Of course, non of us think WE, have an accent, but others might.

How about it, do you sound like people where you grew up?

When in basic training - I was accused of being Texan - or Mexican.

Raised here with hispanics.
Mom was an Okie.

Ya shure, you betcha...

I found I have what I call a Great Lakes accent. I'm from Erie, Pa., and they sound kinda Canadian/Great Lakes region.

I do... english is my second language

I ain't got one.

Richard,

Yeah, bloody oath Mate !

I sound like everyone else from Wyoming, I guess.

I have to listen VERY carefully to folks from some other parts of the country in order to understand them. East Coast people have their particular accents and talk REALLY fast, as do people from California. I served with a guy from New Orleans with a very heavy French accent, could barely make out what he was saying. Of course, understanding "inner city" people is next to impossible at times.

Funny story, in Basic Training, 1958, I was in the same company as a group of about 10 African-American guys from Alabama, IIRC, they spoke clear English as well as anyone, but they knew I was a hick from the sticks, so any time I was around they would slather on the jive talk so bad I absolutely has no clue what was happening. They sure had a lot of fun with me, I never found out the joke until one of them told me about it years later.

I don't SPEAK with an accent. Some other people HEAR with one.



Tom

I'm fairly accent neutral. When I'm in the north, people ask if I'm from the south.

When I'm in the south, people ask if I'm from the north.

When I'm in California, people ask if I'm from the mid-west.

When I'm in Canada, people ask if I'm from Australia (no sheit, been asked that several times)

I would be interested in which "accent" is the most easily understood by people who speak the other ones.

Try going moose hunting in Newfoundland and understanding some of them! I didn't have a hard time, but had a buddy that couldn't decipher a word.

I'm from Texas, I sound like a damn hick from the sticks. I used to call the house to leave a reminder message for myself. Bad

I suppose you fard (fired) your roffle (rifle) last tom (time) you shot a deer. I swear I need an interpreter to watch some hunting shows.

And Southern English is my first. Believe it or not there are multiple "southern" accents. Being from Alabama I'm sure I've incorporated most of them in my speech at one time or another. One of the most interesting is found in the west central portion of the southern half of Alabama in the Wilcox, Dallas county area. Heavy on the drawl with somewhat of a Scotch/Irish/English influence. I've been around a few folks there that EVEN I had trouble interpreting.

When I first got my shoes, fixed my teeth, came out of the woods and got edjekated the professional types I encountered got a real kick out of me. I could show up in California and really draw the grins with my Southern lingo. Then I'd get back home and be told I sounded like a Yankee. So I guess my accent gains and wanes depending on where I am and who I'm trying to influence.

OMG, ya'll would pick on me. Born and raised in south Louisiana, I sound very Cajun!

Ma yeah das how we talk..

someone "Jason do you mind if I go to the store?"

Me " Ma yeah, I don't mind if you go to da store"

It is easy to tell that I am Appalachian.

5sdad had the question about which accent is the easier to understand.

Some of the Canadian women have an accent I could listen to for hours. And, consider that Canada being Canada, there are many accents within Canada, regional , but also, French, Italian, and many more.

In my head no

When I hear my voice recorded I sound like bassackward country boy

From Montana, so no accent.

when I moved from NY to California , I had to put up with a lot of crap. I removed NY , NJ and CT from my resume now everyone is confused on what am I ?

I do sound like a nasty NY cab driver with an attitude/accent.

P.

I have a bit of a Southern accent, mostly upland South like that found in North Alabama and Middle Tennessee. My father's family is from the mountains in East Tennessee, but my accent is nothing like theirs. It is amazing how many different Southern accents there are.

I've been told I have an accent. I'm from NW Illinois. It's about the most accent neutral part of the country. We don't talk fast or slow. However, people can never guess where I am from based on how I talk.

Now I for sure do have an accent, in that I like to accentuate my speech with 4 letter words.

Definitely. When you grow up around it, it's easy to tell an Alabama accent from someone raised around Atlanta or North Georgia from someone raised in North Carolina.

I am told folks can distinguish between northeastern accents like New York and Philly but when youse guys tawk dat way dey all sound da same to me.

I don't have an accent unless I hear a recording of myself.

