SoCal accents- slurring and… nothing. If you’re thinking stereotypically, then Valleyy Girl and Surfer Dude. But I have lived in SoCal my whole life, and I’ve never heard anyone talk like that.
I went to Tennessee recently, and I was kinda amazed, everyone I met talked in the same accent. I’m not very used to that, because almost everyone I meet has a different one! It’s funny. There are two new kids in my class. They think I talk funny. I can tell one has one of those strong south Indian accents, the other, has a south eastern/Georgian (the state) accent.
My accent is kind of strange, because I was born in New York, to New Yorker parents, but then my family moved down to Maryland. So it’s a not-quite-New York accent.
I have a strong New England accent. I can’t really help it; it gets worse when I get mad. When my mom gets mad, she gets a heavy Minnesota accent. Like those porcupines in Over the Hedge. It’s hard to take her seriously when she’s scolding me when she has this strong accent thing going on.
Pittsburgh (PA) accents are painful to listen to. I have a bit of a Pittsburgh accent, because I came here while I was still learning language and spent a fair amount of time amongst Piksburgers, but thankfully, it’s not bad at all. Mostly it’s just small things in my vowel sounds.
You can tell I am from New Hampshire because I say “wicked!” a LOT. MissSwann would know. I don’t really know how strong of an accent I have, since everyone I know talks basically the same way as me.
5 (MissSwann)- what do you mean you have a strong accent? Do you think I do?? (since ignorant me doesn’t know.)
I’m messed up with my accents. I have a half-southern, half-Boston accent. My parents are southerners and have southern accents, but I was raised in Boston. I say “y’all” “ain’t” and go into deep southern drawl when I’m pissed off, but I say wicked, Bawston, and on some words, I leave off the r.
We have a foreign exchange student from Germany on the xc team this year, and she has such a cool accent! Of course, she thinks that we all have accents too. I wonder how an american accent sounds to people from other places…
13 – I’ve always wondered that too – if I had a London accent, for example, how would I hear the American accent that I have?
I love listening to (and even reading, because they write a bit about it there) The Secret Garden and hearing the Yorkshire accents/dialect. I know that all the actors on the cd are only acting that accent, but I think they do it well. I love how they handle their vowels and slur things together in such a deliberate way.
Oh yeah, the SoCal accent includes pronouncing our R’s. Really. We always say the R’s. And the only way I can describe my slurring is “scuffing.” I slur sometimes, but more than half. And some of that slurring comes from this ACCURSED MARA DEVICE!!!!
i have no idea if i have an accent!! but i always start talking in a brittish accent when i’m acting. once i had to be Crazy Horse in a DI (destination imagination) skit and i started going brittish.
I suppose that I sound rather Maryland-ish, but I don’t really speak the same way as most people around where I live. In our area (and I include PA in taht, since it’s close) the accent is a bit Southern sounding, or maybe just more “hillbilly” like. (Appaliachian American, as they say) People at home also often talk a bit slower, and I say just about everything very, very fast. (Faster than some, at least.)
Probably by the end of the week (or more, if we stay longer) I’ll sound midwestern, I pick up accents fast and copy what I hear around me.
For example, when I spend a day with my friend Danielle, I start speaking the way she does, pronouncing my words and slurring them in the same rythms as she does. (I slur mine too, but differently.) It’s just what I’m around, and sometimes a mix of everything, so it’s hard to tell.
Hmm, what do the people who’ve heard me talk think? Do I sound Maryland-ish, Midwestern, Virginia, weird??
The thing is, I can hear the accents all of the places I spend the most time, so I don’t know which I imitate the most.
20 – Your British accent is… well… not British. And your normal accent is like mine, neutral. I’m actually quite surprised you don’t have a Minnesotan accent, though.
17- cheeyyy you guys have weird slang, so I guess that counts. There’s this subtle difference even when I’m reading stuff online by people from the bay area or whateva
socal=definite slurring going on lol. “I don’t know” becomes “iunno” and so on.
I’m really interested by early “American” accents and how they gradually became more regional. I suppose people came from all parts of Britain anyway, but I still think that progression is fascinating.
(24) Not only did they come from different parts of Britain, they arrived on our continent at different times, reflecting changes in the original accents as they themselves evolved. Where people ended up, and which other languages/dialects/accents they rubbed up against once they got there, also affected the outcome.
Re: slurring. English in general lends itself to slurring. Our linguistic ancestor tended to put heavy accents on initial syllables, and over time the ends of words, in particular, eroded. Final “e’s” became silent, many vowel sounds blurred into a schwa (that ubiquitous “uh” sound), “t’s” were ground down to “d’s” (“boating” is likely to sound like “boding”), and so on.
Fiddler, I can’t recall a notable/noticeable accent when I heard you speak last summer, but that was a while ago and I also wasn’t looking for an accent. But of course, everyone has their own subtle (or not so subtle, sometimes) differences in how to pronounce their language.
I honestly find the progression of our language’s pronunciation in America and stuff fascinating.
At Jewish camp over the summer, we asked our Israeli counselor to do his best impersonation of an american accent. Shockingly- it came out like he was a spoiled brat on Laguna Beach or something. He talked in a stereotypical Socal accent. I think the “Spoiled Brat from Beverly Hills” accent is what foreigners think when they think of an American accent.
Omg, I was just thinking about this topic the other day! Except that I was wondering if there was a website or something that had audio clips of accents from all around the world. That would be interesting.
I don’t think I have an unusual accent, but nobody ever thinks they do. I say “pop” instead of “soda”, a trait I picked up when I moved from California to Washington, but that’s more geographical vocabulary then an accent.
I have recently discovered a Chicago accent. It is rather subtle, but I finally found it. This discovery has probably been made before, but I’m rather proud of myself. And Robert, I don’t think all Brits find the various American accents nasal. Frankly, several English accents seem very nasal to me. Of course, I, being from Nebraska, have no accent.
Fun (random) fact: You can tell I’m posting from school if there are no little symbols on either side of my name.
In the science museum in boston *the science museum in boston pwns* there is this exhibit where you can listen to different English and French accents.
Accents can be a problem though. In the bible, the Gidionites said “s” instead of “sh” when they talked. The Israelites wanted to kill all the gideonites trying to cross the border, so they asked all immigrants to say the hebrew word “shibolet”. The immigrants who said “Shibolet” were let through, but all gideonites who said “sibolet” were murdered. Sticky.
10- hey gim! ‘sup? *high 5* sorry, off topic. I just haven’t seen you in a while.
30- I don’t think anyone I know says ‘soda’.
I don’t think I have an accent. I live in Canada. When I’m around people with accents my vowels go weird and sound like I’m trying to speak without moving my mouth. But it’s not hugely noticible. I deffinitely don’t say aboot instead of about. The newfoundland accent is cool but it throws me off because I’m expecting certain syllables to soud different than they do.
8- I don’t really know about yours, but I think mine is stronger. My friend’s parents were born and raised in England, so they told me exactly how my voice sounds (it’s more prominent to them).
I went to a camp with mostly foreign counsselors (Syllabub was there too, btw) and our counselor, Frida, was Swedish, and by the end of the week when my mom picked me up, she told me I was talking funny. I realised (after recording my voice and listening to it) that I had picked up a light Swedish accent! It was so cool; I had dozens of recordings of my voice on my iPod until I lost it. (the iPod, not the accent, but I did loose the accent after awhile, too).
I can’t tell if I have an accent. I’ve lived in New York since I was three, but nobody in my household, at least, has the accent. I do say “coupon” differently from everyone I know though, picked up from my parents.
Everyone in my house- “Kyew-pon”
Everyone else- “Coo-pon”
30- I was with some people from the midwest, I believe, and we discussed that. Apparently, people in the northeast say “soda,” while people in the midwest say “pop.” Also, southerners apparently call it “coke,” which I don’t know is true or not. Can any MuseBloggers verify?
25) aha very true! I didn’t think of that..oh that’s so sad, I;m studying that period of history right now for ap us. lol.
also, not everyone from California has a valley girl accent. just fyi. And we’re not all surfer dudes or whatever all those silly tv shows try to portray ~cali~ as. lollll. Laguna Beach is actually really nice, and they don’t appreciate all the publicity they get from that show.
34) Seriously? I don’t know anyone who says “pop” or uh whatever other terms there are. Isn’t that funny? hehe
I’ve only noticed that Canadians sound different with their ‘o’s as in they clearly pronounce it in words like “sorry” or “processed”. Whereas I say “prahcessed” and the Canadian person I heard say it was much more literal. if that makes any sense at all.
Accents and regional things are also interesting in other languages, like cliff eagle mentioned. In Japanese the most common differentiation in Kansai-ben aka Kansai dialect. It makes it confusing when I’m trying to translate, cause the dictionary I have goes by standard japanese.
‘Pop’: Soda.
Coupon: COO-pon. I swear, EVERYONE in Minnesota says it KEW-pon.
Just clearing that up.
37 – Yeah, that’s true. Midwesterners say pop, Deep Southerners say Coke (for EVERYTHING, mind you: Pepsi = Coke, Sprite = Coke, Mountain Dew = Coke…), and everyone else (as far as I know) says soda.
Oh, and I know that for a fact: I have lived in the Deep South, Midwest, and ‘everywhere else’: aka Virginia. Also, the Philippines. So I know firsthand.
27 – Not only is that not necessarily true, it doesn’t really answer my question, because it doesn’t explain how I would hear it. Also, I’m not usually a very loud person. I’m quieter than a lot of people I know (unless I’m really excited, but those people are intolerably loud when they want to be).
30 – I found one once, actually. I can’t remember what it was called, but I’m sure you could find it through some good googlesurfing.
I say pop too. Well, sometimes I say soda, but that’s only when someone has said soda and I’m… responding I guess. I don’t say either particularly often.
37 – I can’t stand it when people say “kyew-pon”. It doesn’t make any sense, as far as how coupon is spelled.
I live in Pittsburgh, PA, but I say pop. But then again, most of the people at my school say soda… It’s probably because my mom (from MI) says pop.
Fun fact: Last year’s world culture teacher (who knew nothing, by the way, so don’t trust this) said that in the Down Under region (Australia/NZ and stuff) people say “fizzy” for soda/pop. Any of you MBers from that region, can you verify this?
38 – I love those vowels. All over the Canada/very north USA (as far as I know) they say “oh” with almost an “oo”.
My parents and I say “soda”, but my family in Illinois say “pop”.
I say coo-pon.
I live in South Carolina, but I haven’t picked up their accent, I have lived all over so I really don’t have an accent. Actually my voice is kind of lower sounding than most girls my age. It’s hard to explain. I love British and Austrailian accents!
