Our accents

[Amy SF]

Even when we say we don't have an accent, we really do. The way we speak reflects both where we've lived and who raised us. I'm curious about how you guys and gals sound as I have only met a few of you in person.

My father grew up in Philadelphia, PA, and my mother grew up in Trenton, New Jersey. I was born and raised in Los Angeles, so I supposedly have a flat, broad, general American accent, but, and I have noticed this myself, my parents' accents often creep in when I speak. Also, people have asked me if I'm from Boston because they think they hear a Bostonian accent (with the ah in the middle or on the end - pahk your cah in Hahvahd yahd - but I'm too embarrassed to tell them that it's actually a speech impediment. I've had some speech lessons to try to fix that, but it only helped a little bit. Also, when I was growing up, my dad coached me and my siblings to speak in a certain way to sound educated, putting more emphasis on consonants, for example. I think he was especially concerned about me because I had certain speech impediments.

I also thought this was interesting:

• The accents of some languages are unknown enough to appear this way, especially if there are phonetic features not found in English such as vowel harmony (you can pronounce a lot of vowels but not in the same word).
• Move somewhere with a drastically different accent from your birthplace. Live there for a year. Travel to a third location and watch most people be completely baffled.
• Cary Grant spent the first few years of his life in England, then moved to America aged at age 16, leaving him with a peculiar accent that seemed to be stranded halfway across the Atlantic. In Some Like It Hot, Tony Curtis does a perfect impersonation of Grant's strangled vowels, only to be told to stop being ridiculous, because 'nobody talks like that'. He made up that accent, a sort of generic upper-crust accent, as he was originally from Bristol, England and picked up a Cockney accent in the music halls in London during his early acting work.

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There is more here: Main/What the Hell Is That Accent? - Television Tropes & Idioms Scroll down to where it says Real Life (you may have to click on it to open it)

 

[yakherder]

I've been told I speak Chinese with a Fujianese accent, which kind of makes sense since I first started practicing with illegal aliens from Fuzhou

 

[RascalsMom]

I grew up in Baltimore, md until I was 16 -- when I moved to the middle of nowhere in Georgia. Baltimore people say I've picked up a bit of a country accent, southern people say I talk like a Yankee.

 

[Mikkel]

I speak two dialects. With humans, I have a kind of Oslo accent, but when I speak to my dogs, I have an accent from North-Norway (not the place I lived at there, they have a very strange dialect, so it some sort of my own version of it).

 

[Joe]

I was born in northeastern Pennsylvania, moved to Long Island, NY at age 8, grew up there, then moved to Nashville when I was about 30.

I was encouraged when growing up to speak like an educated person and therefore to try to lose all regional accents. When I moved to the South, I thought it would be disrespectful to try to "fake" a Southern accent.

I sometimes slur my words or elide two together. I suppose this is a bit of a speech impediment. For example, I used to tell people that I grew up on LonGuyLand (until some people started making fun of me). I once quoted to an actress friend Northrop's dictum that the Roman Catholic mind is "logical and teleological." She asked me, "What does 'anteological' mean"?

My actress friend is an unbelievably gifted mimic, and can do all kinds of regional accents effortlessly. I have no such gifts.

 

[Spang]

According to a dialect survey I once took on the Internet (and so can you), I have an accent similar to folks who live in Rockford and Aurora, IL, though I've never been to either.

 

[Scorpius]

According to a dialect survey I once took on the Internet (and so can you), I have an accent similar to folks who live in Rockford and Aurora, IL, though I've never been to either.

That was neat and very accurate for me. The three areas I supposedly share an accent with are all in my neck of the woods (Worchester, MA, Boston, MA, and Providence, RI, according to the quiz).

 

[shyvas]

Well, according to the quiz I have a New York accent. Logical, as it is the closest place to the UK.

 

[hungryraccoon]

London accent. Typical London accent, I guess. Not posh like the queen but not like a cockney geezer either. Somewhere in between (although people not from this area seem to think quite posh.)

 

[shyvas]

London accent. Typical London accent, I guess. Not posh like the queen but not like a cockney geezer either. Somewhere in between (although people not from this area seem to think quite posh.)

I would think that it's similar to my accent, as I come from Kent. I certainly don't have a cockney accent and just sound like an average person from the south.

 

[hungryraccoon]

Yes, sounds about right. I'm from Hertfordshire

 

[Blobbenstein]

I suppose mine is also typical of the south east.

 

[shyvas]

I suppose mine is also typical of the south east.

What part of the UK do you come from, Blob ?

 

[Moll Flanders]

For the quiz I got New York, Yonkers and Providence as the most similar.

My accent was posher when I was younger but now it's much more cockney as I've picked up on my husband's accent over the years. I still get called posh sometimes but it is probably a mix of South London and East London/Essex now.

 

[shyvas]

For the quiz I got New York, Yonkers and Providence as the most similar.

My accent was posher when I was younger but now it's much more cockney as I've picked up on my husband's accent over the years. I still get called posh sometimes but it is probably a mix of South London and East London/Essex now.

Cockney English dictionary - FREELANG

 

[Blobbenstein]

What part of the UK do you come from, Blob ?

Well I've lived in the west for 30 odd years, but my parents are from the south east. I haven't picked up a Gloucestershire accent, I don't think.

 

[shyvas]

Well I've lived in the west for 30 odd years, but my parents are from the south east. I haven't picked up a Gloucestershire accent, I don't think.

I see. I wonder whether we really hear ourselves speak ?

 

[Blobbenstein]

I see. I wonder whether we really hear ourselves speak ?

well, we know what we are going to say, so I don't think we hear ourselves in the same way other people do.

 

[Moll Flanders]

Cockney English dictionary - FREELANG

It's mostly people above age 60 that still use some of the cockney rhyming slang. I wouldn't know most of it, only a few terms. One thing I've noticed about East End people of that generation is that a lot of them claim they knew the Krays. It seems like everyone I've met seemed to either know them as friends, drink in a pub with them or know their family.

(The Krays were notorious East London gangsters from the 50s and 60s. Kray twins - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia)

 

[Amy SF]

What are examples of Cockney rhyming slang?