My Dad worked for the American Can Company, a national corporation with offices throughout the United States. Raised in southeast Texas, he realized pretty quickly that people from other parts of the US regarded a southern (or Texas) accent as a sign of ignorance. He made sure that all four of his sons learned to speak without a regional accent. My Mom was from Nebraska, so it wasn't all that hard.

When one of my younger brothers received his MS degree and went to work for the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department, he learned quickly that ranchers and rural landowners responded more positively to someone with a Texas accent. He acquired one pretty quickly, and he still has it (and it serves him well) almost 40 years later.

Oh! Don't get me started.

See, the problem is I'm a Cincinnati Krauthead. My mother came from Northern Ohio. My Dad grew up here, in Cincinnati, specifically on the north side. That's significant if you know Cincinnati.

My northern relatives think I talk like a hillbilly. When I go to the KY/TN border to visit KYHillChick's family, they see me as a fast-talking Yankee.

To make matters worse, being a Northsider whose father spoke German before learning English, I've got all these little quirks that make people scratch their heads.

"What can I do to ya?" is "What can I do for you?"

"Please?" means "Repeat what you said. I didn't understand." It's funny, because that one did not come from my Dad. We're protestants, and "Please?" is an affect from the Westside Catholic Germans, but there were so many of them teaching school in my day it was bound to be that I'd pick it up. The Westsiders have their own set of quirks, and you can usually tell East, West, or North siders if you listen to them for a while. South? That's Kentucky, and they all talk like hillbillies.

"Run over by a beer wagon," means "Died an untimely death of unnatural causes." At least on the north side. I had a boss from up around Wapakoneta, Ohio and he had the same thing-- big Hessian community up there.

Northsiders go to the Pony Keg, not the Convenience Store. It's from a "pony," a small barrel of beer the workmen would put on their shoulder and take home at night.

"That's all." is a common way of ending a conversation. It's from "Das ist alles." If you're not clued-in it sounds like we're cutting you off, but it's meant to be more like "See ya later."

My father's ending vowels were always indistinct and mine end up equally confused. "W" is pronounced "Dub. . . " and what comes next is anybody's guess. It could be "ya" "ah" or something else, but it is never "Dubble-You."

I'm from (born & raised) south Arkansas. Attended college at Mississippi State. I'll let y'all guess.

Idaho was settled later than most states and most of the people came in from all over. We really don't have a 'local dialect' as a result. It's a mixture of everything.

In Northern NY we tend to sound a bit Canadian. When I was in the Navy I used to hear all the time, "You don't sound like you're from New York."

I always took it as a compliment.

Me nope, oh wait, whenever I leave New England I am pegged instantly as from New England, so I must. Funny part my wife is neutral, nobody can tell where she's from.

Wee all es goin tu de dam dear leese dis weak end. Us all hopes do katch sum dem dam piggs. Wee all sho douz likes tu katch dem sum beaches!!

No accent here, although everyone else I talk to seems to have one.........

I have no accent. It's yeall that have the accent.

Richard - one time I was sitting at the McDonald's in Dryden and there was a group of older men visiting at the table next to me. They were clearly speaking English, but I could not for the life of me make out what they were saying. I think that it was as much the "lilt" in their voices as anything that was causing the disconnect. (I always enjoy conversing with the folks up that way.)

You forgot about "Wersh yer hands after you change the earl in the car..."

Pretty much how it is for me.

Folk from Appalachia ain't got no accent.

Mine changes when I get around my roots or someone from where I grew up, or even fellow southerners while living here in Oregon...

The first time my son was with me when he wasn't real young, when I was on the East Coast... we'd been up in New England.

Before heading west, I dropped down south to Virginia to visit family...

First stop I made after crossing the state line, my son asked me to explain something to him..... he finally stopped me and asked me " who in the hell are you and what did you do with my dad?"

What do you mean, I asked.... which he responded, speak English again would ya.. I can't understand a darn thing you are saying...

When in New England, he barely understood the people with the heavy old Bostonian accent, which I had to translate....

When we got to Virginia I had to translate more people...

When we visited southern West Virginia, he kept on claiming we were in a foreign country, and I talked just like the people Thar/ I mean there...