I was reading an Australian book once, and they kept referring to this stuff called “cordial.” In the back of the book, they had a glossary of Australian terms/lingo, where I found out that cordial is a concentrated syrup-thing, which you mix with water, popular in Australia/UK. Heh.
It sounded pleasant. Why do we not have things like cordial in the US?
Oh dear, this whole post so far is slightly off topic. I’ll try to fix it, here on.
41- That’s what everyone I know says, about “kyew-pon,” at least. “Why do you say it like that?! It’s Coo-pon!
I knew someone from Pennsylvania who had an interesting accent. I can’t quite recall it now, but she pronounced “Spanish” interestingly, and said that Italian ices were really “water ices.”
It took us about half an hour to figure out what exactly a water ice was.
Also about the Midwestern person who informed me of the pop/soda/coke phenomenon- she would pronounce orange as “oynge.” It wasn’t an accent though, just that one word was pronounced differently.
41 (THF): You say “Pop”? I never noticed that. I’ve always said “Soda.” Mom says Pop, Dad says Soda…I guess each of us took one. I think our brother says soda, too, but I’m not positive.
Kyew-pon drives me nuts. Thankfully, it’s not a word I hear in every-day conversation.
What I have noticed about Pittsburgh accents: few people who actually live in the city of Pittsburgh (or, at least the neighborhoods I visit frequently) have the horrible accents. It’s the people who live in the suburbs who have the “Pittsburgh accents.”
36- That’s not really very New York– at least, not my part of it. In Jersey, we don’t pahk the cah. That’s more New England-y.
We firmly believe in pronouncing awll the invisible w’s in words.
I say ‘pop’ and ‘coo-pon’. But sometimes I get mixed up and say ‘kyew-pon’ . Usually, my family just says, “Hey, would you grab me a Diet Coke?” instead of saying, “Hey, would you grab me a pop?” Not EVERYTHING is Coke, people. I also say ‘proh-cessed’, not ‘praw-cessed’. ‘Praw-cessed’ is too raw for me. I’m the only one in my family who says it like that.
I have a sort of subtle, suburbian accent, and I say ‘like’ and ‘um” a lot. It’s the way everyone talks where I live.
I’m from Ohio and I say pop most of the time, but sometimes I say soda. It annoys me when some people use a lot of “big words”. I think people have to have a certain voice/accent for it to work.
Most people just sound like show offs when they use big words.
If the big words are in a pre-written speech, it’s ok because it fits with the speech, but in normal conversation most people can’t sound intelligent while using big words.
I wonder what my accent sounds like. I must have a very strange one because even people around here can’t understand me sometimes.
I was talking to my english teacher the other day, he’s from california, and we were noticing how different our accents were. I enunciate rather clearly and use my throat and lips, wher as a lot of southerners use their mouths.
I say … fizzy water. Or soda-pop. Or soda.
Coo-pohn.
New Orlins, not new orleens.
new York, not new yawk
I say sawsspahn. not sauhspan.
I say wow. or oh.
I say thee apple, the clock.
And people say that I sound british sometimes. when I’m excited.
I say ja instead of yeah, but that’s dansih taking over!!!
Ooh, here’s an old immediate family dispute – Is it Root beer as in boot or root beer as in cook? And it’s the same with roof, hoof, and the rest of those ones that can be pronounced either way. I’m with the Roooooot beer. And yes, I say hooves with an “oooo”, is there anything wrong with that?
Oh, and how do you say tootsie roll? I say tootsie as in cook, but when I went to camp, my roommates said tooootsie, with the longer “oo”. As in boot.
50 – See, I say praw-cessed, but I understand people who say proh-cessed, because it makes sense for how it is spelled.
50 – I’d like to say it proh-cessed, but I say praw-cessed. I also say ‘like’ and ‘um’ a lot, but the times I say that are rapidly diminishing because I spend all of my time on here and haven’t really spoken to anyone for three months, so I have broken the habit. I hope.
38- I say processed: prawcessed.
41- um, really? I didn’t know that, about the o thing. I don’t think I do that. can you give me an example of a word where you notice that?
53- it’s root beer as in ‘boot’. trust me.
54- I say tutsie.
thee apple, the clock
an apple, a clock
How do you pronounce aunt?,
I say awnt not ant. I have had a teacher single me out infront of the class because when asked for a synonym of ant I said awnt. I’ve always said aunt becasue my mom says aunt. and little kids ask me what I’m saying when I say awnt. it’s kind of anoying, wouldn’t you just assume that I meant aunt if I say “awnt jane”?
11. My friend’s science teacher has this really thick Norwiegen (Which I am unable to spell correctly) accent, and she can never understand what she’s saying, and my music teacher at school, who forces us to learn the dreaded recorder (YAAAAH!) has a Romanian accent, which you get used to, but is very difficult not to laugh at when he gets angry and starts yelling at the boys in and/or my class for not playing the song we’re learning correctly, although, he’s kind of frightening when he gets angry, but it’s funny later on.
58- I called my aunt “ant” once when I was… five maybe, and she doesn’t speak English totally well, and she asked why I called her an insect. I’ve said “awnt” ever since then.
Oh, our old health teacher was from… Botswana, I think. He had the thickest, funniest accent ever.
I would like to say “awnt”, because it’s the proper way to say “aunt”, but all (or most) of my family says “ant”, so I’m stuck with that pronunciation.
52 on – Thee apple, thuh clock is how “the” is supposed to be pronounced. Always. Before a vowel, the “e” says its name. Before a consonant, its a schwa sound.
58 – It’s around Wisconsin and Minnesota where I’ve noticed it (people from around there tend to say it like that). It’s kind of like a Welsh-y “oh”, I guess… it’s just a very “oo”-ified “oh”. Kind of hard to explain.
A lot of people here say:
Pop
über
They like lefsa (what the heck is lefsa?)
They go fishing a lot
Kew-pon
Bayge [rhyming with vague]
Vag [rhyming with bag]
New England slang words:
wicked (really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really cool)
pwns all (self explanatory)
spiffy (cool, without flaw)
sketchy (questionable; skanky)
ZOMG (OMG with a z on it; pronounced Z-omg!!!)
Thuh apull , Thuh clok
soda
aunt/ant=ant
coopon
When you say “Volleyball” do you say Volly-vawl or Volly -ball, I used to sat Volly-vall, but I broke the habit.
65 – You’re absolutely right about “awnt”. It sounds totally wrong to me, which is part of the reason I don’t say it. But I feel like I should, because whenever I say “ant” I get mad at myself for pronouncing a word incorrectly.
I say “kyew-pon.” I’m also starting, as I expected, to change the way I say some things to a bit more midwestern-ish. Os are different here, a little more “oo” instead of “oh”, but it’s the tone quality that makes it different. It’s a little lower and higher in the throat here in WI. Of course, in some words that have O in them Marylanders around where I live will replace them with A’s. (Like “Ohio”, some people around us say “ah-hi-ah.”
The whole tone quality of speech is different here than it is at home, not just ways they pronounce things. It’s fun to listen to, and interesting to try to imitate.
The reference librarian here has a VERY Midwestern accent!!
28 – Must be; my group’s New Zealand tour guide did the same thing when we asked her to imitate an American.
41 – I’m not from there, but when I visited some people did say “fizzy.”
53 – I pronounce both like “cook.”
58 – I like “awnt,” but I’m used to saying “ant.”
64 – I say “volley ball.”
Coke (for all soft drinks), kew-pon, praw-cessed, New Orleens, sauhspan….ok, maybe I do have a southern accent after all. I guess I always assumed that I was neutral because I don’t have the Appalachian-ish southern accent that a lot of people here do. What do the English think of southern accents?
Do any other states have “git ‘r done,” or is that just a Kentucky thing? I don’t actually say that, but it is a popular phrase here.
Soda/the name of the soda when referring to soft drinks, kyewpon, prawcessed, Neworlins (one word) or New Orleens when trying to emphasize, sawspan, ant=aunt, thuh for the. This is a CA accent, as far as I can tell. Slurring and too lazy to say “the” properly.
And yes, we say “git ‘r done.” But not too often. I wonder where it came from?
Does anyone else say “sketch” or “sketchy” for something that’s a little shady? We say stuff like, “I like going to LA, even though it’s a little sketch.”
I say sketchy all the time haha. Also say ahnt and ant pretty interchangeably. and dudes, it’s kyuupan. My dad and paternal grandparents all say coopon. They’re from the east coast so maybe that’s why? They’ve lived here a long time but every so often a word will slip in that sounds differently. Like pizza parlor. yeah but coopon really annoys me for some unknown reason. It’s just a word after all. but man!
…wait are you guys trying to tell me there’s another way to say saucepan? sauce= sahs. right? okay.
“Some Southern Californians refer to Northern California as “NoCal,” to emphasize perceived feelings of Southern California’s superiority. In exchange, “SoCal” is often used derisively in some areas of Northern California, (“Oh, he’s from SoCal, no wonder he’s such an airhead.”), especially in conversations about water usage or Los Angeles (sometimes referred to as “La La Land”).”
LOLLL that’s so true though. we’re all a bunch of jerks. This all makes me realize what an influence your environment is. It wasn’t until recently that I felt a real ~attachment~ to my state…probably cause I hadn’t left it much. Do you guys ever feel that way?
69~ A little. But not really, it’s where you pronounce it in your throat. “Tone” the way I say it eastern-ish is different than the way I say it midwestern-ish. I have no idea how to actually say it in typed words, because the most difference seems to be in the quality of sound (as in tone quality) that makes the difference, more even than pronunciation on some words.
70~ Mm hmm. I’ve heard it in Maryland. I’ve seen it on Maryland, Pennsylvania and West Virginia trucks.
coupon: I pronounce it q-pon–people who say coo-pon drive me crazy!!!! Actually, right this second, no pronunciation sounds correct–i think I’ve been saying it too many times (ok, need to stop saying coupon)
I say soda, unless somebody else said pop, then tend to respond with pop
I say wicked–sometimes. so it’s not just new england
do you say mum or mom? I say mum. I didn’t know I said mum until recently. I always thought I said mom but I don’t. My brother sais mommy and daddy. it drives me crazy.
I use mom and sometimes mum and mother only when she’s not paying attention, only say the second r in February, and use ‘bloody’ when there is someone who might be offended nearby.
I had a fine southern accent for a while. It annoyed my parents so much that they got a clicker and clicked at me when I pronounced stuff wrong…
I guess I have a New York accent, but I can’t tell.
I say both rs in February when I’m reading something that makes me want to, (perfect example = Phantom Tollbooth. I would say a light first r, but it would still be FebRuary).
Oh, you know, I’ve noticed that when I read Roald Dahl stuff aloud, I subconsciously try to speak with a British accent. It’s just the language he uses, I guess.
