :bowdown:

From the Canadian Maritimes
 

Do I have a regional accent? Of course. Everyone does (even my American friends who try to say they don't). ;)

Whether it's strong or not depends on who you ask I suppose. Most Americans tend to be able to pick up on it as just generally Canadian. People from the UK often assume I'm American (http://www.toffeetalk.com/public/sty...ing%20fist.png) and most other Canadians can tell I'm from somewhere on the East Coast.

In casual conversations I also tend to talk at a fast clip which I'm told is a fairly regional thing. Americans often tell me to slow down, especially those from the deep South. Out here "our" sounds like "are" and "right" sounds like "rate." The D's and G's in words like "old" and "going" are usually dropped. R's towards the end of words like "car" and "dart" sound a bit hard and I have a friend originally from BC who says all Maritimers sound like pirates, especially when drunk. I guess?
:pirate-steer:
I think it would be neat if people were to include a little video clip of an example of their regional accent. Mine would probably be closest to Sarah McLachlan in the early days before she started really sounding like a Vancouverite. :p



I've had a couple people from Toronto ask me if I was originally from Newfoundland. :| (cue jokes about Toronto :p)

For those not familiar with that regional accent, here is an example:


Not. Me. :p
(though I really like it!)

I love this thread! :thumbsup: I often wonder what the voices of the people I'm talking to here actually sound like!

I have a mess of an accent. Several places.

But, I have a low, husky tone, FM radio announcer type voice (one of my exes said it's similar to Kathleen Turner's) with punctuated upper middle class articulate pronunciations (theatric, I suppose) and a soft hint of London that floats in and out as I speak.

When I had been in the UK for ten years my accent was so baffling to people they could not tell where the hell I was from. I got asked if I was scottish, australian, welsh, New Zealand.... ?

Amused the hell out of me.

I remember conversations in the seventies about how broadcast news and the increased watching of television was ruining the regional differences in the US, and homogenizing the country culturally. I think it's happening, the differences are fading more all the time. I like it when I hear dialects and differing word usages, mostly folks from other countries. Helps me get out of my own little box.

I sound west coast/PNW/Canadian (western), at least that's what I'm told.

*Really glad I didn't end up sounding like Walter Cronkite*

OK...sooo I've been told I have an accent. I've been told it's abrasive *shrugs* I don't see it...do you?

I find it interesting how anyone outside "our" region sounds different, and that "ours" is normal. And how there can be layers of both cultural and region speech patterns that mix.Throw in the ability to speak more than one language and and the layers deepen. Such a varied field of flowers, us humans.

I've been told I have a Chicago accent. Personally, I don't think I do. But I think it's harder to recognize an accent in yourself than hearing it in other people. A good friend of mine always makes me repeat the word "quarter". Apparently I say it funny.

What I do notice more is the slang and colloquialisms I have a tendency to use. Like sitting in the "front room", wearing "gym shoes", and drinking "pop".

To say someone's accent is "abrasive" seems oppressive to me. Maybe classist, definitely regionalist. Some accents are "deeper," in my opinion, than others—more thoroughly immersed in the way of speaking in a certain region. Why is that a bad thing? An "abrasive" thing?

My dad had a different accent than I do. He had a masculine, upbeat, Texan twang. He was the only person in my world with that accent. I can still hear it. I channel his encouraging words.

I went to an Ivy League graduate school and there, for the first time in my life, people corrected my pronunciation of certain words (for example, I would say IN-sur-ance, not in-SUR-ance) and grammar. Some constructions, like "lay" and "lie" will never come naturally to me, but I know how to do it right.

When I'm with my sister, I don't bother self-correcting.

One particular conversation comes to mind when I read the title of this thread. I was asked during this conversation, "can you repeat that without your accent?" I actually thought for a moment to Myself if that was possible. After I was finished laughing, because she was darn cute and serious about it, I did try. You'll never take the country out of this good ole boy.

So, I will defer to Ms. Candelion, who can answer this better than Myself.

It's interesting to hear the different colloquialisms people use.

People often say "cut the lights off," instead of "turn the lights off," in GA. I have a friend from St Louis who said she never heard someone say "shot a bird" instead of "flip a bird." Of course everyone drinks Coke, so there is no "pop." :)

It's slower and thicker than molasses in January. His accent, that is. :p

I have a mix of Italian,cajun and southern drawl,understandable ??Ask Fever.

Oh yeah, there's pop..lol
 

Being born and raised in Upper Michigan I never heard pop called Soda till I moved to the big city of Milwaukee:nerd:

Another thing they said in the city that I'd never heard of "we're going to go by so and so's" I never understood why they said "by" instead of "to" so and so's I mean to me going by someone's place meant to just drive by not stop and visit!

Regional, no. Pedantic, alas, yes.

yes, different parts of the country have different words and wordings for things, like:

In Mass...we say: where is the bubblah?
translation: where is the water fountain/drinking fountain

In Mass...bang a left at the light
translation: take the next left

In Mass...I'm gonna swing by the packie, you want somethin?
translation: I'm heading to the liquor store, would you like me to pick you up something?

In Mass....that is wicked cool!
translation: That's great!

I could go on....but yeah...it's an interesting little thing to observe. Sometimes it's like we aren't even speaking the same language when I am talking to folks here in the midwest