Accents

I was raised in MD. I swear up and down I don't have an accent but according to other people both from other parts of the US and outside of it I do.

 

People from Chicago really do talk just like the Super Fans.

My grandfather was Cockney. I never thought anything of it but I had to translate for my friends to understand anything he said.

This thread got me pondering influences and results. My mom grew up in Schenectady, my dad in San Antonio, and I was born in San Francisco. Neither of them have an accent to my ear, and I just talk really fast. I do sporadically get asked whether I'm English or Irish, which is confusing, and I think probably has more to do with vocabulary than accent (I read a lot of books from that part of the world at a formative age), but I'm really not certain and always find it puzzling. The folks who ask are generally neither English nor Irish, though I did get mistaken for Italian by a French girl while in Ireland.

GRM-pertinent: There's a working theory that since all I ever wanted to talk about from an early age was car details, I started talking faster to get it all out before my parents got fed up and wandered off.

In reply to Wayslow :

Not Cockney, but...

EDIT: It's a lovely added bonus that the closed captioning can't even understand the most coherent (to me) of the three...

In reply to Ransom :

It was actually worse than that because he didn't always use the actual name of the thing he was talking about. He threw a fair bit of the rhyming slang around. The most commonly used was apples actually meant stairs. I understand it started out as apples and pears but somewhere along the line they dropped the pears part and stairs just became apples. But sometimes it got changed to "up woten ill", direct translation "up wooden hill" meaning "go upstairs".

If you didn't grow up with it you were screwed

I was born and raised for the most part in Ontario, but my dad and granddad are English and some of my friends were from the south. The Britishness comes out when I'm relaxed, and the southern influence comes out occasionally in dialect. When addressing a group of people, sometimes I say "you guys," sometimes I say "y'all" and sometimes I say "you lot." 

As a purebred frenchpuertoricancatholicjewfromnigeria born in Arizona and living in Canada, I have no idea what is going to fall out of my mouth at any given moment or what dulcet intonations it may consist of! Most people treat me like the nice chap with the shotgun in the video clip.

Pete

Pete Gossett said:

There’s a NOLA accent, but not one you might expect. It’s not Cajun, but rather something I can only describe as a mix between Chicagoan and Bostonian. 

It certainly sounds like northeastern accent. Took my wife to new orleans for a food vacation. Shes puerto rican descent but from bronx, ny. Were talking to this guy who grew up in NO at a market who was helping us out. He had worked in NYC and everyone up there thought he was a local. It was enough for my wife to start reverting back to her NY accent. 

As a native floridian, i dont have a accent. There is plenty who have a more backwoods “southern” accent but most floridians i know have zero accent. Had family visit from Tennessee and in their extreme southern draw, told us we had “funny accents”. Not really.  

Knurled. said:

OHSCrifle said:

My screen name lists a handful of the many states in which I've lived. For my first 25 years in Wadsworth (Northeast) and Oxford (SW) Ohio I swore that I was accent free, but after a few years each in SC, RI, FL, CT and now GA... I can discern an Ohio accent when I visit. So much for accent free.

WHICH Ohio accent?  There are several. People in Youngstown sound different from Toledo sound different from Cincy and I swear I can tell if someone is from Cleveland/west, the East side, or the Western exurbs.  And don't get me started on SE Ohio which sounds more West Virginia than actual West Virginia.

Cincinnati sounds slightly southern. I havent spent much time around Youngstown natives. I'd have a hard time describing Cleveland or Columbus, but I swear I can discern a common sound. More from women than men.

I was born in Bermuda to parents with deep Texas and Oklahoma accents.  My nanny was from Korea and my godparents were from the Bronx.  Plus, with dad being in the Air Force, I was exposed to lots of different accents.  By the time I started kindergarten I had to go to speech therapy because I would bounce around through so many accents, people had trouble understanding me.

Years later, when I'm on the phone with people or doing training in other parts of the U.S., people are surprised that I've lived in Texas most of my life and don't have much of an accent.  I usually respond with, "Y'all mean cuz I don't talk like this?" in the thickest accent I can muster to generate a laugh.

I still pick up accents really easily, though, when spending time with people.  My father in law is from England and the first time I met him, my wife pulled me aside (she has more of a Texas accent than I do) and scolded me for "making fun of him".  I had no idea what she was talking about, but had apparently started picking up and mimicking his accent without even realizing I did.

A karting dad we use to hang out with had a very thick southern drawl and my son thought it was weird that after a weekend around him, I had a very thick southern accent that would slowly go away in the following day.  He too, thought I was poking fun, but I had no idea I was even doing it.

-Rob

I am from Upstate NY. I've lived in NC for a long time (22 years), and my accent has started shifting a bit. People from the South still know I am a damn Yankee, but my family is quick to point out when I say y'all. 

My wife is from an unincorporated area of NC that is close to Rockingham. The family has lived in that area for longer than there has been a United States. The road they live on is named after the family.

I literally couldn't understand my in-laws the first time I met them. It's how I learned that my wife intentionally started masking her accent when she moved to Raleigh. If she is on the phone with her family or spends any time around them, it is back in full force.

 

I swear I don't have an accent (I'm from the PNW).  I always thought I just talked "normal".

The first time I met someone I couldnt understand, I was in Pennsylvania meeting some family out there for the first time.  My Japaneese grandmother had to translate for me the first day. 

I moved to Texas and most people there talked "normal" too, including my wife who I met in San Antonio.  So that just furthered my belief that I talk "normal"  

In Brisbane I overheard an Australian woman say "oh, I just love the way they talk" (referring to me, and my american friends) and I decided for the sake of my marriage I should probably not visit Australia anymore.

And then I heard Amy Macdonald's top gear interview and decided that I should probably stay the hell FAR away from Scotland (again, for the sake of my marriage).  I could listen to her talk all day

 

I think that's all I got on accents...

oh wait. 

ok, now THAT'S all I have on accents

In reply to Hungary Bill :

Improved even further by the YouTube auto-generated subtitles failing as badly as the robot they are making fun of!

In reply to Hungary Bill :

Amy MacDonald's accent is only nice because she isn't irritated at the time. Your second clip gets closer to that, but lacks something surprisingly heavy sailing at your head.