Stupid Guest Tricks

Amphigorey wrote:There isn't really any such thing as "not having an accent." Everybody has an accent...

felinefan wrote:Frankly, I thought nobody west of the Rockies had an accent...

But people from San Diego have a funny accent!

And yes, I understand that everybody has an accent. If I say I don't I am fully joking.

I have a very weird, mixed up accent. Different people hear different things in it, Southern (born and raised, grandma also from the South), Georgia (mom was a Georgia girl), Yankee (granddad), English (great-grandparents), Scottish (another set of great-grandparents), and sometimes others. I think I might sometimes "pick up" accents from people around me, which is why it varies.

While I try not to talk like a redneck (hard when you grew up in redneckville) one can usually tell I'm from the South when I talk. The Southern accent is one of my stronger ones and I do use "y'all" and similar words sometimes.

Cranbiz wrote:I paak my caah.

I got in my caah.
I drove to the baah.
I drank some beeah.
And baafh on the flahh.

Amphigorey wrote:There isn't really any such thing as "not having an accent." Everybody has an accent; it's just that some accents and dialects are dominant. Standard American English is as distinctive as Scottish English to a linguist.

I've never really noticed myself having an accent.

Shorty82 wrote:I have a very weird, mixed up accent. Different people hear different things in it, Southern (born and raised, grandma also from the South), Georgia (mom was a Georgia girl), Yankee (granddad), English (great-grandparents), Scottish (another set of great-grandparents), and sometimes others. I think I might sometimes "pick up" accents from people around me, which is why it varies.

While I try not to talk like a redneck (hard when you grew up in redneckville) one can usually tell I'm from the South when I talk. The Southern accent is one of my stronger ones and I do use "y'all" and similar words sometimes.

Yes, you do, Shorty. I never could place your "accent," although the southern part was definitely there. An interesting mix, you are.

joanna71985 wrote:I've never really noticed myself having an accent.

One doesn't notice their own accent. That's why the only reason I know my accent is all weird is because I've been told by a number of people.

I'm from Boston, and while people say I have a slight accent, they always have a hard time placing it, and never guess anywhere near Boston. It's mainly because I say my "R"'s. And hearing someone imitate a Boston accent is like torture. I remember that show Crossing Jordan, it took place in Boston, but only one person tried to talk with the Boston accent. It was horrible. What was so great about The Dearted is that the ones that talked in the Boston accents were actually from Boston.

accioetoile wrote: And hearing someone imitate a Boston accent is like torture.

Like hearing people attempt to imitate a southern accent..

Except for the one anomaly which was Olympia Dukakis in Steel Magnolias, her and Shirley McClain's accents were good but Julia Robert's (who is from Smyrna GA.) couldn't do a decent southern accent.

It was just another reason for me to dislike that woman..

joanna71985 wrote:I've never really noticed myself having an accent.

That's probably because you speak the dominant dialect. That doesn't mean your speech is accentless; it just means that the features of your dialect are shared by the majority of American English speakers. You'd have a very strong accent to, say, a native of London, or a speaker of Indian English.

I'm using "dialect" in a technical linguistic sense; it means the specific form of a language used by a speech community. Everyone has a dialect. Mine is northern Californian, and sounds a lot like Standard American, although there are some subtle differences. To answer a question upthread about Californian accents, the Rs are a little harder, some of us say "rilly" for "really," and California is where the emphasizer "hella" originated. Our vowels are sometimes a little different, too - broader and more flattened. Older San Franciscans say the days of the week as "Mondee" and "Tuesdee," but it's slight and not very exaggerated.

If you want a technical discussion of the different vowel sounds throughout the United States, check out http://www.ling.upenn.edu/phono_atlas/N ... alMap.html, which outlines the results of a 1996 linguistics study.

Regional differences in the US aren't as pronounced as the ones in England, but they do exist. One reason is that we just haven't been around as long, but the second and IMO more influential one is the advent of transportation and communication technologies. People migrated across great areas in a relatively short amount of time, which meant there simply wasn't time for distinctive regional dialects to develop. This is why you encounter less diversity as you move West; the east coast settlements are older, so there's more variation there.

Shorty82 wrote:One doesn't notice their own accent. That's why the only reason I know my accent is all weird is because I've been told by a number of people.

I've learned to recognize mine since living in the South because Southerners are not at all shy about pointing it out! It's made me very aware of my pronunciation of certain words. Also, I've noticed that the expression y'all has slipped into my lexicon...probably sounds especially weird when spoken with a Chicago accent.