I just say Mom and Dad. Nothing cool or interesting.
nugget–nuh-git
coupon–kew-pon (coo-pon annoys me, for some reason)
soda
wicked–occasionally, but more often sweet
sick–not to describe something cool
aunt–ant
sketchy–no
bloody–definitely, especially if my dad is around–it annoys him–I do believe he said it was unladylike *laughsmaniacally*
mom
february–only the second r
and occasionally git, bugger, or prat–and definitely use mental
Nugget- Nuhg-it
Coupon- Coo-pon.
Soda/pop/coke- Pop/fizz
Wicked- Nope.
Sick/ sick nasty- Nuh-uh
Aunt- Not ant, I pronounce it with the u.
Sketchy- What’s that?
mom- mum
bloody- Yeah. Especially “absobloodylutely” for “absolutely”
February- only 2nd R
thesaurus- the-saw-rus
I could email my other best friend besides Leafy, Olivia, who came from Korea in fourth grade and is now back in the bloody country, do to her father’s Visa running out. *sheds a tear*
82~ I say Mom usually, but occasionally find myself saying “Mum”. That started after working with Dennis and having him call her my “mum”. He’s a Brit.
And, no, I don’t say the first R.
83~ Why?
87~ Being ladylike is way overrated.
88~ Marpy. I’m so using that word now. Marpy, marpy, marpy!!!!!
Nuh-giht
Febyoo-air-ee
Mum/mom I say both
Thuh-sore-us
RANT-
MY LAST NAME IS ONLY 7 LETTERS LONG AND NO ONE CAN PRONOUNCE IT!!!!! I DON’T CARE IF IT’S GERMAN IM TIRED OF HAVING TO SAY MY NAME OVER AND OVERGGAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRR
(96) *empathy pies* I’ve had the same problem all my life. My last name is pretty close to phonetic (LASS Lee), yet people are always trying to stick an “h” in there or make the “a” long. Then there’s Lazy, Lacey, Laffly, Lastly, Lazlo…once someone called my mom Mrs. Buzzby.
People pronounce my last name wrong a lot. Once someone mailed something to Robin B– [Yes, I snipped it because it made your last name to easy to guess. –Rebecca] And many people spell my name Robyn. It’s the gosh darn BIRD, people! ROBIN! R-O-B-I-N-!
Spell it correctly! YARG!!
My first name is wonderfully straightforward (there are only two different letters in Anna. Yay!), but my last name is tricky. Heh, well, I can’t tell you how people mispronounce it, because that would be like saying it, and it’s quite an uncommon name (I think I’ve met almost all of the S–– s in the world, or at least in the US, because they’re in my extended family).
I’ve always said LASS-lee, or something close enough, but in the first MuseCast, someone (I think it was Pan, but it might have been me) said LAYZ-lee. I believe it when you say you have trouble, Rebecca, because though it is really quite simple, people think it has some sort of trick in it.
(113) Yes, I think you’ve described the situation perfectly regarding my last name.
My aunt’s name is Anna. Occasionally, people try to call her AH-na, but mostly, as you say, it’s wonderfully straightforward — even when it’s facing backwards. Cool to have a palindrome for a name.
*googles*
Hmm, “le car” means “the bus.”
Can French-speakers verify?
My name is pretty much never mispronounced. The only variation of Rachel could be maybe, the Spanish “Raquel,” but only one person’s ever called me that. And my last name is a whopping THREE letters long, and also non-mispronouncable. Hehe.
114 – You’re right, some people say AH-na. And some people say the An in AN-na in a way that is impossible to spell. I’ll show you in the next MuseCast. If there is one.
There are some downsides to having a palindrome name. My name backwards is (ta-dah!): Anna. As opposed to my name forwards, which is Anna. Fascinating, is it not? I have such a cool name backwards. Meh.
(127) My aunt’s last name is Graham (which is also my middle name), so sometimes her name comes out sounding like “anagram.” As she was my heroine growing up, I am decidedly very fond of the name “Anna.”
To all, another poll: do you pronounce the “L” in words like golf, yolk, bulb, folk, and so on? Also, do you distinguish between “pen” and “pin” or do they sound the same?
They are very different; pen has an EH sound, and pin has an IH sound. But a lot of people here in MN say pin and pen the same. Ditto with poor and pour.
97- for some bizare reason my brain adds in a ‘t’ inbetween the ‘s’ and the ‘l’.
101- yeah. If I’m not possitive on what slang means i don’t use it.
107- even if it is outlandish I would be more careful infuture. It would really suck if a scary stalker person found out your name and located you. just saying.
125- I don’t know if ‘car’ is a french word. the bus is l’autobus.
my name backwords is Neelhtak. for somereason small children add an a to my name so it”s three syllables. Kathaleen instead of Kathleen. It’s funny because I introduce myself with two syllables and they just add the a.
I`ve kind of got a southern accent,but since i moved from michigan, i`ve kind of of got a Michisouthern accent.I say skeletin and tommara,so i guess i`m southern.
My friend’s dad was born/raised in England, they moved here 7 years ago, and so he has an English accent. But here’s the funny part; he had dental issues, so he got all of his teeth pulled out. Now he has this weird, warped toothless accent that makes me all but crack up whenever I see him.
133- My friend has the same name, and she gets annoyed when people do that. I suppose it’s because of the many consonant sounds all smushed together- it sounds more flowy with the “a,” I think.
128 – It would be weird to have a name like Anna Graham. I’ve always wondered if people with names like that (two words that kind of sound like a different word when said together) get teased and stuff. Hm…
130 – Yeah, I was going to write that, but changed my mind. I’ve actually met people who say AH-na, but spell it Anna.
133 – Well, “lastly” is a word, so maybe it’s just the dictionary within you.
I think the Kathaleen thing has something to do with separating the consonant sounds. “thl” is hard to say for kids who are still working on the dexterity of their tongues. That’s just a guess, though.
I’ve heard some people say “poor” as “pore”, but I don’t say that. I say “pore” for pour and “POOR” (long oooo) for poor.
I say “pin” and “pen” with two distinct vowel sounds (ih and eh), but again, I’ve heard people say “pen” more like “pin”.
Golf, yolk, bulb, and folk all have the “L” second to last, but only in the “lk”s are the ls supposed to be silent. In my pronunciation, yoke/YOHK is “yolk”. For folk, I almost pronounce the l, but not quite. Again, hard to explain, I’ll talk about it in the next MuseCast.
128–I pronounce the L in all of them (although in folk I don’t if I’m saying it fast). And pen and pin are different, I pronounce pin with a narrower, more “i”-ish sound.
Does anyone else pronounce “Okay” wierd, sort of like “nkay”? I don’t know why I do it, but I just noticed that my friend does it too, so maybe it’s a SoCal thing. Or maybe I’m just too lazy to enunciate.
My name backwards: Haras. It sounds really funny with my last name, but alas! there are too many scary stalkers about.
Sorry for the double post–I just found out something cool. Apparently monkeys have accents, just like humans. Here’s the link to the article:
http :// news.nationalgeographic .com /news/2005/12/1228_051228_monkey_accents. html
I just spelled out my last name backwards, and it’s really cool. To quote Nthanda: “alas! there are too many stalkers about.”
139 – That makes a lot of sense, really. Very cool, though, thanks for sharing!
Okay, it seems a lot of this thread is morphing into a conversation more suited to the Words and Names thread. Can we try to return to something more like accents?
Howdy. Ah’m a sturrio-tippical caow-boy. Ah’ve got mah-silf a accent. Yew know, from them su-thern pahrts?
I’ve sort of invented my own accent for some of my roleplay characters. It’s kind of like Old English pickpocketer/southwestern milkmaid. Tis very intristin, tis.
143- I have no idea. Just, my friend and I were doing phone rping (don’t ask) and I suddenly burst into that sort of accent. She asked me what the heck kind of accent that was, and I said it was MY accent. After recording my voice a few times and listening back, tht’s what I determined it sounded like. It was very cool.
144- Yeah, BrItish accents are so much better than American accents.
• Adult = ah-DULT (I pronounce it A-dult)
• Caramel = CAHR-mul (I pronounce it CARE-a-mul)
• Garage = ga-RAHDG (I pronounce it ga-RADG)
• Pasta = PAW-stah (I pronounce it PA-sta)
Other than pronouncing those words differently from everyone I know, I don’t think I have much of an accent.
I say car-e-mel. but the middle sylable is barely there.
I also say liberry. I have no idea why I can’t say the first r.
vawse not vayse.
awnt not ant (aunt)
Well, Once this Californian came to our school (she moved to Oregon now) and she and I inimtated each others accents…It was really funy…she said Kiwi accents are nasal…and they go up at the end…is that right?I dont think I have an accent..I cant hear it…but I like Australian accents..ok, I just like impersonating Kath&Kim, thats an Australian comedy that takes a parody of Australia, but its amazing how they can exaggerate their accents because to do that they have to be able to hear it…I cant!
151- Hi. Reviving this thread for you.
The North Eastern accent is quite funny. I live here so you would think I couldn’t hear it but I can. Everyone drops contenants. It makes spelling impossible becuase we have all of these constenats that no one pronounces. For example: the word Constanents. I know that I spelled that wrong… jsut because I had to look it up a gazillion times on word and each time the only replacement word it come up with was constant. But anywho we pronounce how-ever-you-spell it con-sti-nets. I think we dropped at least one N. And Wicked is Wic-ed. And compition is Comp-tshun. Which is close enough I guess… but not really.
What really gets on my nerves is kids go around saying “WE don’t have an accent! The diciotnary was written here!” yeah… um… we most definetly do. Noah Webster most definetly (pronounced Def-ni-ly) did NOT pronounce things the way my class does.
The other day I got a chance to hear a rather good recording of my voice and I don’t think I’ve entirely dropped the slight midwestern twinge that I took on while visiting grandparents in WI for a few days. Than again, maybe I just sound a little that way, who knows? I really don’t have the local accent (which is surprisingly southern sounding), despite growing up in this area. It’s odd, on one half I have midwestern (WI) and on the other I have MD, but my paternal grandfather was born in….Minnesota, I think. He came to the east coast when he was a baby though.
I sometimes wonder if I sound like anywhere, since I do tend to mimic other people’s voices, whether I realize it or not.
It’s most obvious when I learn a song by hearing someone else sing it (the easiest way for me to learn something with lyrics).
153- I get what you mean. I pick up peoples way of speaking way too quickly. I also speak different depending on how annoyed/tence/boring/goofy a situation is.
I got an “ARe you from Oklahoma too?” at a world wide compition last year after talking Oklahoman for about five minutes about the condition of our school toilits (don’t ask)
One minute after meeting the rest of my Space Academy team at the airport:.
