Comments on: Excellent article on accent

By: sylvia_rachel

sylvia_rachel — Wed, 05 Nov 2008 03:05:50 +0000

I have a bizarre hybrid accent. I grew up (mostly) in Alberta, but was raised by parents from Connecticut (vase=vahz, aunt=ahnt, “quahter of four”, package store, grinder) and Michigan (vase=vayse, aunt=ant, “roof” rhymes with boeuf), and have now lived 16 years in Ontario. “Auto” and “Otto” sound unmistakeably different to me, as do “Aaron” and “Erin”, whereas my Toronto-born-and-bred husband can’t hear any difference between these word pairs — but I can’t be sure whether it’s the Albertan, the Michigander, or the Connecticut Yankee in me that makes the difference.

I have a very strong, and almost totally unconscious, tendency to mimic the vowels, speech patterns, and vocabulary of whoever I happen to be talking to. For instance, I’ve just spent three days with my mom’s family in Connecticut, and by the time I got back on the plane in Hartford I suspect I sounded exactly like my cousins who’ve never left Middlesex County. It’s wearing off already, though, with renewed exposure to Torontonians, and expect it’ll wear off altogether by tomorrow afternoon. Same thing happened when I was a teenager and spent three weeks in Australia; my mother was appalled when I got home, and was sure I was doing it on purpose, but I honestly wasn’t. I think what happens is that my brain dislikes dissonance between how I sound and how other people sound, and since it can’t adjust other people, it adjusts me …

By: Justine

Justine — Sun, 02 Nov 2008 14:52:49 +0000

Tim: I have indeed seen that doco. I’m a huge John Clarke fan. It was most excellent.

By: Tim

Tim — Sun, 02 Nov 2008 14:46:44 +0000

You should watch a great documentary made by the (Australian) ABC last year called “Sounds of Aus” (if you already haven’t). It’s a documentary on the Australian accent and its development. I know it’s available on DVD if you think you might be interested.

By: Herenya

Herenya — Sun, 02 Nov 2008 01:15:09 +0000

At a guess, I probably still sound the same way I did at fifteen. Partly because it wasn’t that long ago and while, yes, I have travelled a little and been overseas, I’m still living in the same place and with the same people as I did then.
But I don’t think I’m very good at picking up on accents – at least, I’m not very good at imitating them. So I would wonder if some people are more predisposed to picking up on accents than others…

Also, would anyone else say there are different regional accents in Australia? I’ve noticed different slang and word use, but not accents. Not connected to a specific area, that is. There are plenty of different accents around, that’s for sure!

By: Mitch Wagner

Mitch Wagner — Sat, 01 Nov 2008 22:13:44 +0000

PixelFish – There isn’t just one Boston accent — there are many. They all sound alike, but native Bostonians can tell them apart.

I’m interested in the original article’s streets-of-New-York comment. I grew up on the Long Island suburb of New York, moved away about 16 years ago, and have only been back a couple of time since. Like the author of the original article, I’ll occasionally get a strong note of Al Pacino in my voice — and, like the author of the article, I never talked that way when I actually lived in New York.

By: anony

anony — Sat, 01 Nov 2008 21:44:16 +0000

Everyone has an accent!

By: Emily

Emily — Sat, 01 Nov 2008 21:21:37 +0000

I dont have a accent!! lol!!!

By: PixelFish

PixelFish — Sat, 01 Nov 2008 15:57:35 +0000

Oh, also, I tend to pick up the stresses and sounds of people around me. I don’t do it consciously, and sometimes I wish I didn’t, because people think I’m making fun of them. But I’d help out my South African friends in their store, and within a few hours, start adopting their vowels, to the point where customers would ask me where I was from. When I lived in the South, I picked up y’all, and haven’t given it back. (My ex threatened to dump me if I picked up a Southern accent. I think he was joking.) And I tried really hard in Boston not to pick up the Bostonian accent, mostly because I think it sounds like a B-movie actor’s attempt at a Joisey accent. (Sorry, Bostonians.) So my real accent is probably a mishmash of all the places I’ve lived and I’d give ‘Enry ‘Iggins apoplectic fits. The Canadians-Western US bits are still the strongest though.

By: PixelFish

PixelFish — Sat, 01 Nov 2008 15:53:00 +0000

My accent veered strongly into Canadian accent territory after having lived there for three years. People pick up on it all the time. The funny thing is, they don’t always guess the same part of Canada. I lived in Calgary, and sometimes people guess western Canada, but I’ve also been accused of being from Ontario. Nobody has yet mistaken me for a Newfie.

(As far as I can tell, the western Canadian accent sounds a lot like the western United States, but people give various parts of the sentences different stresses. Oh, and there’s the pasta-java-taco thing. USians say paw-sta, jaw-va, taw-co, and many a western Canadian will tend towards paa-sta, jaa-va, taa-co. I come up somewhere in the middle of those, and by some miracle, the USians think I say those words correctly, and the Canadians think I sound like them.)

When I was a kid, I didn’t think I had an accent. My reasoning: I sounded just like the people on TV.