Speak with an Accent do you?

[Deckerd]

Yes but can you sneer like Huw Edwards?

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.

Kids when they're play acting always use their approximation of an American accent. At least mine did. Obviously a TV influence. Maybe you just never grew out of it? Darkest Lanarkshire, me, although working in Edinburgh for 20 years has softened it a lot.

 

[SmoothieX]

I grew up in a suburbof NYC and went to school in the Bronx so I definitely picked up some of that. It's not overly thick or hammed up like on TV shows but its noticeable pretty easily, especially that I now live by Baahhhston.

 

[Zulu Romeo]

Yes but can you sneer like Huw Edwards?

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.

Kids when they're play acting always use their approximation of an American accent. At least mine did. Obviously a TV influence. Maybe you just never grew out of it? Darkest Lanarkshire, me, although working in Edinburgh for 20 years has softened it a lot.

I wonder if the TV influence explains why a lot of younger Eastern Europeans (especially Russians) I see on TV adopt a mild American accent when speaking in English, or is it just my ears?

 

[backstept]

I've heard that regardless of where you're from, a second language will often have hints of the teacher's accent . . . say if I learned spanish from a Mexican I'd have an American/Mexican Spanish accent which would be different if I learned in Spain
so the TV influence is quite plausible

 

[Angry Angel]

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.

You haven't gone for the soft-g yet?

 

[JonathonWally]

I've heard that regardless of where you're from, a second language will often have hints of the teacher's accent . . . say if I learned spanish from a Mexican I'd have an American/Mexican Spanish accent which would be different if I learned in Spain
so the TV influence is quite plausible

Well, if you're only hearing the 2nd language from one person I would think you wouldn't have much choice in the matter, since that's all the exposure you have.

Unless, like me, an entire family speaks the second language and you have all that exposure.

 

[nevermore]

I'm from Maryland, went to school in Virginia and have a heavy southern-PA familial influence. My accent is all sorts of fucked up.

eta: I would like to make it perfectly clear that I do not, in any way, have a Baltimore accent. In no way. That is all.

 

[Q2UnME]

I was born and raised in Western New York. In our area the accent is the "Great Lakes" accent prevelent from here to Chicago. Basically, most folks around here sound exactly like any TV news person on the air in any city throughout the US. Not sure what you'd really call it, I think someone up-thread called in "middle-American". Perhaps it should be called "Anchorman-American"....

Q2UnME

 

[T'Aerwynd]

I was born and raised in Western New York but spent seven years living in North Carolina. I acquired a pretty thick drawl. Now that I've been back home for awhile, it's flattened out some, but I still catch myself drawling quite a bit. And, of course, there's the "yawl" and etc.

PS. It's not "New Or-lee-ans." It's "N'Awlins." Just throwing that out there.

 

[Q2UnME]

I was born and raised in Western New York but spent seven years living in North Carolina. I acquired a pretty thick drawl. Now that I've been back home for awhile, it's flattened out some, but I still catch myself drawling quite a bit. And, of course, there's the "yawl" and etc.

PS. It's not "New Or-lee-ans." It's "N'Awlins." Just throwing that out there.

You're from WNY? Where, if I might ask?

As for the accent, I lived in North Georgia for 3 years right after college. I too picked up a Southern Drawl. It took almost a year to fade away when I returned to WNY for the job I've held for almost 20 years. My first few days of work, people thought I was a Southerner. The kept asking me where I was from, and I'd respond "Lancaster" (a suburb of Buffalo, NY) and they just stand there, looking at me like

Give it another year or two and you'll be back to your youth. Another thing I noticed, is that if I'm in the South for a few weeks (for work, mostly), the Southern accent comes back rather quickly. Pisses my wife off to no end....

Q2UnME

 

[Nerys Ghemor]

My accent is a weird thing. I lived all over the country and I can get anything from a Deep South drawl to a South Jersey/Philly accent depending on who I'm talking to and what kind of mood I'm in. And I can also do newscaster English at the drop of a hat, as soon as I'm required to give any kind of formal speech.