My favorite two campfire members are Kaywoodie and Oldman 03.... especially Randy, I can listen to him talk all day long.... around Randy, I love as he talks like everybody talked when I was growing up...

Accents today are much less pronounced with the younger generation, I guess due to TV and the internet.... I miss being around folks with accents, that was my version of diversity, vs the way they look at 'diversity' nowadays...

Oh, yahhh, ya think??

Amen brother... we Virginians don't...its ever'body else...


by the way... "Earl" is Kentucky/Tennessee for Oil...

Virginia its Uhl....

southern accents are dependent on who settled what areas...

Old English, Scotland, Ireland and then whether the area had a lot of slaves or not....

I know the first time I was in far northern Maine up by Caribou, I could tell the way people spoke with a slight different accent than Southern WVa and SW Virginia.... but the sentence structure and ways of saying words was pretty much spot on...

both areas minus a lot of different ethic groups, passing thru after the original groups that settled there...

always traveled a lot.. when I was growing up, I could usually identify what states most southern folks were from, just by the way they would pronounce one or two words....

could always tell people from eastern PA by two words...

Beautiful and hour.... they would pronounce Beautiful, like people from New Jersey would.... b-u-Tee Full...kinda fast

and then they pronounce Hour like we did in Virginia.. Eye-Errr....

once in a while, my son loves for me to speak "southern" for some of his friends....

That far of a move and still in a crappy state.. LOL.

Wife and I both have that flat Midwestern accent, I am a natural and unaware mimic and will be speaking like whomever I am speaking with if I am not real careful. It has got me in trouble a time or two.

Can't remember where I heard this, but I recall the source was fairly reliable. Claim was that broadcasters all over the US like news readers from the PNW, because of their "neutral accent".

Can't figure why our local news radio chose to hire that gal with the pronounced Cal/Mex accent though....

I certainly can't deny where I was raised.

I don't think so but I was in Vermont one time and a guy asked where I was from because he said that I have a strong accent.

I also had a woman from Ireland tell me that my "American accent" was very strong - more so than most Americans that she talks to.

My accent is probably some variation of a Philadelphia accent. I don't notice it but I am sure it is not pleasant to people from other regions. I think the New York (Long Island, Brooklyn, etc.) accents are horrible. I hope I don't sound as bad as that.

Grew up in SC low country. More than once been called a Geechee. Was asking a salesperson in Vail for help selecting ski gear because I didn't know much. He replied "Im sure! Where you are from they never get snow "
GreggH

Rong, its 'ryfull' and 'lastime', doncha kno nuthin.

No, for several reasons. Firs and maybe most important I am only 67 and haven't grown up yet. Second, I have live north to south and east to west and thus have been exposed to many of the accents in the US. Lastly I have spent most of the last 39 years in the Pacific NW where their is supposed to be no accent. News casters and radio hosts are often recruited from this part of the country because they have less local accent, or at leas that is what I have read.

No but everyone else sure seems to. Seriously though I've been told I don't have that much of a accent. My biggest give away is I use some regional colloquialisms ( sp?) that mark me from the south and I tend to say Mam , Sir. and thank you .

Not me personally. But I have found that pretty much everybody outside a 100 miles from home does. You betcha, they talk funny past da county line, for sure.

As a result of interaction with campfire members whom I trust, they being from various and sundry parts of this great nation, I have come to understand that I do, in fact, speak with an accent.

No one is more surprised than me.

I hope I speak with an accent. Those that speak without an accent speak in a monotone. That would be boring. Of course I hope I don't have an accent that others can not understand. I grew up in the Midwest.

I have a neutral accent (sounds like a news reporter), but I can mimic people's talking and idioms pretty quickly.

I'm so vanilla white I can't even fake an accent. So I just speak Rocky Mountain..........


Casey

You and John Denver

I've been told that I sound like I come from Bahstaan.

Born and raised in orygun, so I have no accent! I was working in Marion North Carolina, when an older lady ask, ya'll ain't no damn Yankee, what are you?

Im a Yankee that speaks with Southern accent.

My college buddies tell me I have a terrible American accent.

Can't be, you guys are telling me people from the PNW don't have accents....

