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i sound like keanu reeves no matter what i do. The only real drawbacks are when youre doing a 10 min speech on post civil war labor migratory patterns.

I used to have a fucked up accent that grew from watching many movies in the original american english and having a cousin-in-law that's from Ireland. So I had a mixture of Cali and Irish. That was fucked up. Native speakers used to flip when I started talking.

Nowadays I don't talk to my Cousin much and people usually place me in California. But I can sort of fake a Southern Drawl, Irish, some posh British and of course a German Accent. I can't get a Portuguese Accent right though even though I lived there for 13 years and spoke english to people very often. (My english is better than my portuguese. Wish I'd watched more portuguese movies back in the days...)

jfrey wrote:Zero accent. There's a few small areas of the US - one of which is on part of long island (where I'm originally from) - that have what is considered completely unaccented English.

Kinda neat - until you find out that because of this I have trouble understanding what people are saying if they have more than just a slight accent of any kind. I say "what?" twice and then I just nod or make some noncommittal sounds.

Must be a different part of long island than I've been to. Everyone I've met there sounds like Linda Richman from that old SNL skit "Coffee Talk"


edit::

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QqPiJ0L7YmY[/youtube]

That ^ is gross. Lol. But yeah, that would be a different part/group. LI has at least 6 different major accent groups - probably more.

i have a weird mashup of accents. i spent most of my childhood as one of three white kids in an otherwise monolithically black area (the South Side of Chicago) and as such acquired the sort of Mississippi black accent common to everyone around me other than my relatives. this got modified to a whiter Midwestern accent when we moved to the suburbs when i was ten, but the Southern accent is still there and particularly shows up when i'm tired or otherwise out of it...you can tell how beat i am by how much i drawl. add to that the peculiar twang in the 'r' sound i acquired from imitating Neil Young's singing style as a teenager, the decades of NorCal residency, and the Zappa-derived use of heavy emphasis and tone.

dubkitty wrote:i have a weird mashup of accents. i spent most of my childhood as one of three white kids in an otherwise monolithically black area (the South Side of Chicago) and as such acquired the sort of Mississippi black accent common to everyone around me other than my relatives. this got modified to a whiter Midwestern accent when we moved to the suburbs when i was ten, but the Southern accent is still there and particularly shows up when i'm tired or otherwise out of it...you can tell how beat i am by how much i drawl. add to that the peculiar twang in the 'r' sound i acquired from imitating Neil Young's singing style as a teenager, the decades of NorCal residency, and the Zappa-derived use of heavy emphasis and tone.

Give me a call, please!


(btw have you read Fortress Of Solitude? Part of it is about a white kid growing up in a black neighborhood - Crown Heights ? / Brooklyn in this case.)

I'm from PA but for some reason I catch myself saying aboot instead of about

bdunlap wrote:I'm from PA but for some reason I catch myself saying aboot instead of about

My Canadian friends don't even say "aboot". Though my friend's mother does say out with more of the "oh" sound than "ow", but I've never heard an "oo".
I find it incredibly cute. No, it's not weird that I have a mild crush on my friend's mom (and I'm almost 22 years old).

jfrey wrote:Zero accent. There's a few small areas of the US - one of which is on part of long island (where I'm originally from) - that have what is considered completely unaccented English.

Nowhere has no accent. I guarantee you have an accent that would be picked up as 'different' somewhere.

I sound kinda like this ...

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=da1PodDYfL8[/youtube]

Still remember the first time I travelled outside my 'as far as you can walk' circle and was surprised when people knew I was from Scotland.

It's all relative

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pFWsge0IEF0[/youtube]

devnulljp wrote:Nowhere has no accent. I guarantee you have an accent that would be picked up as 'different' somewhere.

Of course any way of speaking will sound different somewhere else. That isn't what makes an accent. An accent is a deviation from phonetic pronunciation and emphasis. So when I say Zero accent I mean I speak in what is considered nearly perfect phonetic pronunciation with no unusual emphasis. I've never met a person that could tell even what part of the country I'm from, let alone something like the specific state.

i have been told that i sound like i am introducing a boxing match...

magiclawnchair wrote:i have been told that i sound like i am introducing a boxing match...

You mean like Zappa's "Don't touch that dial, folks!" voice from I Am The Slime?

StudioShutIn wrote:

magiclawnchair wrote:i have been told that i sound like i am introducing a boxing match...

You mean like Zappa's "Don't touch that dial, folks!" voice from I Am The Slime?

well i certainly dont sound like don pardo's sophisticated narration on zappa new york!

jfrey wrote:

devnulljp wrote:Nowhere has no accent. I guarantee you have an accent that would be picked up as 'different' somewhere.

Of course any way of speaking will sound different somewhere else. That isn't what makes an accent. An accent is a deviation from phonetic pronunciation and emphasis. So when I say Zero accent I mean I speak in what is considered nearly perfect phonetic pronunciation with no unusual emphasis. I've never met a person that could tell even what part of the country I'm from, let alone something like the specific state.

But if only a very, very few places speak that way, then doesn't that identify you as being from there?

I'm going with the everybody has an accent thing. Language is incredibly malleable; I find it hard to believe that one part of Long Island speaks English exactly the same way that people have been for hundreds of years. Also, my (like unownunown said, newscaster)accent is more desirable so .

snipelfritz wrote:But if only a very, very few places speak that way, then doesn't that identify you as being from there?

Kind of, but in the way that darkness can identify an area where light isn't. Either way, the fact that something is identifiable though isn't what makes something an accent. Like in my previous post... An accent is a deviation from phonetic pronunciation and/or emphasis, or even perhaps cadence.

snipelfritz wrote:I find it hard to believe that one part of Long Island speaks English exactly the same way that people have been for hundreds of years.

It isn't necessarily the same as it has been. It's just phonetic. There is a difference. And there are several other areas throughout the country. There is at least one other area in NY, and I think a couple on the west coast also. Probably more but I don't know.