And if I'm around people with foreign accents of any kind--be that Australian, British, or even any other sort...I have to really watch myself or I start to absorb whatever accent they have. Very aggravating, that!

 

[backstept]

I tend to pick up things like that pretty easily, like back when I watched all of the LOTR extended edition appendices I sometimes started to think in a New Zealand accent

 

[An Officer]

Most people tell me I have a standard English accent. Very occasionally, I'm told I have a general international accent that's difficult to place.

I first learned English in a lovely leafy secluded little primary school in Hampstead, London (I was simply thrown in at the deep end and had to learn fast). An area that's considered to be rather "posh" even now... so I remember getting teased a lot for pronouncing all my T's (I asked for "water" instead of "wa'er"), and minding all my P's and Q's, when I finally transferred to an inner London bog standard high school... They soon forgot about this sort of business when they were introduced to a close-up of my fist, but I'll save that for another topic...

I guess whoever said you pick up the accent of your teacher was correct, as I still apparently retain my old Hampstead. People sometimes try to slyly find out if I was privately educated when I take up new assignments at work. I never mind explaining if they have the guts to ask directly. I guess it's difficult to accept a foreigner speaking without an accent, let alone the queens English. Then they try to find out which area I live in, what my parents do for a living, where I took my last holiday, and then finally, if they have double hard balls, how much I earn!

The good old class system, or at least the general sport of trying to place people into categories, is very much alive and well in London!

 

[nevermore]

I was born and raised in Western New York. In our area the accent is the "Great Lakes" accent prevelent from here to Chicago. Basically, most folks around here sound exactly like any TV news person on the air in any city throughout the US. Not sure what you'd really call it, I think someone up-thread called in "middle-American". Perhaps it should be called "Anchorman-American"....

Q2UnME

Hmmm. The Great Lakes accent is pretty distinct. I noticed it rather strongly when I was in school in Ohio...

Of course many people can or do speak in the general American Newscaster accent regardless of where they were raised. I certainly can, if I watch my regional expressions and vowels.

 

[Lindley]

Like all pilots, when I make radio calls I inadvertently shift slightly towards a Chuck Yeager accent.

 

[cyph]

Oh accents, how I love thee...

I have a vauge accent that changes in proportion to how drunk I am. Sober I'm californian/midwest and drunk I'm F.O.B./gangster... but anyways.

I often "point out" accents when talking to new people (specifically women) because in L.A., chances are that people you meet aren't actually from L.A.. For example:

Me: You have a twang in your talk...
Her: I do?!?!/Really?!?!
Me: Yeah! Are you originally from L.A.?
Her: Yes/no, I'm from "blahblahblah"
Me: Yea I thought so, because of the way you stress your A's blahblahblah
Her: Awwww! *smile/blush/laugh* blahblablah

It's a good ice breaker...

 

[mimic]

My Dad's from CT with parents from western PA and north Jersey; my Mom's from north NJ with parents from Michigan. I grew up in the Philly suburbs. I speak with a generic American accent except for a few quirks:

• I say horrible with the flat 'a' sound most of the time, but I don't have the other Jerseyisms in that respect, like 'Flah-rida'
• I pronounce 'our' the same as 'are'
• I say 'tour' like the pressure unit 'torr' rather than making it almost two syllables, 'two-ur' or something

 

[Dr. Chandra]

Raised in south Georgia, I think I sound a little like Andy Taylor...or Jed Clampett. "Welllll doggies!"

 

[TheBrew]

I supposedly have a CA accent.

 

[Alidar Jarok]

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.

Alcohol improves my foreign languages skills. Or lowers my standards about them.

That's my plan to get through the couple of weeks I'm in Siena.

I have a mild Philadelphia accent, although many people probably wouldn't recognize it anyway.