Sometimes Americans can't understand me...

[dragon_wings]

One thing I'm good at is being able to discern accents,I've made some people very happy when I said "Oh,you're from the UK/Ireland/Australia",they always say most Americans can't tell the difference.

This. I can't tell you the number of Aussies alone that have been please by me guessing their country of birth. Even Aussies that have been here years with accents that have softened.

[ArcticChicken]

(Like when I'm doing a Russian accent, and I pronounce it "Muscoh" and not "Mosscow".)

That reminds me of an incident a few weeks ago, I can't remember how we got on the topic, but we wound up with my friend who's majoring in Russian teaching us to pronounce...something. I got it on my second try, but we spent about 5 minutes arguing with my cousin because he insisted he was pronouncing it the same way we were, but he was putting the stress on the wrong syllable the entire time. That man has something of a tin ear, though. Can't sing worth a damn, and it's very rare that I can even figure out what he's trying to sing, unless I know the words perfectly.

I also am among those who pick up accents, when I was little I watched The Secret of Roan Inish and spoke in an Irish accent for a week. When a British kid transferred to our school, practically the first thing I said to him was "If I wind up talking in a British accent around you, I'm not mocking you, I just pick up accents very easily. I might not even notice that I'm doing it."

[PepperElf]

Off topic: has anyone else had the sensation of watching or listening to a bunch of people speaking in an accent not their own and suddenly having that accent sound normal and their own accent sound foreign? That happened to me watching Doctor Who the other day, and it was weird. On the plus side I can now distinguish Welsh and Scottish accents that aren't ridiculous and over the top from British accents.

not exactly, but it does kinda fuck with my mind to hear John Barrowman use a Scottish accent.

though yeah... for me an english accent isn't hard to understand.
then again it could be from watching a lot of british tv... doctor who, monty python, the young ones, mulberry, as time goes by...

[RecoveringKinkoid]

Yes. All the time.

My immediate family is originally from New Jersey. So while I grew up here in SC since I was five, a have a lot of relative that have Jersey accents. Which sound normal to me. My parent's accents have faded to sort of what I'd call a non-committal neutrality. Which also sounds normal to me.

However, I have hundreds of relatives down here who are from here and have thick southern accents, have lived my adult life around co workers with thick southern accents, and grew up with kids with thick southern accents. Nearly all my friends havde thick southern accents. This also sounds normal to me. I have a southern accent. I dont' think it's really thick (I suppose that's subjective) but it is noticeable.

If I get to hanging around with people from NJ and New England (and in addition to relatives, I have lots of SCA friends I see once or twice a year), I become very self conscious of my own accent. It's about the only time I can hear it myself.

I was taking to a young friend on the phone a while back (it was the first time we'd actually spoken, she's a fan of my blog and we'd been emailing back and forth), who is from the Pacific Northwest, and she interjected "Your accent is adorable" in the conversation. Which made me become conscious of it. I couldn't hear it till she'd pointed it out.

Accents I'm not used to don't do that to me until it's brought to my attention.

[Mishi]

I keep being asked which part of England I'm from, normally by English ex-pats who can't quite place my accent. I've never been out of Australia, I just speak very clearly because most of my older family members have some form of hearing loss and it makes conversations easier. My eldest daughter also has tongue thrust, so it's really important to speak clearly around her so that she can learn proper tongue placement. Rugz keeps being mistaken for an Irishman, even by random Irishmen who try to tell him he's lying! He has an Aussie/Cornish/English mixed accent from growing up on his grandparents farm.

[pltkcelestial18]

I grew up in East Texas but I don't have much of a southern accent myself. My mom and her family is from Louisiana and Illinois. My dad and his family is from the Kentucky and Virginia region. On top of that, I had severe hearing problems as a little kid and didn't get it fixed until I was four so I had speech problems and had to have speech therapy until I was in 5th grade (about 10ish). So I tend to enunciate very well and I've been asked where I'm from because I don't sound like I'm southern apparently.

I love Australian, English, Irish and Scottish accents so much. ^_^ I had a guy come through my register last week and he had an accent so I talked to him for a minute and then asked him if he was Scottish and he was. The Scottish accent is probably my favourite.

I play an MMO and one of the guys I played with lives in Canada (we actually had several Canadians playing at one time) but his parents were Sri Lanken (did I spell that right?) and he lived in Australia for 10 years so I loved listening to him talk cause he still had a subtle Aussie accent. It was funny though cause I didn't realize he had the accent at first cause either his mic or sound card really sucked.

[protege]

I love British accents.

However, there are certain times, particularly with the Cockney accent, that I can't understand anything that was said.

Throw in the rhyming slang...and I have no clue what they're saying.

But, if you *really* want to have fun, drive around Pittsburgh sometime. We have our own accent...and it's amusing to see 'outsiders' try to figure out what we're talking about. They're not used to getting "chipchopped 'am from Gyunt Iggle" or taking da streecar Dahntahn" Seriously though, most "Pittsburghese" stems from the fact that our city was once a melting pot of many cultures. Several of the words were either 'borrowed' from the early settlers, or simply corruptions of those words. 250 years later, and you have Pittsburghese...which was made famous by the late Myron Cope.

[csquared]

Oooh, love the outfit.

You should post an audio clip. Let us hear that lovely accent.

[Jay 2K Winger]

Because of my ear for accents, I notice when I lapse into an accent, and I do get a touch of Southern (alas, not quite sure on which 'flavor' of Southern it is) on certain words at times.

For instance, at the wholesale club once, while handing someone their $9 in change, I said, "And here's nahn dollars your change." And I blinked to myself and thought 'where did that Southern come from?'

I have no sound clips, but I do have an image of the "Mary Poppins gone evil" sort of look that was my real love of last year, for those who were curious. I was wearing the hat and corset in Hot Topic in March XD. Actually, i need to do it again at some point when the weather is cooler (far too hot for corsets and bustles right now).

....I'll be in my bunk.

Hot damn! Why must you tempt us red-blooded males so?

[Kogarashi]

Cool outfit, Rabbit.

I personally don't believe I have an accent. It's more of an American non-accent, and seems to sound natural anyplace that doesn't have its own very heavy and noticeable accent. Hubby is similar, despite growing up halfway across the country from me.

I'm from upstate NY, and though a lot of people in my hometown and my family especially have the same non-accent, everyone else has a light drawl. It only shows up in my speech if you get me agitated and talking very very fast. According to my former college roommate, it sounds like my IQ drops several points when that happens.

Hubby grew up in east Texas, but his father is from Idaho and his mother's mother is from Utah, so they pretty much have a non-accent as well. One of his uncles married a local with a very thick Texan accent, and it's kind of amusing to listen to her at family get-togethers, because she sounds so out of place in her home state. The only time Hubby lets on at all that he's Texan in his speech is when he says "y'all." It still throws me, seven years later.

[NorthernZel]

I and Mr Zel have a slight Danish accent when speaking English, although we mostly use British words and terms over American ones (partly due to my English teacher in high school who was so obsessed with British-ness that he would give low grades to students whose NATIVE tongue was American English and partly due to the fact that... well, we watch too damn much BBC ).

Though we came short once we visited Newcastle-Upon-Tyne. Most people were very kind and switched to plain BBC English once they sensed that we were tourists. However, a cashier at a Burger King didn't take the hint and continued to ask us questions in full, blown-out Geordie dialect. We were very impressed.

[greek_jester]

Actually I enjoy accents of most all kinds, as long as it's understood that with my hearing difficulty that I may not understand you the first time you say something...

Me too. There was a lovely Nigerian chap who temped at a company I used to work for, & I used to love listening to him as he had the most beautiful deep voice & had a beautifully soft way of speaking. Unfortunately I had to ask him to repeat half of what he said as it was pre-hearing aid Of course, that did mean I got to listen to him speaking more often!

Though we came short once we visited Newcastle-Upon-Tyne. Most people were very kind and switched to plain BBC English once they sensed that we were tourists. However, a cashier at a Burger King didn't take the hint and continued to ask us questions in full, blown-out Geordie dialect. We were very impressed.

Sorry to any Geordies on the board, but a lot of us Southern Brits tend to get a bit confused too!

And to any non-Brits on the board, don't worry about having problems with British accents. We have trouble understanding each other sometimes - another temp at the same company had moved down from Manchester quite literally the previous week, & most of us spent the first month asking him to slow down & enunciate!

[Rapscallion]

The fun I've had in the Americas!

I have a presentation style and accent made for morse code. However, when not flustered I have a sort of refined Yorkshire accent.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sB3ieNhEsDY for a very cute broad Yorkshire accent.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eB1yu...eature=related for somewhere close to me both in accent and locality.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wPjJFv1NDBg fora bloody great sketch.

Rapscallion

[EricKei]

What do you do when people say it in French? Nouvelle-Orléans?

Why, I do what anyone else would do -- I grab the lady by the hand and go "My God! Tish! That's French! You know what that does to me!"...and hope that she responds with "Oui."

Well...Someone saying it the French way is likely to be from a French-speaking area, so they're exempt ^_^ Amurrikunz tend to mangle it pretty badly -- OR-lee-unz rather than or-lee/lea-ON'. (Please note: Hoda Kotb no longer counts as a New Orleanian 8p iirc, partly for this reason)

[ArcticChicken]

Because of my ear for accents, I notice when I lapse into an accent, and I do get a touch of Southern (alas, not quite sure on which 'flavor' of Southern it is) on certain words at times.

OMG, I do that too! Sometimes, when I was working as a cashier, I'd slip into a very faint generically southern accent. It was a little more about speech pattern and word choice than the actually way I said the the words, but that was there, too.