If I'm careful with diction, I sound completely midwestern or non-regional even though I'm from far west Texas. El Paso has had a large military presence for many years and is a kind of melting pot for regional accents. On the other hand, it may depend on what part of the area you frequent and who you hang with, even if you live there.

My ex brother-in-law grew up in the same neighborhood where I did, but speaks with an odd and choppy cadence I only became aware of one day when I heard him speaking from the other end of the house. I couldn't hear anything well enough to understand and it sounded like someone speaking Spanish. That was kind of illuminating.

Now you fellows up in Montana...believe it or not, you have an accent, but it is so danged subtle that I suspect most folks in other parts of the country may not even notice it. I had a very good friend in the Navy who was from Billings and during the time we worked together I heard him say plenty. After the Navy I went back to Texas for a number of years, then one summer I migrated to Montana for a while. I was surprised when I listened to people talk because I kept hearing the same *oh-so-subtle* accent. It is SO subtle I could never describe it, but I recognize it when I hear it.

There's a subtle California accent too, but it's easier to pick up on than that Montana accent.

Oof Da. When I used to work my Grandfathers farm as a kid in the summer time, I would pick up my accent real quick. Ole and Lena sure had strong accents dontjaknow!

Ain't that the truth!? I found the Newfies hard to understand at first but after a while I was able to follow what I would describe as a "cadence" to their speech. Great people.

My wife's college friends had a hard time understanding me sometimes. Most of them were from downstate and I speak a sort of local gibberish I call "Hamdenese". My Mother is from Hamden, NY and they had words and phrases around there that I was surprised to find aren't normal anywhere else.

i don't hear oil pronounced earl in Ky that much truthfully we have a friend from Ohio that likes to crack on southern accents.I tend to let her go for a while and ask her to say oil. She pronounces it with a hard E sound in the middle ,sort of a oi-E-il I just ask how the he-- do you get 3 syllables out of a simple 3 letter word . It's oil not o-ei-ei-oil.

The plant I use to work at had a engineer that came from Boston. He liked to hit on hit on the local habit of ending words with a inappropriate r sound for example winder for window. I would just reply that it was southerns way of maintaining balance in the universe because people from Boston left all the orphaned R's floating around our there by pronouncing car as caa, and bar as baa.

Actually I think that the Appalachian area of Ky , WV and parts of N Tn have a much harder and distinct accent than a true softer southern accent as from Georgia , and softer yet Virginia. Get down into Louisiana and parts of southern Mississippi where the French influence is present and I can't tell you what the he-- those guys are talking about.

I was raised on the West coast but I've spent the last fifty years in middle America. I don't think I have much of an accent but if I do it's plain vanilla, suburban bland. But lots of other people do have accents though.

KC

I have no accent GI. Sometime peopre raff at way I tark, but they just being sirry. You bic?

I rearn proper grammer from books. Rike "Harf a reague, harf a reague, into varrey of death rode six hundred." No girry men there.


Kindest regards,

Phuoc Mei

I have one, even the people here in Arkansas give me hell for talking slow. It must be genetic. My son was raised in northern Illinois and talks just like me.

I guess you can speak in javascript too.

P.

I grew up listening to national TV personalities. NBC and CBS news broadcasts, when they wrre still American networks.

As far as I can tell, my wife, my kids, and I sound pretty much like most TV broadcasts.

Should have told them you were speaking Coastie....

Yankees talk faster than I can think, but that ain't sayin much.

Me too- especially with a Norwegian accent. I AM NOT MOCKING YOU!!!

I don't know why... except my mother was of half Squarehead descent. I'll blame it on her!

An older brotherr sent 12 years in the Air Force in Texas. Never did loose the accent, even 20 years after moving back to Alaska.

Born and raised in NC, so yes I do. Funny how folks from other states can pick up on a NC accent. Must be something distinct about it.

I don't know if BYC has posted this thread or not, it was his phone voice message that got me thinking of accents.

Write script, no speak. You tark rike GI I know from Ivy Reague schoor. He think he judo interrectuar.

Nice accent though.

Once back in about '72 while traveling by car through Arkansas, we happened to tune in to an AM station on the radio and some fellow was talking...he had the damnedest accent I ever heard anywhere...can't even begin to describe it. If I hadn't known where I was I would never have believed I was somewhere between Dallas and Memphis.

