So, I was having a conversation with a few friends the other night at the bar and accents came up. It's always a topic that interests me. Do you speak with an accent? I would guess most people don't know they do, or don't realize it. You usually only become aware of it when other people say you have one. I'm from, and still live in the NYC metro area where you have tons of different accents in a relatively small area. I have a heavy North Jersey (Joisey) accent. Which is very different from Queens, Brooklyn, Long Island or Staten Island, which are all within minutes driving distance from me. But I try my best to squelch it. So ya, do you have an accent and what area is it?
I have been told I've developed an upper Midwest accent after living here for the past 30 years. I don't know what that means except "you betcha" creeps into my conversations every now and then. And I can do a great Norwegian accent when telling an Ollie and Lena joke.
If we are talking about English, I speak it with a more than obvious Italian accent (or as I usually put it, I shpeakk-a likk-a thatt-a) Funnily, some people found that I sound almost Scottish sometimes, probably because i tend to overemphasize the "shh" sounds. I also tend to use less common words which derive from Latin instead of the more usual form, because they sound much more like their Italian counterparts (like "victorious" instead of "winning", for example). As for Italian, I usually speak with a fairly recognizable Bolognese accent (again, the "shh" sound), with some touches of Piedmontese (my father's legacy) and some Sicilian expletives (my mother's curses).
No one can really pin down my accent... ...I've tried to ham up the Scottishness of it lately and in doing that I'm slowly developing a Glasweigan twang though I can't drill out the 'middle class' elements. Going on other peoples opinions - theres some Northern Irish, a bit of American and a hint of English in there and the accent varies based on how much alcohol I've consumed.
I grew up in Ohio and went to college in Michigan, where several people told me I had an Ohio accent. I couldn't hear any difference. Marian
The good thing about being British... alcohol makes me talk louder and if we talk louder, non-English speakers understand us. It's a proven scientific fact.
So do you sound like Captain Bertorelli? I have a Dutch accent when I speak English, but I speak to little English to get rid from that. In the Netherlands we have quite a lot of dialects. Though I can speak a dialect that is a mix of Nijmeegs (from the city of Nijmegen) and Millings (from my hometown Millingen), I prefer to speak plain Dutch since I no longer live in that area.
I seem to have a mix of several accents, to the extent that I have developed a "wandering accent". I'm the only immediate member of my family with a very strong Southern England / received pronunciation accent (mostly owing to my being born in London), but to other English people I have a mild Scottish twang (despite having lived in Scotland for most of my life) which varies between Strathclyde and "softer" Aberdonian dialects. To Scottish people I sound very English, and I was teased about it to no end in primary school. Since progressing through my career, however, I've picked up Yorkshire lilts, Northern Irish drawls in some words (most of my friends in Uni were Northern Irish and Northern English), and some have even commented, especially when I'm tired or under duress, that my accent shifts suddenly to a strong South Wales sound (mind you, I've only ever been to Wales once ever, on holiday with my parents when I was 14). I find I can pick up, adopt, and mimic accents quite well as a result. When I went to New Zealand for the first time, I spent most of the time listening to the local radio stations, and I quickly picked up a few snippets of the New Zealand "smushed vuwwuls". [That was terrible, ZR, please don't try to be a New Zealander ever again - someone] When I was 11, we went on a summer trip to see relatives in Essex, and I spent a lot of time with my cousin watching cricket, and during that time I had picked up a very strong Estuary accent that lasted for weeks - some might say it's never really gone away. So what's my excuse for the Welsh twang, I hear you ask? I blame Huw Edwards.
I'm told I don't have much of a Boston accent, even though I grew up there. I attribute that to my mother being from California.
I apparently sound mildly different from other Californians due to a malformed tongue that needed "surgery*" when I was a kid. I had to take speaking classes in elementary school which were probably not regional-specific. Add in the Shakespeare and an accents class in college and I've ended up with a sort of neutral American accent that isn't quite the Newsman accent, but isn't quite the normal west coast dialect either. I'm told it is quite pleasant though. *They took some scissors and cut the bottom of my tongue so that it could move more freely.
Thinking about it, I wonder how much mass media has an effect on the development of our accents. I spent most of my time watching BBC news bulletins with all their received pronunciation here and sundry (still doesn't explain the Huw Edwards thing, though, perhaps) and some of it has stuck permanently. Listening to Nicky Campbell in the mornings for the last few years (I can't be bothered to change the radio station anymore ) seems to have rekindled my Scottish twang a little, too.
My South Yorkshire accent has been softened by living away from T'North for quite a few years, but when I go back there to visit I go into Full Yorkshire Mode. Can't help it. It just happens.
I have a broadcasters accent. Which pretty much means we're as boring as possible. No long northern, no twangy southern. Just words come out and are easy to understand.
I speak with accents, but only when I'm acting, or trying to be funny, or both. Naturally I don't have any accent.