Me: Hi, I’m Kai. I’m from-
Billy: New York.
Me: How’d you know?
Billy: Your accent.
Which is funny, because I know a lot of people with much stronger NY accents than me.
155- What’s space academy like? Is it fun? It’s always been my dream to go but nothing could get me away from Woodstock. I love it there. That is my home.
My couneler there was from England. She actualy had an amazing Connectican accent. She had to try when she was doing it but… she fooled a parent. Her name was Katie and she made us pronounce it Kate-y instead of the american Kadie. It was funny. She made fun of our attemeted English accents. Especaily mine… that tells you somthing ay?
156- It’s a lot of fun, even if you aren’t as obsessed as I am, and you’ll certainly learn a lot of really cool stuff. The training takes effort, but it’s very exciting.
159- That’s cool. Still can’t go but now I can think about the setting there. *sigh* My mom says I have too many things that I am interested in too much. I think it means I should start figureing out what I like the most.
155~ New York accents are fun to listen to. I know a guy with a really strong New Jersey/New York accent, and, of course, I hear it on live recordings of Simon & Garfunkel. And Dustin Hoffman, in Kramer vs. Kramer, that I watched not too long ago.
Hmm, I’ve been able to do a fairly decent English accent, due to watching way too many British films I think, but I’ve never had the nerve to try it out (in jest) on any of the Brits I know.
Of course, I’ve also worked with Aussies (my aunt is one, and some other friends of the family as well), but for some reason I can’t do that as well.
For awhile (after hanging out with a friend from Quebec for a week) I could imitate a strong French accent, but I haven’t done it for awhile, and I’m not sure if I could anymore.
Although a lot of people think so, a lot of Italian peeps don’t have the accents that we think they do. They just sorta sound like…. peeps from Spain. Don’t do them injustice. Some of them even have English accent. We met someone from Austria and Scotland and England AND France there. Lots of different accents. And kilts. Sorry that last sentence was totally unrelated.
161- I’ve never been able too understand the crazy new york accents they use on TV though. It’s pretty bad. All the New Yorkers I’ve met (And I live in CT so I’ve met quite a few) didn’t sound all that “New Yorkish”
163- It’s like the stereotype that all Nebraskans are uneducated hicks who ride cows to school. (I’ve been asked before if I do that.)
I still like my North Midwestern accent. It’s been found by the Telsur Project, led by William Labov, to be the most free of regional features, or, in other words, the most neutral.
I went to Phili a few days ago. There was this huge convention for Latin and Greek scholars plus archiologists. There were people from everywhere there. One lady I talked to was from Germany, the accent was quite interesting. And there was this other man form I have no idea where whose accent made him relaly hard to foolow. I don’t even think I was supoosed to be there, but hey, they were achiologists.
I pick up accents quick too, and my family gets annoyed. I watched two episodes of Doctor Who just before watching the second Harry Potter, and I continued to talk British for the rest of the weekend. I do the same thing whenever we visit my gma’s house in Atlanta, I end up talking in a southern accent for weeks afterward. I don’t seem to pick up NY as much, but I’ll get to test my NJ when we visit Princeton next weekend
I’ve lived all over, so I don’t have much of an accent, but I do say orange Arr- ange. Which people think is funny. I’m moving to ND at the end of the school year, so I’ll get a fun accent there
I recently tried to learn Japanese from a tape, and gave up partly because I couldn’t get the accent right. tangerine (my sister) is really good at it.
Me: (practicing) Nihongoga wakarimaska? (That means “Do you understand Japanese?”, by the way.)
tangerine: No, it’s waki(r/d-ish sound)imaska.
Me: Wakadimaska?
tangerine: Waki(r/d-ish sound)imaska.
Me: *gives up*
I get really mad when I catch myself talking in a Boston accent. I don’t know why, I just get paranoid at myself. I talk in a British (cockney) accent a lot, even though I have no British family members/ancestors/relations at all.
I say… Wicked (as you all know), “thuh apple, thuh clock”, (though when I sing I say thee both) COO-pon, va-NILL-a, a-DULT (though for some reason it sounds more like a-DOLT), cahr-ramel, and yore for your. I’m sorry, but I can’t stand it when people say “yer”.
Everyone in the whole caking WORLD mishears/mispronounces my name. It is Emi, not Emma, not Abby, and not Debbie. And my whole name, too. Poll: If you saw the name “Emilia,” how would you pronounce it?
My name(s) backwards are okay. Ime, and Ailime, which sounds like “Ay, Leema!”
I love using peoples names backwards! My friends and I have called each other for our backwords nicknames for so long that it feels totally natural.
I’m Lirpa (April)
Rehtaeh, goes by Taeh (Heather)
Roonham, goes by Roony (Mahnoor)
and Acceber for Rebecca.
Poor Hannah feels so left out all the time
Hee. I love Japanese accents, too.
And I hate it when my mom randomly starts talking with a Japanese accent. I know she’s doing it to annoy me.
I’m starting to pick up a southern accent from my dad’s family. Most of the time I don’t have a southern accent, but sometimes I’ll slip and say “mah” instead of my, “thae-at” instead of that, “thay-er” instead of there, “whay-er” instead of where, and so on.
My dad travels a lot inside the States for work, and picks up accents and slang from different regions. Me and my sister always laugh when he does the “hyre instead of hour, pyre instead of power” pronunciation he picked up in Kentucky.
*is incredibly jealous of people who can pick up accents quickly* I don’t even notice accents much. (Which I also hate.) Strong British ones drive me insane. I love Southern, French, Scottish, and German ones. I say COO-pon, AD-ult, and va-NILL-a, Emilia- I’d say Em-il-EE-ah even thought I prefer Em-EEL-ia.
Why do strong British accents drive you insane? *cries* Ah well, if I ever meet you in real life I’ll use my American accent then, don’t worry. And I don’t even remember at what point I picked up my American accent. It was sooo long ago.
SoCal accents- slurring and… nothing. If you’re thinking stereotypically, then Valleyy Girl and Surfer Dude. But I have lived in SoCal my whole life, and I’ve never heard anyone talk like that.
First post?
I went to Tennessee recently, and I was kinda amazed, everyone I met talked in the same accent. I’m not very used to that, because almost everyone I meet has a different one! It’s funny. There are two new kids in my class. They think I talk funny. I can tell
one has one of those strong south Indian accents, the other, has a south eastern/Georgian (the state) accent.
My accent is kind of strange, because I was born in New York, to New Yorker parents, but then my family moved down to Maryland. So it’s a not-quite-New York accent.
Pahk your cah in havahd yahd and give the guy a quahtah. Whats the big idear?
I have a strong New England accent. I can’t really help it; it gets worse when I get mad. When my mom gets mad, she gets a heavy Minnesota accent. Like those porcupines in Over the Hedge. It’s hard to take her seriously when she’s scolding me when she has this strong accent thing going on.
I don’t think I have much of any regional accent, I mean, I know it’s American, but I have a typical American accent.
Pittsburgh (PA) accents are painful to listen to. I have a bit of a Pittsburgh accent, because I came here while I was still learning language and spent a fair amount of time amongst Piksburgers, but thankfully, it’s not bad at all. Mostly it’s just small things in my vowel sounds.
You can tell I am from New Hampshire because I say “wicked!” a LOT. MissSwann would know. I don’t really know how strong of an accent I have, since everyone I know talks basically the same way as me.
5 (MissSwann)- what do you mean you have a strong accent? Do you think I do?? (since ignorant me doesn’t know.)
I’m messed up with my accents. I have a half-southern, half-Boston accent. My parents are southerners and have southern accents, but I was raised in Boston. I say “y’all” “ain’t” and go into deep southern drawl when I’m pissed off, but I say wicked, Bawston, and on some words, I leave off the r.
You misspelled my name. Again.
My science teacher is Romanian, and has an odd accent.
I am a New Englander but I don’t really do the Boston thing, or say wicked all the time.
what other NE things are there?
We have a foreign exchange student from Germany on the xc team this year, and she has such a cool accent! Of course, she thinks that we all have accents too. I wonder how an american accent sounds to people from other places…
13 – I’ve always wondered that too – if I had a London accent, for example, how would I hear the American accent that I have?
I love listening to (and even reading, because they write a bit about it there) The Secret Garden and hearing the Yorkshire accents/dialect. I know that all the actors on the cd are only acting that accent, but I think they do it well. I love how they handle their vowels and slur things together in such a deliberate way.
14) Its like music…
Oh yeah, the SoCal accent includes pronouncing our R’s. Really. We always say the R’s. And the only way I can describe my slurring is “scuffing.” I slur sometimes, but more than half. And some of that slurring comes from this ACCURSED MARA DEVICE!!!!
14 – The Secret Garden is good for accents.
I don’t really have an accent…I have a Northern CA accent? Is there such a thing?
17- I dunno, you might have the same accent as I have with a bit of differentiation, as we have a few more Hispanics here. I’m not racist!
I have a southern louisianna mixed with northern michigan accent. Don’t ask.
i have no idea if i have an accent!! but i always start talking in a brittish accent when i’m acting. once i had to be Crazy Horse in a DI (destination imagination) skit and i started going brittish.
3~ You’re in Maryland? Cool, so am I.
I suppose that I sound rather Maryland-ish, but I don’t really speak the same way as most people around where I live. In our area (and I include PA in taht, since it’s close) the accent is a bit Southern sounding, or maybe just more “hillbilly” like. (Appaliachian American, as they say) People at home also often talk a bit slower, and I say just about everything very, very fast. (Faster than some, at least.)
Probably by the end of the week (or more, if we stay longer) I’ll sound midwestern, I pick up accents fast and copy what I hear around me.
For example, when I spend a day with my friend Danielle, I start speaking the way she does, pronouncing my words and slurring them in the same rythms as she does. (I slur mine too, but differently.) It’s just what I’m around, and sometimes a mix of everything, so it’s hard to tell.
Hmm, what do the people who’ve heard me talk think? Do I sound Maryland-ish, Midwestern, Virginia, weird??
The thing is, I can hear the accents all of the places I spend the most time, so I don’t know which I imitate the most.
I guess I have a NY accent?
20 – Your British accent is… well… not British. And your normal accent is like mine, neutral. I’m actually quite surprised you don’t have a Minnesotan accent, though.
17- cheeyyy you guys have weird slang, so I guess that counts. There’s this subtle difference even when I’m reading stuff online by people from the bay area or whateva
socal=definite slurring going on lol. “I don’t know” becomes “iunno” and so on.
I’m really interested by early “American” accents and how they gradually became more regional. I suppose people came from all parts of Britain anyway, but I still think that progression is fascinating.