When finishing up all my English courses in college, I had a choice between 19th century American or British literature and a course titled "History and Structure of the English Language." I really, REALLY didn't want to go through either off those lit courses so I took the last choice, hoping to not be as bored as I would have with the literature courses. I hit the jackpot with that one...it was one of the most interesting of all the college courses I ever took and would have enthusiastically taken Part 2 had it been available. I was surprised to learn that there are isolated locales in the Ozarks where you here local dialects that are closer to 18th century Queen's English than you're likely to hear anywhere else.

I think maybe I should have been a linguist. There's just an awful lot to be interested in if you take a close look at things.

Same here, and then I moved to Minnesota where eveyone talks like an Amish man.

I am from New Zealand, you guys all talk like your on TV shows

When I went to country towns in Arkansas a couple of years ago, I heard their accent which was unfamiliar to me, because in American movies you only seem to hear the Californian accent or New York city, country Arkansas was one you hardly hear in movies.

...I told them that the only time we ever hear their accent is when there is a horror movie about some teenagers from Los Angeles going on holiday on a plane, and it crashes in the Ozark mountains at night time, and there are some cannibal hillbillies trying to chop them up...thats the only time they are in the movies.

Exactly what I was thinking.

I have a slight touch of Appalachian in my speech.

We have Amish and Mennonites here who have been here for several generations, but their kids still have that accent that they brought with them. As for me, I speak Western Kentucky/redneck/Southern. A girl from Canada once told me that she found my voice sexy, and I told her that hers was too, especially when she said "eh" and "you betcha". She responded by telling me off and saying that Canadians didn't say that. Well, she did, but her voice was still sexy.

Lived here my whole life, but have been told I have an accent. It must be from traveling in the south, and Appalachian/hillbilly family. Modern transportation and communication are causing us to lose our local flavor, it is a shame. It seems wherever I go, the biggest influence on accent is urban vs rural. In the cities the accent is less pronounced, the more rural, the heavier. Unless,of course, your looking for Ebonics or Spanish.

If you move far enough away from where you grew up someone is going to think you talk funny. Yes I do have an accent, but it is different than other parts of Virginia. I remember the first time I was in Maryland and heard a "Baltimore" accent and I thought, "Where are they from?"

In my job I work with so many people with different accents that I usually don't pay much attention to it. The two hardest accents for me have been an older Greek man and young guy from Quebec which I deal with a couple of times a year. I have to listen to them for a few minutes before my ear tunes them in. I don't think it is so much the accent, but their enunciation.

...Except for Pocatello. There is a Pocatello accent.

I like listening to those Carolina girls.

Not now. I've had British people describe my accent as "the softest American accent I've ever heard", pretty much neutral Californian.

Now when I was a kid I lived in the deep South and had the most deep fried Southern drawl you can imagine. I moved to California when I was in middle school. My Southern accent was gone inside a month. The funny thing is that while I don't speak with one anymore, I can still understand it as well as ever. Once I was in a restaurant with my wife and daughter and a woman with an overpowering twangy accent asked directions to a local ice cream joint. They looked at her like she was speaking Klingon. I just calmly gave her directions.

My wife is also neutral Cali to my ears but sometimes she talks too fast for me to understand.

Poor hearing and I have trouble distinguishing words.





She says I talk like a Swedish Indian.

You are quite right. Most of South-Estern Idaho was settled through the Mormon migration originating in and around Missouri. Linguistically, that still shows, and this region has distinct Missouri influences in it's accent.

The worst accent is that damned east coast Boston drawl. Those folks really need to learn how to talk.

Long ago when I was in the Army, people would guess me from Mississippi. That is Where my people moved from after the civil war, although my Great Grandfather was living in South Arkansas when the war started. miles

My wife is from Saugus, Mass, north of Boston. She never had a super strong accent, but her parents were nearly unintelligible. We went to a class reunion for her, I think 30 years, and she was amazed at the accent. Said they sounded uneducated. I just said SEE?

Fairly nuetral. Can get a bit southern when I spend time with old buddies.

Been hitting the Aquavit?

That's because of how you look, Scott, not how you talk....