I don't even speak in that weird SoCal dialect that is fondly represented on t.v.
I am pure generic. Let me tell you what, though....I saw an interview with Rhianna the singer...that Barbados accent is one of the most beautiful I have ever heard, and it doesn't hurt that she is gorgeous...
Seems like everywhere I go
The more I see
the less I know-Michael Franti
Thank goodness we Canadians don't have accents ... well, except Newfies, but they're hardly Canadians at all (and proud of it, I hear). It's a superior position to be in, but we cope. We cope.
djm
I'd rather be atop the foothills than beneath them.
Canadians do so have accents. We love to make fun of them all the time where I'm from (Southern California).
Accents can be catching if they are easy. What I mean is, I don't think I could catch an Aussie accent. It's too hard. Heck I can barely understand it. But I spent a couple of weeks in New York State and caught myself catching that Long Island accent a couple of times. That's an easy one.
~ Diane
Flutes: Tipple D and E flutes and a Casey Burns Boxwood Rudall D flute
Whistles: Jerry Freeman Tweaked D Blackbird
My granddaughter, who is 4 years old now,does not speak like the rest of us. My only conclusion is that this is due to TV. Where else would she learn this? She speaks clearly, typical only child who talks more like an adult, and has just recently started using our pronunciation of a word once in a rare while.
I found this interesting site with a map of US dialects. (Mine would be closest to #25 on the map)
chrisoff wrote:
According to my English friends it gets worse the more I drink...
I have a mate from Ayr like that. After 8 pints of IPA he turns into C. U. Jimmy...
And whether the blood be highland, lowland or no.
And whether the skin be black or white as the snow.
Of kith and of kin we are one, be it right, be it wrong.
As long as our hearts beat true to the lilt of a song.
My accent moves all over... you see, I've grown up in a very "inner-city" part of Chicago, I've gone to schools with kids who are defnitelynot from "that kind" of neighborhood (hehe), and my extended family is from... Indiana. So on one hand I've had a sort of bland, generic "tv" accent forced on me; but then when I get excited about soemthing I revert back to a harsher "urban" accent... except sometimes when I can't get that Indiana drawl outta me. I guess I feel most natural with the Chicago accent, but I say what comes out mosta the time.
I've been told I have a very slight East Tennessee accent, but it's not very noticeable unless I'm immersed in it, such as a visit back home. Even then, it's mild, though. My mom grew up in northeastern Kansas, and my dad in the western North Carolina mountains, so I guess it's not surprising that my accent isn't strongly East TN, even though I grew up there.
Giles: "We few, we happy few."
Spike: "We band of buggered."
I have no accent whatsoever. Mine is such an eclectic mix of so many different things, that I just don't sound like I'm from anywhere. If you were to try to pinpoint where I am from, you wouldn't be able to. Oh wait.....someone told me that I sound like a "Yank", but I don't trust their judgement
Someday, everything is gonna be diff'rent
When I paint my masterpiece.
My youngest son must have been about 12 or 13 before he started to understand which TV shows were British and which were American. The differences in sound meant nothing to him at all. I think he eventually figured out which were US and UK accents by checking which side of the road the cars were on.
May the joy of music be ever thine.
(BTW, my name is John)
I have spent most of my life in Moscow Idaho, next to the Washington border. The U of I (in Moscow) and WSU (in Pullman Washington) universities are only 7 miles apart, so we all have the same basic inland Northwest intellectual accent. It seems because of his inland Northwest background, Edward R. Murrow (for whom the school of broadcasting at WSU is named) had an accent that was remarkably easy for most of the people of the US to understand. The more rural people of my area, especially in the more isolated parts, speak with a beautiful western drawl, including my late grandma Bessie.
I was watching The Story of English, a joint BBC PBS production with friends when a Scotsman in a London regiment was talking. He apologized for his wonderful Scots accent, which my friends and I found completely intelligible, but the show had subtitles for. He then demonstrated his more “proper” London regimental accent, which we all found guttural and almost unintelligible, but the subtitles were gone.
I usually talk with the local accent, but if I am talking to someone from the British Commonwealth, I come out with a vary strange natural accent of my own. From the age of 2 to 5, my family lived in Tucson Arizona. During that time, I spent days with a well to do Spanish speaking woman who took care of me for my poor, struggling Anglo student parents. I spoke Spanish better than I could English. At the age of 7, my family spent a summer on Prince Edward Island on the east coast of Canada. The people there spoke with a very strong Scottish accent. My mom would sometimes talk in German, which I never understood, because she had studied the language and she had her grandmother from Berlin as a model for her accent. I call my “natural” accent my Mestiso-Scotian-Teutonic accent. Even the little bit of mom’s German adds to the mix, because the sound of a commonwealth accent taps into the part of my mind where all the “Foreign” accents from my past are stored!