(24) Not only did they come from different parts of Britain, they arrived on our continent at different times, reflecting changes in the original accents as they themselves evolved. Where people ended up, and which other languages/dialects/accents they rubbed up against once they got there, also affected the outcome.
Re: slurring. English in general lends itself to slurring. Our linguistic ancestor tended to put heavy accents on initial syllables, and over time the ends of words, in particular, eroded. Final “e’s” became silent, many vowel sounds blurred into a schwa (that ubiquitous “uh” sound), “t’s” were ground down to “d’s” (“boating” is likely to sound like “boding”), and so on.
Fiddler, I can’t recall a notable/noticeable accent when I heard you speak last summer, but that was a while ago and I also wasn’t looking for an accent. But of course, everyone has their own subtle (or not so subtle, sometimes) differences in how to pronounce their language.
I honestly find the progression of our language’s pronunciation in America and stuff fascinating.
(14) How Americans sound to English people: flat, loud, and nasal.
At Jewish camp over the summer, we asked our Israeli counselor to do his best impersonation of an american accent. Shockingly- it came out like he was a spoiled brat on Laguna Beach or something. He talked in a stereotypical Socal accent. I think the “Spoiled Brat from Beverly Hills” accent is what foreigners think when they think of an American accent.
I have a sort of light, flat voice and a really breathy laugh.
Omg, I was just thinking about this topic the other day! Except that I was wondering if there was a website or something that had audio clips of accents from all around the world. That would be interesting.
I don’t think I have an unusual accent, but nobody ever thinks they do. I say “pop” instead of “soda”, a trait I picked up when I moved from California to Washington, but that’s more geographical vocabulary then an accent.
I have recently discovered a Chicago accent. It is rather subtle, but I finally found it. This discovery has probably been made before, but I’m rather proud of myself. And Robert, I don’t think all Brits find the various American accents nasal. Frankly, several English accents seem very nasal to me. Of course, I, being from Nebraska, have no accent.
Fun (random) fact: You can tell I’m posting from school if there are no little symbols on either side of my name.
In the science museum in boston *the science museum in boston pwns* there is this exhibit where you can listen to different English and French accents.
Accents can be a problem though. In the bible, the Gidionites said “s” instead of “sh” when they talked. The Israelites wanted to kill all the gideonites trying to cross the border, so they asked all immigrants to say the hebrew word “shibolet”. The immigrants who said “Shibolet” were let through, but all gideonites who said “sibolet” were murdered. Sticky.
32 – Ouch. That could be painful.
10- hey gim! ‘sup? *high 5* sorry, off topic. I just haven’t seen you in a while.
30- I don’t think anyone I know says ‘soda’.
I don’t think I have an accent. I live in Canada. When I’m around people with accents my vowels go weird and sound like I’m trying to speak without moving my mouth. But it’s not hugely noticible. I deffinitely don’t say aboot instead of about. The newfoundland accent is cool but it throws me off because I’m expecting certain syllables to soud different than they do.
8- I don’t really know about yours, but I think mine is stronger. My friend’s parents were born and raised in England, so they told me exactly how my voice sounds (it’s more prominent to them).
I went to a camp with mostly foreign counsselors (Syllabub was there too, btw) and our counselor, Frida, was Swedish, and by the end of the week when my mom picked me up, she told me I was talking funny. I realised (after recording my voice and listening to it) that I had picked up a light Swedish accent! It was so cool; I had dozens of recordings of my voice on my iPod until I lost it. (the iPod, not the accent, but I did loose the accent after awhile, too).
I have a New York accent, but it’s not as strong as those who live closer to The City. I don’t say “Shahcks in da wahta.”, for instance.
I can’t tell if I have an accent. I’ve lived in New York since I was three, but nobody in my household, at least, has the accent. I do say “coupon” differently from everyone I know though, picked up from my parents.
Everyone in my house- “Kyew-pon”
Everyone else- “Coo-pon”
30- I was with some people from the midwest, I believe, and we discussed that. Apparently, people in the northeast say “soda,” while people in the midwest say “pop.” Also, southerners apparently call it “coke,” which I don’t know is true or not. Can any MuseBloggers verify?
25) aha very true! I didn’t think of that..oh that’s so sad, I;m studying that period of history right now for ap us. lol.
also, not everyone from California has a valley girl accent. just fyi. And we’re not all surfer dudes or whatever all those silly tv shows try to portray ~cali~ as. lollll. Laguna Beach is actually really nice, and they don’t appreciate all the publicity they get from that show.
34) Seriously? I don’t know anyone who says “pop” or uh whatever other terms there are. Isn’t that funny? hehe
I’ve only noticed that Canadians sound different with their ‘o’s as in they clearly pronounce it in words like “sorry” or “processed”. Whereas I say “prahcessed” and the Canadian person I heard say it was much more literal. if that makes any sense at all.
Accents and regional things are also interesting in other languages, like cliff eagle mentioned. In Japanese the most common differentiation in Kansai-ben aka Kansai dialect. It makes it confusing when I’m trying to translate, cause the dictionary I have goes by standard japanese.
How I say some words…
‘Pop’: Soda.
Coupon: COO-pon. I swear, EVERYONE in Minnesota says it KEW-pon.
Just clearing that up.
37 – Yeah, that’s true. Midwesterners say pop, Deep Southerners say Coke (for EVERYTHING, mind you: Pepsi = Coke, Sprite = Coke, Mountain Dew = Coke…), and everyone else (as far as I know) says soda.
Double post, sorry.
Oh, and I know that for a fact: I have lived in the Deep South, Midwest, and ‘everywhere else’: aka Virginia. Also, the Philippines. So I know firsthand.
27 – Not only is that not necessarily true, it doesn’t really answer my question, because it doesn’t explain how I would hear it. Also, I’m not usually a very loud person. I’m quieter than a lot of people I know (unless I’m really excited, but those people are intolerably loud when they want to be).
30 – I found one once, actually. I can’t remember what it was called, but I’m sure you could find it through some good googlesurfing.
I say pop too. Well, sometimes I say soda, but that’s only when someone has said soda and I’m… responding I guess. I don’t say either particularly often.
37 – I can’t stand it when people say “kyew-pon”. It doesn’t make any sense, as far as how coupon is spelled.
I live in Pittsburgh, PA, but I say pop. But then again, most of the people at my school say soda… It’s probably because my mom (from MI) says pop.
Fun fact: Last year’s world culture teacher (who knew nothing, by the way, so don’t trust this) said that in the Down Under region (Australia/NZ and stuff) people say “fizzy” for soda/pop. Any of you MBers from that region, can you verify this?
38 – I love those vowels. All over the Canada/very north USA (as far as I know) they say “oh” with almost an “oo”.
My parents and I say “soda”, but my family in Illinois say “pop”.
I say coo-pon.
I live in South Carolina, but I haven’t picked up their accent, I have lived all over so I really don’t have an accent. Actually my voice is kind of lower sounding than most girls my age. It’s hard to explain. I love British and Austrailian accents!
39 – We people from the Northwest say pop too, at least where I live. We said soda where I lived in California.
Everyone around here says pop, except my family, because we’re weird like that.
I say kyew-pon. Sorry, THF.
I was reading an Australian book once, and they kept referring to this stuff called “cordial.” In the back of the book, they had a glossary of Australian terms/lingo, where I found out that cordial is a concentrated syrup-thing, which you mix with water, popular in Australia/UK. Heh.
It sounded pleasant. Why do we not have things like cordial in the US?
Oh dear, this whole post so far is slightly off topic.
I’ll try to fix it, here on.
41- That’s what everyone I know says, about “kyew-pon,” at least. “Why do you say it like that?! It’s Coo-pon!
I knew someone from Pennsylvania who had an interesting accent. I can’t quite recall it now, but she pronounced “Spanish” interestingly, and said that Italian ices were really “water ices.”
It took us about half an hour to figure out what exactly a water ice was.
Also about the Midwestern person who informed me of the pop/soda/coke phenomenon- she would pronounce orange as “oynge.” It wasn’t an accent though, just that one word was pronounced differently.
39- I say “Pop” and “Coo-pon”
Instead of “Wow” I say either “Woh” or “Woah!” actually saying the A.
As for teachers… I HAVE TO GO! BYE!
41 (THF): You say “Pop”? I never noticed that. I’ve always said “Soda.” Mom says Pop, Dad says Soda…I guess each of us took one. I think our brother says soda, too, but I’m not positive.
Kyew-pon drives me nuts. Thankfully, it’s not a word I hear in every-day conversation.
What I have noticed about Pittsburgh accents: few people who actually live in the city of Pittsburgh (or, at least the neighborhoods I visit frequently) have the horrible accents. It’s the people who live in the suburbs who have the “Pittsburgh accents.”
I say coke for pop/soda. pop.
36- That’s not really very New York– at least, not my part of it. In Jersey, we don’t pahk the cah. That’s more New England-y.
We firmly believe in pronouncing awll the invisible w’s in words.
I say ‘pop’ and ‘coo-pon’. But sometimes I get mixed up and say ‘kyew-pon’ . Usually, my family just says, “Hey, would you grab me a Diet Coke?” instead of saying, “Hey, would you grab me a pop?” Not EVERYTHING is Coke, people. I also say ‘proh-cessed’, not ‘praw-cessed’. ‘Praw-cessed’ is too raw for me. I’m the only one in my family who says it like that.
I have a sort of subtle, suburbian accent, and I say ‘like’ and ‘um” a lot. It’s the way everyone talks where I live.
I’m from Ohio and I say pop most of the time, but sometimes I say soda. It annoys me when some people use a lot of “big words”. I think people have to have a certain voice/accent for it to work.
Most people just sound like show offs when they use big words.
If the big words are in a pre-written speech, it’s ok because it fits with the speech, but in normal conversation most people can’t sound intelligent while using big words.
I wonder what my accent sounds like. I must have a very strange one because even people around here can’t understand me sometimes.
I was talking to my english teacher the other day, he’s from california, and we were noticing how different our accents were. I enunciate rather clearly and use my throat and lips, wher as a lot of southerners use their mouths.
I say … fizzy water. Or soda-pop. Or soda.
Coo-pohn.
New Orlins, not new orleens.
new York, not new yawk
I say sawsspahn. not sauhspan.
I say wow. or oh.
I say thee apple, the clock.
And people say that I sound british sometimes. when I’m excited.
I say ja instead of yeah, but that’s dansih taking over!!!
Hm… this is really interesting.
Ooh, here’s an old immediate family dispute – Is it Root beer as in boot or root beer as in cook? And it’s the same with roof, hoof, and the rest of those ones that can be pronounced either way. I’m with the Roooooot beer. And yes, I say hooves with an “oooo”, is there anything wrong with that?
