Our accents

[Andy_T]

Funniest thing I ever encountered was an engineer from Barcelona, Spain, who had studied engineering in Germany and also had learned English there (and picked up a horrible German accent).

So when he spoke Spanish, he was a normal Spaniard, but when he spoke English, he sounded like a Nazi movie villain from a 1950's Hollywood movie...

For us folks coming from Germany it was always hard to keep a straight face in conversations with him...

 

[Freesia]

There aren't even parking spaces in Harvard Yard. Not even for bikes.

Your voice is adorable!

 

[KLS52]

There aren't even parking spaces in Harvard Yard. Not even for bikes.

Awesome!

 

[Amy SF]

Your voice is adorable!

That's not Scorpy's voice.

 

[AeryFairy]

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.

This was really fun to take, even though I'm British apparently, my accent is most like New York, Boston, and Honolulu :S

My accent used to be on the 'posher' end of the British scale (Southern UK), but after six years in Manchester it's had some of the posh knocked out of it. People from Manchester can still tell I'm originally southern, but now people from down south think I sound "common"

 

[Scorpius]

That's not Scorpy's voice.

Yes it is!

 

[Dropkick]

After careful consideration I've come to the realization that I'm the only person* who doesn't have an accent. It's the rest of you that have accents.



*This also applies to sanity, and being totally correct in all my views.
It's lonely here at the top.

 

[KLS52]

Lol, Dropkick!

 

[Moll Flanders]

I wonder if most people from the UK would get New York on the quiz Spang posted.

I hate the sound of my voice when I've heard it recorded. I think I sound like a young boy.

 

[Blobbenstein]

 

[Dropkick]

According to that map Blobbenstein and I most likely wouldn't be able to understand each other.



I'm inside the green circle (I'm the one leaning back in an office chair with a dog licking his bare foot).

 

[Blobbenstein]

According to that map Blobbenstein and I most likely wouldn't be able to understand each other.

well, I do mumble a lot.

 

[Dropkick]

I don't know if this happens in other countries, but in my lifetime I've met a few people from the Deep South* who have such heavy accents that the language they speak almost isn't English.
(Other than Montana, the only states I've ever lived in for an extended period of time have been in the south. Plus I was in the military. I have experience with many different Southern accents and normally I have no problem with my comprehension).

*Deep South usually used in the U.S. to identify the areas off the beaten path in the South Eastern states where the people are a bit insular.

 

[Moll Flanders]

I have trouble understanding some accents from the North of England and sometimes Scotland.

 

[Calliegirl]

I got Santa Rosa (CA), Corona (CA), and Oceanside (CA). I've been to two of those cities and actually live almost halfway in between the two of them.
The most distinctive answer was Firefly. Is that word only used on the West Coast?

 

[KLS52]

I hate when I can't understand someone because of an accent. It makes me very uncomfortable and I never know the appropriate way to handle it.

 

[Amy SF]

Yes it is!

My apologies; I got confused. And yes, your voice IS adorable!

I hate when I can't understand someone because of an accent. It makes me very uncomfortable and I never know the appropriate way to handle it.

Same here. I was once on the phone with a customer service rep who was talking me through rebooting a computer program, and he had an Eastern Indian accent. I had trouble understanding some of what he said, and I was embarrassed having to ask him several times to repeat himself.

 

[Calliegirl]

I hate when I can't understand someone because of an accent. It makes me very uncomfortable and I never know the appropriate way to handle it.

I met someone from Maine who had a really heavy accent and I had a terrible time trying to understand him. I was constantly asking him to repeat things, and half the time I still didn't understand what he was saying.

 

[Scorpius]

I met someone from Maine who had a really heavy accent and I had a terrible time trying to understand him. I was constantly asking him to repeat things, and half the time I still didn't understand what he was saying.

Maine accents are quite unique.

 

[Dropkick]

I was managing a restaurant/bar/motel/convenience store several years past, when the husband of one of the employees (they lived in one of the employee cabins out back) came in and excitedly told me "I mell potain!"
I said "What?"
He repeated "I mell potain!"
(to shorten the story) He ended up leading me out to the motel, where I found that I too could mell potain.
A pipe fitting was cracked on one of the water heaters and it was leaking propane.

In one of my first encounters with him we delt with his wish for some "pee no n an n's" (Peanut M&Ms) and my total incomprehension.

He was a really nice guy. Felt sorry for him as the only person in Montana that could understand some of what he was saying was his wife (and occasionally even she didn't).
My cousin and I took him out with us bar hopping a few times, but I don't think he was really comfortable with that, as he was totally dependent on us.

He was from the Deep South, his wife wasn't.