FOREIGN ACCENTS!

[Lars Ulrika]

Favourite accent? Indonesian and japanese. Indonesian because of my wife. Japanese because their french sounds so cute. 

 

[Simon D. Aelsi]

I myself have a very thick so-cal accent. When I say "Dude", "Whoa", "Man" and, for some reason, "Nice" it comes out the most. I sound like one of those golden-haired surfers you'd see on TV except I don't say "Gnarly" and "Far-out" all the time.  I noticed it when I was practicing my voice a few months ago. Instead of try to fight it I embraced it.  I sound kinda like Mordecai from Regular Show... ( T_T )

Of course I can change it at will, but yeah.  My favorite accents to listen to are Irish, West-London British, Korean, and something called "TRANS-ATLANTIC".

 

[??????]

Trans Atlantic is the most epic accent to use for hardcore music. Defqon 1 only uses that accent for its set opening tunes because it just sends chills down your back when its heard

 

[Ms Littlefish]

I have what is called a "Midwestern Neutral" accent. I guess that's what a lot Americans would call "having no accent" or a "newscaster" voice. I enunciate every syllable very clearly. Now, it's strange that I mention that because I live in the Midwest and am surrounded by people I could consider to have the same accent but I often get asked where my accent is from. I even had a German man refuse to believe I was American because, "your English sounds so beautiful," he said. 

As for accents I love? I absolutely adore Russian accents! 

 

[mlogan]

I love listening to accents, especially foreign accents. I think it's the main reason I've gotten hooked on so many British shows lately, lol! But seriously, I find accents so intriguing.

Personally, for a long time I had what I considered to be a "non-accent". I somehow lost my Texas accent in college and adopted this neutral generic American accent. My Texas accent is coming back though after living here for almost 4 years again.

 

[??????]

@MsDrunkfish - having heard you speak I can honestly say you have a very nice accent.
I would not say that it is 'accent-less' at all

 

[Ms Littlefish]

@Dekita Aww, thank you! But remember you've never even heard me speak sober, though!

 

[Simon D. Aelsi]

@Dekita Aww, thank you! But remember you've never even heard me speak sober, though!

We need to have another group voice chat.

 

[??????]

@Dekita Aww, thank you! But remember you've never even heard me speak sober, though!

Hmm yea, but if you can speak clearly enough when drunk, your speech when sober would be much more understandable

We need to have another group voice chat.

Is that group chat even still going? Seems like so long ago I left now

 

[Simon D. Aelsi]

Hmm yea, but if you can speak clearly enough when drunk, your speech when sober would be much more understandable

Is that group chat even still going? Seems like so long ago I left now

Yeah it is. We miss ya.

 

[??????]

Yeah it is. We miss ya.

Its all LIES.

They're not even square...

 

[MektiKwiiger]

My R's are horrible. Fortunately it comes up rarely as my dialect let's me shorten and cut out a lot of those. But when it does come up, it usually is in reply to where I'm from. And so it becomes horror piled upon the top of horrors. Hhrrrr-egional is an example. That sound of preparing to spit, yet not managing to collect enough moisture. 

 

[slimmmeiske2]

I have a neutral accent compared to my fellows in Flanders.

I like Russian and Sri Lanka accents. They're kind of adorable.

The post above just reminded that I can't actually pronounce the R in the Flemish/Dutch way, so I have a French R instead.

 

[Simon D. Aelsi]

My R's are horrible. Fortunately it comes up rarely as my dialect let's me shorten and cut out a lot of those. But when it does come up, it usually is in reply to where I'm from. And so it becomes horror piled upon the top of horrors. Hhrrrr-egional is an example. That sound of preparing to spit, yet not managing to collect enough moisture. 

That accent sounds amazing!

 

[Ralpf]

Actually, American English, especially from the South, is probably closer to how English was spoken in England several hundred years ago than what British English sounds like now. I read some papers on it, its an interesting thing but basically the Virginia Piedmont & Coastal Southern accents (think Gone with the Wind) has had a lot less drift than most other version of English.

I myself speak with a fairly American neutral accent (Midwestern accent, I once got accused of being Canadian in my own hometown in the Deep South based on the way I talk...), with just a touch of Southern Appalachian (which has actually been theorized to have pronunciation that is remnants of Elizabethan English) which gets stronger the more excited I get.

That is weird, I have heard there was a noticeable shift in most Southern accents after the American Civil War.

Also just read that (what you posted) was debunked by linguists as a myth, but it was unsourced. Hard to find info on accent history.

One thing I came across that was interesting though is that (common) English accents started to shift to a non-rhotic accent (Meaning the R isn't pronounced every time, it tends to be dropped in the middle and end of words) in the 19th century, and then brought that back to America during trade, which is why some East (north and south, though mostly north) coast accents are non-rhotic (think Boston). While most other American accents retained (to this day) the rhotic speak that was initially brought over by the English.

 

[Kes]

I have heard a number of programmes about accents, including a couple where they tried to reconstruct the accent of Shakespeare's time.  They used things like (the equivalent of) teach yourself English books that for a while were popular in France and looked at the way the pronunciation was handled.  Using various linguistic tools they produced what was thought to be a respectable approximation, and yes, there are sounds that you can hear in some US accents.  Also, if you listen hard to accents from certain parts of the country from early to mid 20th century radio programmes, i.e. before things got flattened out with mass media, again you can hear strong echoes of some US accents.  Some of the grammar, too.  English pronunciation underwent tremendous shifts over the last couple of centuries and is now very different to how it was when the first big waves of emigrants went to the States.  Even Received Pronunciation (my accent) has changed dramatically over the last 50 years.  Listen to radio broadcasts from the 1950s and compare it with how people speak now, and there are huge vowel changes.

So while it is a bit of a generalisation, I think that Touchfuzzy is broadly right.

 

[Ralpf]

I have heard a number of programmes about accents, including a couple where they tried to reconstruct the accent of Shakespeare's time.  They used things like (the equivalent of) teach yourself English books that for a while were popular in France and looked at the way the pronunciation was handled.  Using various linguistic tools they produced what was thought to be a respectable approximation, and yes, there are sounds that you can hear in some US accents.  Also, if you listen hard to accents from certain parts of the country from early to mid 20th century radio programmes, i.e. before things got flattened out with mass media, again you can hear strong echoes of some US accents.  Some of the grammar, too.  English pronunciation underwent tremendous shifts over the last couple of centuries and is now very different to how it was when the first big waves of emigrants went to the States.  Even Received Pronunciation (my accent) has changed dramatically over the last 50 years.  Listen to radio broadcasts from the 1950s and compare it with how people speak now, and there are huge vowel changes.

So while it is a bit of a generalisation, I think that Touchfuzzy is broadly right.

That was actually what my third paragraph was about, that in the that specific trait (rhotic or non-rhotic) most American accents are more similar to the English accent of a few hundred years ago then modern English accents. The part I said was (maybe, as I said, it was unsourced) debunked was about the Virginia Piedmont and Coastal Southern accents, I was a bit unclear when I posted that, though, my fault.

It seems possible, maybe even likely, that current American accents are more like colonization of America era English accents then modern English accents are. If you think about the world in that time, lets say late 1600s to early 1900s (when audio recording became more common place and international phone calls became possible) travel to the Americas was long and dangerous for most of the that time frame, so most of the pressures (for lack of a better word) on the American accents would have been internal, mostly from Spanish, French, and Dutch colonists. However, pressures on English accents would have been external and internal because of easy (compared to crossing the Atlantic) travel from mainland Europe, and the fact that the British Empire had spread around the world. Kids would have been bound to pick up slightly different accents then their parents growing up in a foreign country.

 

[Ultim]

I can do a variety of accents British,American,Russian,Indian,Arabix,Scottish etc... I like the Scottish accent OMG that's so freaking awesome.

 

[Omega Weapon]

I don't really have an accent anymore, because our teachers hammered on that, but I really like British. According to my little sister, I sound British.

 

[Simon D. Aelsi]

I don't really have an accent anymore, because our teachers hammered on that, but I really like British. According to my little sister, I sound British.

Everybody has an accent.  which part of Britain?