Oh, and how do you say tootsie roll? I say tootsie as in cook, but when I went to camp, my roommates said tooootsie, with the longer “oo”. As in boot.
50 – See, I say praw-cessed, but I understand people who say proh-cessed, because it makes sense for how it is spelled.
53) I guess its a matter of perspective, I usually go with the boot type, not the cook type. I say toooootsie. But my old music teacher says tutsie.
I say:
“coo-pon”
“soda”
“thee apple, thuh clock”
“New Orleens”
“New York”
50 – I’d like to say it proh-cessed, but I say praw-cessed. I also say ‘like’ and ‘um’ a lot, but the times I say that are rapidly diminishing because I spend all of my time on here and haven’t really spoken to anyone for three months, so I have broken the habit. I hope.
56 – Alter Ego alert.
“Praw-cessed”
“New Orleens”
38- I say processed: prawcessed.
41- um, really? I didn’t know that, about the o thing. I don’t think I do that. can you give me an example of a word where you notice that?
53- it’s root beer as in ‘boot’. trust me.
54- I say tutsie.
thee apple, the clock
an apple, a clock
How do you pronounce aunt?,
I say awnt not ant. I have had a teacher single me out infront of the class because when asked for a synonym of ant I said awnt. I’ve always said aunt becasue my mom says aunt. and little kids ask me what I’m saying when I say awnt. it’s kind of anoying, wouldn’t you just assume that I meant aunt if I say “awnt jane”?
11. My friend’s science teacher has this really thick Norwiegen (Which I am unable to spell correctly) accent, and she can never understand what she’s saying, and my music teacher at school, who forces us to learn the dreaded recorder (YAAAAH!) has a Romanian accent, which you get used to, but is very difficult not to laugh at when he gets angry and starts yelling at the boys in and/or my class for not playing the song we’re learning correctly, although, he’s kind of frightening when he gets angry, but it’s funny later on.
58- I called my aunt “ant” once when I was… five maybe, and she doesn’t speak English totally well, and she asked why I called her an insect. I’ve said “awnt” ever since then.
Oh, our old health teacher was from… Botswana, I think. He had the thickest, funniest accent ever.
I would like to say “awnt”, because it’s the proper way to say “aunt”, but all (or most) of my family says “ant”, so I’m stuck with that pronunciation.
52 on – Thee apple, thuh clock is how “the” is supposed to be pronounced. Always. Before a vowel, the “e” says its name. Before a consonant, its a schwa sound.
58 – It’s around Wisconsin and Minnesota where I’ve noticed it (people from around there tend to say it like that). It’s kind of like a Welsh-y “oh”, I guess… it’s just a very “oo”-ified “oh”. Kind of hard to explain.
…Aunt: awnt
Thuh apple, thuh clock
A lot of people here say:
Pop
über
They like lefsa (what the heck is lefsa?)
They go fishing a lot
Kew-pon
Bayge [rhyming with vague]
Vag [rhyming with bag]
New England slang words:
wicked (really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really cool)
pwns all (self explanatory)
spiffy (cool, without flaw)
sketchy (questionable; skanky)
ZOMG (OMG with a z on it; pronounced Z-omg!!!)
Thuh apull , Thuh clok
soda
aunt/ant=ant
coopon
When you say “Volleyball” do you say Volly-vawl or Volly -ball, I used to sat Volly-vall, but I broke the habit.
New Orlins,
New York
Prahcessed.
Volleyball.
Ant.
Thee apple, thuh clock.
Woah.
Root beer (as in boot).
Tootsie (as in cook).
I’d like to say “awnt,” but it sounds pretentious when you’ve said “ant” your whole life.
63- I don’t know, those sound more like internet slang than New England slang to me. I use most of them, too.
65 – You’re absolutely right about “awnt”. It sounds totally wrong to me, which is part of the reason I don’t say it. But I feel like I should, because whenever I say “ant” I get mad at myself for pronouncing a word incorrectly.
I say “kyew-pon.” I’m also starting, as I expected, to change the way I say some things to a bit more midwestern-ish. Os are different here, a little more “oo” instead of “oh”, but it’s the tone quality that makes it different. It’s a little lower and higher in the throat here in WI. Of course, in some words that have O in them Marylanders around where I live will replace them with A’s. (Like “Ohio”, some people around us say “ah-hi-ah.”
The whole tone quality of speech is different here than it is at home, not just ways they pronounce things. It’s fun to listen to, and interesting to try to imitate.
The reference librarian here has a VERY Midwestern accent!!
63- wicked is very New England, but the rest of them seem to be less localized slang words.
67- You aren’t pronouncing it incorrectly, anymore than any accent is more “correct” then another.
68- does that make words like “tone” and “tune” sound alike?
28 – Must be; my group’s New Zealand tour guide did the same thing when we asked her to imitate an American.
41 – I’m not from there, but when I visited some people did say “fizzy.”
53 – I pronounce both like “cook.”
58 – I like “awnt,” but I’m used to saying “ant.”
64 – I say “volley ball.”
Coke (for all soft drinks), kew-pon, praw-cessed, New Orleens, sauhspan….ok, maybe I do have a southern accent after all. I guess I always assumed that I was neutral because I don’t have the Appalachian-ish southern accent that a lot of people here do. What do the English think of southern accents?
Do any other states have “git ‘r done,” or is that just a Kentucky thing? I don’t actually say that, but it is a popular phrase here.
Soda/the name of the soda when referring to soft drinks, kyewpon, prawcessed, Neworlins (one word) or New Orleens when trying to emphasize, sawspan, ant=aunt, thuh for the. This is a CA accent, as far as I can tell. Slurring and too lazy to say “the” properly.
And yes, we say “git ‘r done.” But not too often. I wonder where it came from?
Does anyone else say “sketch” or “sketchy” for something that’s a little shady? We say stuff like, “I like going to LA, even though it’s a little sketch.”
I say sketchy all the time haha. Also say ahnt and ant pretty interchangeably. and dudes, it’s kyuupan. My dad and paternal grandparents all say coopon. They’re from the east coast so maybe that’s why? They’ve lived here a long time but every so often a word will slip in that sounds differently. Like pizza parlor. yeah but coopon really annoys me for some unknown reason. It’s just a word after all. but man!
…wait are you guys trying to tell me there’s another way to say saucepan? sauce= sahs. right? okay.
“Some Southern Californians refer to Northern California as “NoCal,” to emphasize perceived feelings of Southern California’s superiority. In exchange, “SoCal” is often used derisively in some areas of Northern California, (“Oh, he’s from SoCal, no wonder he’s such an airhead.”), especially in conversations about water usage or Los Angeles (sometimes referred to as “La La Land”).”
LOLLL that’s so true though. we’re all a bunch of jerks. This all makes me realize what an influence your environment is. It wasn’t until recently that I felt a real ~attachment~ to my state…probably cause I hadn’t left it much. Do you guys ever feel that way?
I don’t really say “sketchy” a lot, but my friends at school do.
People at my school said “sick” or “sick nasty” when they thought something was cool. That was in 5th and 6th grade, but it seems to have faded…..
Aunt-awnt
Coupon-coopon
I don’t know if anyone has said this, but what about nugget? I say it the way it is spelled. (As opposed to nooget)
74) I say nugget. Like NUH-get.
69~ A little. But not really, it’s where you pronounce it in your throat. “Tone” the way I say it eastern-ish is different than the way I say it midwestern-ish. I have no idea how to actually say it in typed words, because the most difference seems to be in the quality of sound (as in tone quality) that makes the difference, more even than pronunciation on some words.
70~ Mm hmm. I’ve heard it in Maryland. I’ve seen it on Maryland, Pennsylvania and West Virginia trucks.
72~ I’m an east-coaster who says “keyw-pon”.
75~ Same.
70- That phrase isn’t used in my area.
74- Some people say “sick” for cool, but I’ve never heard “sick nasty”.
75- Me too.
74 – I don’t know anyone who says nugget noo-get, but nougat, a different word, is supposed to be pronounced noo-get.
78-Oh, right. I forgot about that.
coupon: I pronounce it q-pon–people who say coo-pon drive me crazy!!!! Actually, right this second, no pronunciation sounds correct–i think I’ve been saying it too many times (ok, need to stop saying coupon)
I say soda, unless somebody else said pop, then tend to respond with pop
I say wicked–sometimes. so it’s not just new england
Nugget- Nuh-git.
Coupon- Coo-pon.
Soda/pop/coke- Soda.
Wicked- No.
Sick/ sick nasty- Nein.
Aunt- ant.
Sketchy- Nope.
Hmm, I say a lot of British slang. Except I say, truck, not lorry. I say git, bugger, prat, and I really like KT Tunstall and Monty Python.
72- Hrrm? I’m not a jerk! I just like insulting people. Airhead? Psssh. Yeah, right.
do you say mum or mom? I say mum. I didn’t know I said mum until recently. I always thought I said mom but I don’t. My brother sais mommy and daddy. it drives me crazy.
do you say the first ‘r’ in February? I don’t.
82- I say mother. She doesn’t want me to say mum.
Mom- Mum
February- I only say the second R.
Oh yes, whenever I pass the B High School pool, I grumble, “Bloody pool.”
I use mom and sometimes mum and mother only when she’s not paying attention, only say the second r in February, and use ‘bloody’ when there is someone who might be offended nearby.
I had a fine southern accent for a while. It annoyed my parents so much that they got a clicker and clicked at me when I pronounced stuff wrong…
I guess I have a New York accent, but I can’t tell.
I say both rs in February when I’m reading something that makes me want to, (perfect example = Phantom Tollbooth. I would say a light first r, but it would still be FebRuary).
Oh, you know, I’ve noticed that when I read Roald Dahl stuff aloud, I subconsciously try to speak with a British accent. It’s just the language he uses, I guess.
I just say Mom and Dad. Nothing cool or interesting.
nugget–nuh-git
coupon–kew-pon (coo-pon annoys me, for some reason)
soda
wicked–occasionally, but more often sweet
sick–not to describe something cool
aunt–ant
sketchy–no
bloody–definitely, especially if my dad is around–it annoys him–I do believe he said it was unladylike *laughsmaniacally*
mom
february–only the second r
and occasionally git, bugger, or prat–and definitely use mental
Oh yeah, I use mental too. But I invent a lot of words to suit whatever feeling I have at the moment. Marpy= crappy. Yarg= ugh. You get the idea.
Nugget- Nuhg-it
Coupon- Coo-pon.
Soda/pop/coke- Pop/fizz
Wicked- Nope.
Sick/ sick nasty- Nuh-uh
Aunt- Not ant, I pronounce it with the u.
