Accents

I have always thought that the Accent would make a decent little hot-hatch on a budget.  Hyundai needs a TRD-like arm to offer a turbo and a suspension. 

The only trouble I have with accents is those that just learned to speak English.

Stampie said:

mazdeuce - Seth said:

My favorite is combined accents. The girl I met in college who was raised in Vietnam and learned British English in London and then moved to Canada. Or occasionally you meet a native Spanish speaker who learned English in Cajun shipyards in Louisiana, that's a fun one to try and listen to.

I love ones like the Korean ethnicity guy I meet that grew up in country Georgia. Almost had to choose my eyes to understand him cause the visual didn't go with the accent.

LOL, I know him. His name is Kam and he drives a lifted 4x4. But it's a 4Runner.

My qualifications:

I once dated a classically-trained vocalist.

When a singer learns the lyrics to a song, they learn them in whatever language or with whatever accent is appropriate.  My friend would regularly sing lyrics in French or German, yet had thorough knowledge of neither language.  Her pronunciation was practiced and very authentic.   Needless to say, her speaking voice didn't sound French or German.  More like New York Italian.

My family moved from MD to England when I was about 9, and I was going to a local school with very few other 'muricans in it. After about a year, someone pointed out that I was speaking "without" an accent anymore. Turns out I was subconsciously switching from American English to the Queen's English depending on who I was around. Things got interesting when I had friends over from school - usually ended up with some kind of proto-aussie thing going on. When we moved back I went back to 100% PA/mid-atlantic standard but when we went across the pond again for vacation a couple years later I started slipping right back into my old accent around my friends there. Accents are weird man.

Born English (midlands, verging on black country accent) but moved to states at age 6, then took French in middle school, German in High School, and Italian in college.  I can't sound like an interesting foreigner anywhere....

I always had a southern accent even as a kid. People I went to school with would ask me all the time where I was from. I'd tell them I was born in the same hospital they were. When we moved to TN from Ohio I had people tell me all the time that it was weird that I didn't have a northern accent.  Now that I'm in Texas most people seem to me to not have an accent. Except the really old people. But if I call and talk to someone from Ohio I'm struck by how much of a northern accent they have. 

I slur and stammer alot. Does that count?

Having spent a lot of time in Asia, Korea specifically and being married to a Korean I got used to Asian accents. Then I run across now accent and it throws me off for a minute. Ran across one born and raised in Alabama and had a very thick southern accent. Really threw me off trying to understand what she said, had to look away to understand. 

Get a kick out of how a lot of people think that Asians add "ey" or "ee" to the end of words in English. Not exactly true, especially for Koreans. My wife drops the last syllable. Causes me to stop and think what she means a lot. Such as when speaking about diapers for the grandkids now and our kids years ago she would just say diap with a very light "p". She does it on a lot of words. I have to ask her to repeat so I can grasp the subject she's talking about.

In reply to Nick Comstock :

Nick, 

That's because no one here is from Texas anymore. We are all from the north and moved down

Ian F said:
Other than the occasional "y'all" my accent is dormant.  But if I'm around other southerners it comes back quickly.  This used to annoy my ex- to no end.

DW was born in Brooklyn and raised on Lonk Gisland from a young age, then moved to Gettysburg, PA around 7th-8th grade.  When I met her in college (also in PA) her New Yawk accent had muted considerably, and continued to do so.  Then, when we moved to St. Louis in our early 20s, she would call home once a week... and years of being away from NYC would disappear in a heartbeat.  The whole time she was on the phone it was like she never left.

A friend of mine was moved from India to Newfoundland when she was about 9 months old. Beautiful dark skin and hair, the biggest, whitest grin you've ever seen, very Indian looking. Her accent didn't stand out when she was in Ontario.

But get her drinking and the Newfoundland accent would come out strong. It was hilarious. If you've never heard a strong Newfie accent, you're missing out. And if you've never seen a happy Indian girl using that accent, you haven't lived.

If you need a chuckle, go watch some old interviews with the singer from Simple Minds.  Jim Kerr's Gaelic accent is so thick it's damn hard to understand a word he says, but you'd never know it from his vocals.

kazoospec said:

Heard on a college campus in West Virginia "Ya'll oughtta hear my cuuuzin, he does the best northern accent ya'ever did hear!"  

Ummmm . . . what?

Me every time I go to the wife's reunion in WV.