Sketchy- What’s that?
mom- mum
bloody- Yeah. Especially “absobloodylutely” for “absolutely”
February- only 2nd R
thesaurus- the-saw-rus
Thesaurus- The- soar- us
84) lol I’m socal too don’t worry.
I wish we had input from someone who learned English as a second language. It must be confusing with so many regionalized phrases and accents.
I could email my other best friend besides Leafy, Olivia, who came from Korea in fourth grade and is now back in the bloody country, do to her father’s Visa running out. *sheds a tear*
82~ I say Mom usually, but occasionally find myself saying “Mum”. That started after working with Dennis and having him call her my “mum”.
He’s a Brit.
And, no, I don’t say the first R.
83~ Why?
87~ Being ladylike is way overrated.
88~ Marpy. I’m so using that word now. Marpy, marpy, marpy!!!!!
Apparently I have some kind of Philly-Jersey accent. My mom (not mum) must have had more influence on me than I thought.
you guys know bugger is homophobic, right?
Nuh-giht
Febyoo-air-ee
Mum/mom I say both
Thuh-sore-us
RANT-
MY LAST NAME IS ONLY 7 LETTERS LONG AND NO ONE CAN PRONOUNCE IT!!!!! I DON’T CARE IF IT’S GERMAN IM TIRED OF HAVING TO SAY MY NAME OVER AND OVERGGAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRR
(96) *empathy pies* I’ve had the same problem all my life. My last name is pretty close to phonetic (LASS Lee), yet people are always trying to stick an “h” in there or make the “a” long. Then there’s Lazy, Lacey, Laffly, Lastly, Lazlo…once someone called my mom Mrs. Buzzby.
97: stands(sits) corrected–I’ve always read your name as being pronounced laz-lee
(98) If the “a” is short, that’s acceptable. I think some Lasleys tend toward the “z” rather than the “s,” depending on where they’re from.
97- I’ve always pronounced your name LASS lee, but it never sounded quite right. Good to know that I’m doing it right.
95) reason number one why people shouldn’t use slang they don’t know
people are always pronouncing my name wrong. They say “fur” instead of “far” and it’s really quite amusing.
102- I always thought “fair.”
People pronounce my last name wrong a lot. Once someone mailed something to Robin B– [Yes, I snipped it because it made your last name to easy to guess. –Rebecca] And many people spell my name Robyn. It’s the gosh darn BIRD, people! ROBIN! R-O-B-I-N-!
Spell it correctly! YARG!!
103- It both “far” and “fair” are correct, but “far” is more commonly used.
“It both” argh… not what I meant to right
*cringes*
((( Trust me , my name is too outlandish to guess))
List of ways people have pronounced my name.
Reekez
Riches
Re-eck-is
Reaches
Rye-chiss
99–yup, definitely a short ‘a’ sound.
…I’m having real trouble with spelling today.
107- Wow, variety. *sympathy pies*
At least it’s very difficult to mangle “Haley”.
104- Danjit. Leafy’s last name is the same as someone famous, but they are not related. Trust me.
Oops for 107 I meant how people pronounce my last name.
97- LASS Lee, LASS Lee… *Pounds into brain*
People mispronounce my name sometimes. Or try to shorten it.
I can (badly) imitate some accents. Probably badly, though. And I don’t know all that many accents, anyway
Red-tailed HAWK
My first name is wonderfully straightforward (there are only two different letters in Anna. Yay!), but my last name is tricky. Heh, well, I can’t tell you how people mispronounce it, because that would be like saying it, and it’s quite an uncommon name (I think I’ve met almost all of the S–– s in the world, or at least in the US, because they’re in my extended family).
I’ve always said LASS-lee, or something close enough, but in the first MuseCast, someone (I think it was Pan, but it might have been me) said LAYZ-lee. I believe it when you say you have trouble, Rebecca, because though it is really quite simple, people think it has some sort of trick in it.
(113) Yes, I think you’ve described the situation perfectly regarding my last name.
My aunt’s name is Anna. Occasionally, people try to call her AH-na, but mostly, as you say, it’s wonderfully straightforward — even when it’s facing backwards. Cool to have a palindrome for a name.
114-My name backwards is somewhat odd. I can’t say what it is, of course, but…
POLL: Do you think your name backwards is odd or just different?
My, that’s an odd, an somewhat vague, poll!
Red-tailed HAWK
115 – Do you think “Ahtnamas” is odd?
116-Your name is Samantha?
Ahtnamas actually sounds cool. It sounds like a real name, but an unusual one to be sure!
Red-tailed HAWK
117 – I know, I actually really like Ahtnamas. And HOW DID YOU KNOW MY FIRST NAME??? *stalker*
118-
That’s my name back wards too!?!
118/119-You’re both named Samantha!
Red-tailed HAWK
115 – Mine’s slightly odd. Not nearly as good as Ahtnamas.
121- You think yours is odd? This is my brother’s “eilrahc”.
119 – Freaky.
120 – Haha!
121 – What is your (first) name? In a nonstalkerish way, of course…
Mine is OK. Ecila.
Mine is “Lehcar.” Sounds kind of… French-ish, no?
*googles*
Hmm, “le car” means “the bus.”
Can French-speakers verify?
My name is pretty much never mispronounced. The only variation of Rachel could be maybe, the Spanish “Raquel,” but only one person’s ever called me that. And my last name is a whopping THREE letters long, and also non-mispronouncable. Hehe.
Yelah… Cake, that’s darn close to how most of my fellow classmates pronounce “yellow”. >_<
114 – You’re right, some people say AH-na. And some people say the An in AN-na in a way that is impossible to spell. I’ll show you in the next MuseCast. If there is one.
There are some downsides to having a palindrome name. My name backwards is (ta-dah!): Anna. As opposed to my name forwards, which is Anna. Fascinating, is it not? I have such a cool name backwards. Meh.
(127) My aunt’s last name is Graham (which is also my middle name), so sometimes her name comes out sounding like “anagram.” As she was my heroine growing up, I am decidedly very fond of the name “Anna.”
To all, another poll: do you pronounce the “L” in words like golf, yolk, bulb, folk, and so on? Also, do you distinguish between “pen” and “pin” or do they sound the same?
I pronounce the L in golf and bulb, but not in yolk or folk. I do in fact distinguish between “pen” and “pin.”
Golf: GOH-lf.
Yolk: YOKE.
Bulb: BUHLB.
Folk: FOKE.
Pen: PEHN.
Pin: PIHN.
They are very different; pen has an EH sound, and pin has an IH sound. But a lot of people here in MN say pin and pen the same. Ditto with poor and pour.
Poor: POOR.
Pour: POWR.
RE: Anna: Two “n”s = Anna. One “n” = AH-na
I say pool with two syllables. Poo-wul. Is that an accent? My grandma does it too.
Poor: Powr
Pour- powr
Golf- Gowlf
Pin- Pin. Duh.
Pen- Pen.
Yolk- Yoke
Bulb- buhlb.
Folk- Foke.
Anna- Ana
Yellow- Yell-oh.
Re- Backward first names: Nibor. Leafy- Remmus. Nibor and Remmus- doesn’t that sound FANTASTIC?
97- for some bizare reason my brain adds in a ‘t’ inbetween the ‘s’ and the ‘l’.
101- yeah. If I’m not possitive on what slang means i don’t use it.
107- even if it is outlandish I would be more careful infuture. It would really suck if a scary stalker person found out your name and located you. just saying.
125- I don’t know if ‘car’ is a french word. the bus is l’autobus.
my name backwords is Neelhtak. for somereason small children add an a to my name so it”s three syllables. Kathaleen instead of Kathleen. It’s funny because I introduce myself with two syllables and they just add the a.
I`ve kind of got a southern accent,but since i moved from michigan, i`ve kind of of got a Michisouthern accent.I say skeletin and tommara,so i guess i`m southern.
134- That’s cool.
My friend’s dad was born/raised in England, they moved here 7 years ago, and so he has an English accent. But here’s the funny part; he had dental issues, so he got all of his teeth pulled out. Now he has this weird, warped toothless accent that makes me all but crack up whenever I see him.
133- My friend has the same name, and she gets annoyed when people do that. I suppose it’s because of the many consonant sounds all smushed together- it sounds more flowy with the “a,” I think.
128 – It would be weird to have a name like Anna Graham. I’ve always wondered if people with names like that (two words that kind of sound like a different word when said together) get teased and stuff. Hm…
130 – Yeah, I was going to write that, but changed my mind. I’ve actually met people who say AH-na, but spell it Anna.
133 – Well, “lastly” is a word, so maybe it’s just the dictionary within you.
I think the Kathaleen thing has something to do with separating the consonant sounds. “thl” is hard to say for kids who are still working on the dexterity of their tongues. That’s just a guess, though.
I’ve heard some people say “poor” as “pore”, but I don’t say that. I say “pore” for pour and “POOR” (long oooo) for poor.
I say “pin” and “pen” with two distinct vowel sounds (ih and eh), but again, I’ve heard people say “pen” more like “pin”.
Golf, yolk, bulb, and folk all have the “L” second to last, but only in the “lk”s are the ls supposed to be silent. In my pronunciation, yoke/YOHK is “yolk”. For folk, I almost pronounce the l, but not quite. Again, hard to explain, I’ll talk about it in the next MuseCast.
Olivia backwards is cool. Aivilo. Huh.
128–I pronounce the L in all of them (although in folk I don’t if I’m saying it fast). And pen and pin are different, I pronounce pin with a narrower, more “i”-ish sound.
Does anyone else pronounce “Okay” wierd, sort of like “nkay”? I don’t know why I do it, but I just noticed that my friend does it too, so maybe it’s a SoCal thing. Or maybe I’m just too lazy to enunciate.
My name backwards: Haras. It sounds really funny with my last name, but alas! there are too many scary stalkers about.
Sorry for the double post–I just found out something cool. Apparently monkeys have accents, just like humans. Here’s the link to the article:
http :// news.nationalgeographic .com /news/2005/12/1228_051228_monkey_accents. html
I just spelled out my last name backwards, and it’s really cool. To quote Nthanda: “alas! there are too many stalkers about.”
139 – That makes a lot of sense, really. Very cool, though, thanks for sharing!
Okay, it seems a lot of this thread is morphing into a conversation more suited to the Words and Names thread. Can we try to return to something more like accents?
Howdy. Ah’m a sturrio-tippical caow-boy. Ah’ve got mah-silf a accent. Yew know, from them su-thern pahrts?
138- I say both. But then again, I’m SoCal too.
I’ve sort of invented my own accent for some of my roleplay characters. It’s kind of like Old English pickpocketer/southwestern milkmaid. Tis very intristin, tis.
142–Bit of an odd combination. How did you come up with it?
142-I’ve done the same sort of thing, but I tend towards a sort of British thing.
143- I have no idea. Just, my friend and I were doing phone rping (don’t ask) and I suddenly burst into that sort of accent. She asked me what the heck kind of accent that was, and I said it was MY accent. After recording my voice a few times and listening back, tht’s what I determined it sounded like. It was very cool.
144- Yeah, BrItish accents are so much better than American accents.
“Normal” pronunciations that bother me:
• Adult = ah-DULT (I pronounce it A-dult)
• Caramel = CAHR-mul (I pronounce it CARE-a-mul)
• Garage = ga-RAHDG (I pronounce it ga-RADG)
• Pasta = PAW-stah (I pronounce it PA-sta)
Other than pronouncing those words differently from everyone I know, I don’t think I have much of an accent.
146: I pronounce caramel differently when I’m talking, sometimes care-a-mul, sometimes cahr-mul.
How does everyone pronounce “fire”? FY-er. One and a half syllables.
I say car-e-mel. but the middle sylable is barely there.
I also say liberry. I have no idea why I can’t say the first r.
vawse not vayse.
awnt not ant (aunt)
While away, I went to Boston’s New England Aquarium. They sell postcards there that say “Shahhhhhhks!” I thought that was pretty funny.
Well, Once this Californian came to our school (she moved to Oregon now) and she and I inimtated each others accents…It was really funy…she said Kiwi accents are nasal…and they go up at the end…is that right?I dont think I have an accent..I cant hear it…but I like Australian accents..ok, I just like impersonating Kath&Kim, thats an Australian comedy that takes a parody of Australia, but its amazing how they can exaggerate their accents because to do that they have to be able to hear it…I cant!
*sigh* I wish this thread wasn’t quite as dead; it’s quite fun to talk about accents.
151- Hi. Reviving this thread for you.
The North Eastern accent is quite funny. I live here so you would think I couldn’t hear it but I can. Everyone drops contenants. It makes spelling impossible becuase we have all of these constenats that no one pronounces. For example: the word Constanents. I know that I spelled that wrong… jsut because I had to look it up a gazillion times on word and each time the only replacement word it come up with was constant. But anywho we pronounce how-ever-you-spell it con-sti-nets. I think we dropped at least one N. And Wicked is Wic-ed. And compition is Comp-tshun. Which is close enough I guess… but not really.
What really gets on my nerves is kids go around saying “WE don’t have an accent! The diciotnary was written here!” yeah… um… we most definetly do. Noah Webster most definetly (pronounced Def-ni-ly) did NOT pronounce things the way my class does.
The other day I got a chance to hear a rather good recording of my voice and I don’t think I’ve entirely dropped the slight midwestern twinge that I took on while visiting grandparents in WI for a few days. Than again, maybe I just sound a little that way, who knows? I really don’t have the local accent (which is surprisingly southern sounding), despite growing up in this area. It’s odd, on one half I have midwestern (WI) and on the other I have MD, but my paternal grandfather was born in….Minnesota, I think. He came to the east coast when he was a baby though.
I sometimes wonder if I sound like anywhere, since I do tend to mimic other people’s voices, whether I realize it or not.
It’s most obvious when I learn a song by hearing someone else sing it (the easiest way for me to learn something with lyrics).
153- I get what you mean. I pick up peoples way of speaking way too quickly. I also speak different depending on how annoyed/tence/boring/goofy a situation is.
I got an “ARe you from Oklahoma too?” at a world wide compition last year after talking Oklahoman for about five minutes about the condition of our school toilits (don’t ask)
One minute after meeting the rest of my Space Academy team at the airport:.
Me: Hi, I’m Kai. I’m from-
Billy: New York.
Me: How’d you know?
Billy: Your accent.
Which is funny, because I know a lot of people with much stronger NY accents than me.
155- What’s space academy like? Is it fun? It’s always been my dream to go but nothing could get me away from Woodstock. I love it there. That is my home.
My couneler there was from England. She actualy had an amazing Connectican accent. She had to try when she was doing it but… she fooled a parent. Her name was Katie and she made us pronounce it Kate-y instead of the american Kadie. It was funny. She made fun of our attemeted English accents. Especaily mine… that tells you somthing ay?
156- It’s a lot of fun, even if you aren’t as obsessed as I am, and you’ll certainly learn a lot of really cool stuff. The training takes effort, but it’s very exciting.
157- I wish I could go… where is it. Probably somwhere my mother would never let me go.
158- Well, there are various international camps, but the United States one is in Huntsville, Alabama.
159- That’s cool. Still can’t go but now I can think about the setting there. *sigh* My mom says I have too many things that I am interested in too much. I think it means I should start figureing out what I like the most.
155~ New York accents are fun to listen to. I know a guy with a really strong New Jersey/New York accent, and, of course, I hear it on live recordings of Simon & Garfunkel.
And Dustin Hoffman, in Kramer vs. Kramer, that I watched not too long ago.
Hmm, I’ve been able to do a fairly decent English accent, due to watching way too many British films I think, but I’ve never had the nerve to try it out (in jest) on any of the Brits I know.
Of course, I’ve also worked with Aussies (my aunt is one, and some other friends of the family as well), but for some reason I can’t do that as well.
For awhile (after hanging out with a friend from Quebec for a week) I could imitate a strong French accent, but I haven’t done it for awhile, and I’m not sure if I could anymore.
Although a lot of people think so, a lot of Italian peeps don’t have the accents that we think they do. They just sorta sound like…. peeps from Spain. Don’t do them injustice. Some of them even have English accent. We met someone from Austria and Scotland and England AND France there. Lots of different accents. And kilts. Sorry that last sentence was totally unrelated.
161- I’ve never been able too understand the crazy new york accents they use on TV though. It’s pretty bad. All the New Yorkers I’ve met (And I live in CT so I’ve met quite a few) didn’t sound all that “New Yorkish”
163- It’s like the stereotype that all Nebraskans are uneducated hicks who ride cows to school. (I’ve been asked before if I do that.)
I still like my North Midwestern accent. It’s been found by the Telsur Project, led by William Labov, to be the most free of regional features, or, in other words, the most neutral.
If they’re riding cows to school, why are they uneducated?
I went to Phili a few days ago. There was this huge convention for Latin and Greek scholars plus archiologists. There were people from everywhere there. One lady I talked to was from Germany, the accent was quite interesting. And there was this other man form I have no idea where whose accent made him relaly hard to foolow. I don’t even think I was supoosed to be there, but hey, they were achiologists.
i know some people with mexican accens. whenever i am preforming anything or talking to my freind h—, i always get this british accent.it’s weird.
The Central New York accent: leave the “Ts” off of everything. That’s about it.
For the last couple days, i have been scrupulously speaking in variations on a stereotypical british accent.
I pick up accents quick too, and my family gets annoyed. I watched two episodes of Doctor Who just before watching the second Harry Potter, and I continued to talk British for the rest of the weekend. I do the same thing whenever we visit my gma’s house in Atlanta, I end up talking in a southern accent for weeks afterward. I don’t seem to pick up NY as much, but I’ll get to test my NJ when we visit Princeton next weekend
I’ve lived all over, so I don’t have much of an accent, but I do say orange Arr- ange. Which people think is funny. I’m moving to ND at the end of the school year, so I’ll get a fun accent there
I recently tried to learn Japanese from a tape, and gave up partly because I couldn’t get the accent right. tangerine (my sister) is really good at it.
Me: (practicing) Nihongoga wakarimaska? (That means “Do you understand Japanese?”, by the way.)
tangerine: No, it’s waki(r/d-ish sound)imaska.
Me: Wakadimaska?
tangerine: Waki(r/d-ish sound)imaska.
Me: *gives up*
Va-NILL-a or va-NELL-a? I say vanilla.
171- Va-nill-a.
Why is it always me that kills threads?
I get really mad when I catch myself talking in a Boston accent. I don’t know why, I just get paranoid at myself. I talk in a British (cockney) accent a lot, even though I have no British family members/ancestors/relations at all.
This thread is DEAD!!!!! Anyway, my friends say I have a “Canadian Accent,” whatever that sounds like, but I never noticed it. *shrugs*
I say… Wicked (as you all know), “thuh apple, thuh clock”, (though when I sing I say thee both) COO-pon, va-NILL-a, a-DULT (though for some reason it sounds more like a-DOLT), cahr-ramel, and yore for your. I’m sorry, but I can’t stand it when people say “yer”.
Everyone in the whole caking WORLD mishears/mispronounces my name. It is Emi, not Emma, not Abby, and not Debbie. And my whole name, too. Poll: If you saw the name “Emilia,” how would you pronounce it?
My name(s) backwards are okay. Ime, and Ailime, which sounds like “Ay, Leema!”
Emi! Oh my gosh, that’s such a pretty name! *is jealous*
If I saw the name Emilia…well, I guess I would pronounce it Em-eel-lia.
eh-me-LEE-ah
I love using peoples names backwards! My friends and I have called each other for our backwords nicknames for so long that it feels totally natural.
I’m Lirpa (April)
Rehtaeh, goes by Taeh (Heather)
Roonham, goes by Roony (Mahnoor)
and Acceber for Rebecca.
Poor Hannah feels so left out all the time
I just adore British, Japanese, and Scottish accents…I don’t know why, but they are just…amazing.
(not that I have anything against other accents)
Definitely…I can do a british accent impeccably for an American, and I’m working on French. My friend has been mistaken for a Scotsman before.
Hee. I love Japanese accents, too.
And I hate it when my mom randomly starts talking with a Japanese accent. I know she’s doing it to annoy me.
I’m starting to pick up a southern accent from my dad’s family. Most of the time I don’t have a southern accent, but sometimes I’ll slip and say “mah” instead of my, “thae-at” instead of that, “thay-er” instead of there, “whay-er” instead of where, and so on.
My dad travels a lot inside the States for work, and picks up accents and slang from different regions. Me and my sister always laugh when he does the “hyre instead of hour, pyre instead of power” pronunciation he picked up in Kentucky.
*is incredibly jealous of people who can pick up accents quickly* I don’t even notice accents much. (Which I also hate.) Strong British ones drive me insane. I love Southern, French, Scottish, and German ones. I say COO-pon, AD-ult, and va-NILL-a, Emilia- I’d say Em-il-EE-ah even thought I prefer Em-EEL-ia.
Why do strong British accents drive you insane? *cries* Ah well, if I ever meet you in real life I’ll use my American accent then, don’t worry. And I don’t even remember at what point I picked up my American accent. It was sooo long ago.
The stereotypical Californian accent is to slur everything and say “like” a lot … I have this accent. Badly.
My favorite accents are British and Australian, but I can’t imitate any.