YEARS ago, apparently my southern accent was worse that I thought apparently. But I was at the World Free Fall Convention in Quincy, IL. 6:30am and I walk over to the concessions tent and ask for the biggest cup of tea she's got (I'm not an idiot, and didn't ask for sweet tea. I'm in yankeeland. I know I've got to sweeten it up myself) and her response was "I thought we converted all you guys over to coffee" HUH? WHA? "all you english guys"  No Ma'am, not me. "I'm sorry"  

Funny coming from a Yupper accent. 

In reply to Mr. Lee :

Whenever I spend time in the South I'll get, "you don't sound like yer from Philadelphia..." and then I have to explain the whole born in GA and father from VA thing...  my mother is from CT, so she doesn't really have an accent other than maybe "American Mid-Atlantic".

I'm from Massachusetts and summered there as a kid.  I mostly grew up in Kentucky.  Up North people think I'm southern and down here I'm spotted as "different" immediately.  It'd be nice to just blend in sometime.  Maybe Texas or Pennsylvania or some such. 

I met a woman once whose hobby was listening to accents and was very good at determining where someone was from. I flustered her a bit. I am white guy that grew up in Michigan but lived in predominantly black neighborhood.  I also spent a lot of time in North Carolina, the Florida panhandle and Japan by that point in my life. Some how the immersion in Ebonics, southern US and Japanese had produced an accent and speech patterns that she told me didn't sound like anyone else she had met from the upper Midwest.         

I can't speak jive, but I can speak hick.   

Ian F said:

If you need a chuckle, go watch some old interviews with the singer from Simple Minds.  Jim Kerr's Gaelic accent is so thick it's damn hard to understand a word he says, but you'd never know it from his vocals.

On some MTV show I saw, they actually subtitled Liam Gallagher of Oasis while he was speaking English.

I spent a bit of time hanging out with some drag racers from Idaho.  I figured we spoke pretty much the same english, but they giggled at my Canadian accent.  I don't really get the "Aboot" jokes. either, so maybe I'm pretty tone deaf.

When I was in high school, we went to Macks Cafe pretty regularly.  Susie and Eddie were Chinese immigrants, and as such had a very pronounced accent.  After a while, I could hold a perfectly reasonable conversation with Susie, but I went back after being away for a couple of years, and had almost lost the ability to understand her.  All the kids, though fluent in both languages, had no accent that I could detect.

I speak Southern with a nearly perfect Northern accent. 

There's a story about some Canadians who were travelling through the southern US and got talking with the locals.  One of the Canadians, just out of curiosity, asked what their accent sounded like to local ears.  He was told, "Well, sir, the strangest accent I ever did hear was on a man come from a hundred miles north of here... but I reckon y'all must come from at least a hundred miles north of that!"

Type Q said:

I met a woman once whose hobby was listening to accents and was very good at determining where someone was from. I flustered her a bit. I am white guy that grew up in Michigan but lived in predominantly black neighborhood.  I also spent a lot of time in North Carolina, the Florida panhandle and Japan by that point in my life. Some how the immersion in Ebonics, southern US and Japanese had produced an accent and speech patterns that she told me didn't sound like anyone else she had met from the upper Midwest.         

That's me. I can usually nail where somebody's from after only a few sentences. Mrs. f1y watches true crime shows and I like to listen to the locals/family members that are interviewed and see if I can guess where the crime took place.

I find the whole Ebonics thing odd every time we go the the States. Black people in Canada don't speak like that.

Streetwiseguy said:

I spent a bit of time hanging out with some drag racers from Idaho.  I figured we spoke pretty much the same english, but they giggled at my Canadian accent.  I don't really get the "Aboot" jokes. either, so maybe I'm pretty tone deaf.

I hear it. I've always thought it originated from the UK, and sounds Scottish to me like the Newfie accent is very Irish .

Both my parents are from Long Island, and I grew up near Philly, and with that combination I should barely be able to speak at all so I think the accents canceled out?  I think I inherited a little bit of a monotone and weird cadence from my dad.

The weirdest accent I've ever heard was actually a whole combination of speech issues- dude was from northern NJ, had a crazy stutter, was missing most of his teeth, and was extremely fast talking and loved to tell stories.  He was surprisingly easy to understand once you'd had enough time to get up to speed.

pinchvalve said:

I have always thought that the Accent would make a decent little hot-hatch on a budget.  Hyundai needs a TRD-like arm to offer a turbo and a suspension. 

this is my fave accent: