clear
Just Browsing
- Joined
- Oct 18, 2006
- Posts
- 94
- Media
- 4
- Likes
- 0
- Points
- 226
- Location
- Los Angeles, CA, USA
- Sexuality
- 99% Gay, 1% Straight
- Gender
- Male
Different American accents
- Thread starter DaveyR
- Start date
I've been told I have a Northern California accent - (an over articulation of each syllable in words)....there is a difference between the Coastal Accent, SoCal Accent and the Central Valley accent in our state. I have some relatives who live in Fresno and they definitely have a trace of rural hick in their speech. Instead of saying "hundred" they say "hunerd" - perhaps it's from all the Mid-Westerners from Oklahoma that settled there after the great depression.
Why does Sarah Palin sound like she is from Minnesota when she lives in Alaska? Is that how all Alaskans sound?
Why does she sound like Bobby's mom from "Bobby World"?
gordeux2006
Sexy Member
- Joined
- Apr 18, 2007
- Posts
- 99
- Media
- 1
- Likes
- 36
- Points
- 248
- Location
- Sydney (New South Wales, Australia)
- Sexuality
- 100% Gay, 0% Straight
- Gender
- Male
The Palin woman was born in Idaho I believe, maybe that's why she sounds like she's from Minnesota; all that snow and the cold. I don't know, I'm English but live in Australia! Anyway, who cares what that 'A-Palin' woman sounds like just as long as she goes quietly.
I really l like the Boston/New England accent, that Katharine Hepburn type speak. But I find the Southern very difficult to understand as in the Tennessee twang, Texan drawl ain't too bad because it's slow an' drawn out like!
I really l like the Boston/New England accent, that Katharine Hepburn type speak. But I find the Southern very difficult to understand as in the Tennessee twang, Texan drawl ain't too bad because it's slow an' drawn out like!
the way americans speak are different in all parts of the country. people from the west coast sound nothing like people from the east coast and vice versa. the southern accents are different in every southern state, as are the midwest and upper-midwest states.
i worked in the hotel industry for about a year and i was able to pick up on accents just from interacting with guests who were traveling. whenever i travel out of state people can always tell where i'm from too, just by the way i speak.
from what i can tell just by people i've met, most east coast accents usually sound like the words aren't being pronounce all the way. for example, instead of saying "whatever" it's more like, "whatevah." or instead of saying "car" they say "cah."
midwest, upper-midwest, and southern accents are generally spoken slower over all. whenever i visit hardcock in texas i have trouble understanding certain ways words are pronounced from his parents and other people with thick texas accents.
being from california i think the west coast accents are a lot clearer to understand. in california we tend to stress certain syllables, like putting an extra "er" to "whatever" to make it "whateverrrrr," or "sooo" instead of "so." we also tend to talk like 100 miles a minute :biggrin1: northern california and central california are a bit different though, not putting too much stress on the way words are pronounced.
i worked in the hotel industry for about a year and i was able to pick up on accents just from interacting with guests who were traveling. whenever i travel out of state people can always tell where i'm from too, just by the way i speak.
from what i can tell just by people i've met, most east coast accents usually sound like the words aren't being pronounce all the way. for example, instead of saying "whatever" it's more like, "whatevah." or instead of saying "car" they say "cah."
midwest, upper-midwest, and southern accents are generally spoken slower over all. whenever i visit hardcock in texas i have trouble understanding certain ways words are pronounced from his parents and other people with thick texas accents.
being from california i think the west coast accents are a lot clearer to understand. in california we tend to stress certain syllables, like putting an extra "er" to "whatever" to make it "whateverrrrr," or "sooo" instead of "so." we also tend to talk like 100 miles a minute :biggrin1: northern california and central california are a bit different though, not putting too much stress on the way words are pronounced.
I guess the more you hear something, the easier it is to differentiate between minor variations.
Yup, Scouse (L'pool) and Yorskhire are quite easy. Only just beginning to be able to tell the difference between South/West Yorks and North Yorks myself, lol.
I can tell Northern for Southern Irish fairly easily - but that's about it. :S Altho Dublin is quite distinct.
Southern accents are difficult for me too, can't always tell between West Country, Gloucestershire and South Coast - all quite creamy and rustic- sounding, as is East Anglia.
All interesting though.
Damn! I wish that I had discovered this thread earlier!
Thanks for the samples, Bbucko. I doubt that the way that Katharine Hepburn and Bette Davis spoke in their early movies reflected their own or anyone else's natural accent. (I know that your samples are from later, when their speech was less artificial, though it still shows traces of their older habits.) Until well into the 20th century, schools of drama in the US commonly taught an artificial "mid-Atlantic" or half-Anglicized accent. I think that's what you hear in those movies. Hepburn grew up in Hartford, Connecticut, where the accent is more like that of the Midwest than like that of Boston. Bette Davis was born in Lowell, but went to boarding school in western Mass., where the accent is like that of Connecticut.
You are quite right about the contrast between Boston and Rhode Island accents. Providence is phonologically much closer to New York than to Boston, geography to the contrary. But the title that the poster gave to that video on YouTube betrays a victory of preconception over observation. It says: "Delicious hawt cawffee." That would be a fair representation of how "hot coffee" would be pronounced in a Boston accent, namely with a slightly rounded back vowel in both words. (I'm using the technical terms of phonetics: "back" indicates the place of the highest point of the tongue; "rounded" describes the position of the lips.) But the girl in the video plainly says "haht cawfee," with an unrounded vowel in the first syllable and a fairly strongly rounded vowel in the second. This is exactly the New York pattern.
It makes me want to scream when I see the Boston pronunciation of "Boston" represented as "Baahstin." No one with a Boston accent would ever pronounce the name of the city that way. If a Bostonian ever said "Baahstin," he or she would have to be talking about a place called Barston. "Boston" has the same vowel in the first syllable as words like "boss," "coffee," "law," etc. -- "aw," not the "ah" of "pahk ya cah."
If you visit Boston, though, unless you hang out with working-class people, you will probably be disappointed at how rarely you hear a strong local accent. Most of the locals sound about as Bostonian as Matt Damon or Ben Affleck, who only put on a local accent when a role requires it (and who tend to miss the mark when they do so).
There is, however, one mark by which you can recognize Bostonians even when their accents are otherwise without local characteristics, namely the way in which they pronounce the diphthong "ow" before an unvoiced consonant, as in words like "out" and "about." They shorten the diphthong almost exactly as Canadians do, so that it sounds like "oat" and "a boat" -- or, in some cases, like "aht" and "abaht." You can hear this in the speech of Mr. Camuso in the YouTube video ("It's throughoat the community").
I don't doubt it. To you, the difference between Rhode Island and New York accents is obvious. To someone from outside the Northeast, New York, Boston, and Providence accents are all going to sound pretty similar, because they sound more like each other than they sound like the accents that prevail in the rest of the country -- outside of New Orleans, of course, where the people sound like a bunch of New Yorkers pretending to be Southerners!
I am a long-time student of phonetics and dialects, and the best that I could do with unidentified samples of Newcastle, Birmingham, Liverpool, and Manchester speech would be to recognize that this one is different from that one and to make some guesses about where they came from. If the test were in multiple-choice format, I might do pretty well; otherwise, not.
That is certainly true in the Seattle area, where I grew up. If there is anything that can be said to differentiate the local "accent" from other American accents, it is that it is utterly devoid of regional distinction.
On the other hand, if you go to the less populous parts of the state, you are much more likely to hear "country"-sounding accents. I think this reflects the extent of immigration to those areas from the Midwest and the South during the Great Depression.
Thanks for the samples, Bbucko. I doubt that the way that Katharine Hepburn and Bette Davis spoke in their early movies reflected their own or anyone else's natural accent. (I know that your samples are from later, when their speech was less artificial, though it still shows traces of their older habits.) Until well into the 20th century, schools of drama in the US commonly taught an artificial "mid-Atlantic" or half-Anglicized accent. I think that's what you hear in those movies. Hepburn grew up in Hartford, Connecticut, where the accent is more like that of the Midwest than like that of Boston. Bette Davis was born in Lowell, but went to boarding school in western Mass., where the accent is like that of Connecticut.
You are quite right about the contrast between Boston and Rhode Island accents. Providence is phonologically much closer to New York than to Boston, geography to the contrary. But the title that the poster gave to that video on YouTube betrays a victory of preconception over observation. It says: "Delicious hawt cawffee." That would be a fair representation of how "hot coffee" would be pronounced in a Boston accent, namely with a slightly rounded back vowel in both words. (I'm using the technical terms of phonetics: "back" indicates the place of the highest point of the tongue; "rounded" describes the position of the lips.) But the girl in the video plainly says "haht cawfee," with an unrounded vowel in the first syllable and a fairly strongly rounded vowel in the second. This is exactly the New York pattern.
It makes me want to scream when I see the Boston pronunciation of "Boston" represented as "Baahstin." No one with a Boston accent would ever pronounce the name of the city that way. If a Bostonian ever said "Baahstin," he or she would have to be talking about a place called Barston. "Boston" has the same vowel in the first syllable as words like "boss," "coffee," "law," etc. -- "aw," not the "ah" of "pahk ya cah."
If you visit Boston, though, unless you hang out with working-class people, you will probably be disappointed at how rarely you hear a strong local accent. Most of the locals sound about as Bostonian as Matt Damon or Ben Affleck, who only put on a local accent when a role requires it (and who tend to miss the mark when they do so).
There is, however, one mark by which you can recognize Bostonians even when their accents are otherwise without local characteristics, namely the way in which they pronounce the diphthong "ow" before an unvoiced consonant, as in words like "out" and "about." They shorten the diphthong almost exactly as Canadians do, so that it sounds like "oat" and "a boat" -- or, in some cases, like "aht" and "abaht." You can hear this in the speech of Mr. Camuso in the YouTube video ("It's throughoat the community").
I don't doubt it. To you, the difference between Rhode Island and New York accents is obvious. To someone from outside the Northeast, New York, Boston, and Providence accents are all going to sound pretty similar, because they sound more like each other than they sound like the accents that prevail in the rest of the country -- outside of New Orleans, of course, where the people sound like a bunch of New Yorkers pretending to be Southerners!
I doubt that you will find many Americans who would even be able to hear the differences among the English accents that you list if they heard them one after the other, much less be able to attribute them correctly. Welsh and Scottish accents would be another matter: I think many if not most Americans would recognize a Scottish accent, and while they may not recognize a Welsh accent, they would be able to tell that it was something different from the others.Question for the Americans: Can you guys tell the difference between British accents at all? Irish is pretty distinct, and cockney - but Welsh, Scottish, Liverpudlian, Geordie (Newcastle) , Brummy (Brimingham) and Mancunian all sound pretty different too.
I am a long-time student of phonetics and dialects, and the best that I could do with unidentified samples of Newcastle, Birmingham, Liverpool, and Manchester speech would be to recognize that this one is different from that one and to make some guesses about where they came from. If the test were in multiple-choice format, I might do pretty well; otherwise, not.
That is certainly true in the Seattle area, where I grew up. If there is anything that can be said to differentiate the local "accent" from other American accents, it is that it is utterly devoid of regional distinction.
On the other hand, if you go to the less populous parts of the state, you are much more likely to hear "country"-sounding accents. I think this reflects the extent of immigration to those areas from the Midwest and the South during the Great Depression.
Cheers Calboner. We'll have to get you in a room with myself, JamieFord, Flameboy and some londoners, so you can guess where we're all from, lol.
Principessa
Expert Member
I once had a supervisor at an internship request that I "speak black" to a woman on the phone, so she would understand. I was so startled, horrified, & annoyed that for a moment I couldn't speak. I then took the phone, and in my best Jersey Jewish accent told the black woman on the phone that she could not have a refund but if she wished to discuss the matter further we could get together for a nosh.
I am not a homegirl, I do not speak any type of regional ebonics. In fact I am frequently mistaken for being white and specifically a NYC or Brooklyn Jew. I consider that a good thing.
I am not a homegirl, I do not speak any type of regional ebonics. In fact I am frequently mistaken for being white and specifically a NYC or Brooklyn Jew. I consider that a good thing.
Interestingly, the accent around San Francisco has been found by phonetic linguistic to be somewhat similar to the accents in Western/Central Pennsylvania. I can kind of confirm this because I watch a few episodes of Animal Cops in San Francisco on Animal Planet in which one of the cops sounded so much like people from my area in PA.
How about this distinctive TV news reporter accent so ubiquitous across the US?
The contrived empathy in the intonation, the exaggerated stress on the last syllable of the sentence, the faked somber tone?
Trisha Takanawa, anyone?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=krEjjx5zPDQ
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V2W_NrZ-GhI
The contrived empathy in the intonation, the exaggerated stress on the last syllable of the sentence, the faked somber tone?
Trisha Takanawa, anyone?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=krEjjx5zPDQ
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V2W_NrZ-GhI
Last edited by a moderator:
Daisy
Loved Member
- Joined
- Jun 2, 2009
- Posts
- 4,742
- Media
- 0
- Likes
- 555
- Points
- 258
- Location
- California (United States)
- Sexuality
- No Response
- Gender
- Female
I think I'm very good at detecting accents. I live in California which tends to be quite a melting pot of people from all over the US. I cant tell a Maryland/Philly accent from New York which is different than Jersey which is different than Connecticut, etc. To some the East Coast accent tends to sound the same. Southern accents are all very different. I frequently hear people say that they have no accent and then you talk to them and pick up 1-2 states they've previously lived in. So yes, many accents in the US..and all very distinct.
I wonder what causes all the different accents? Maybe influenced by where the majority of ppl in that area originally came from?
Liverpool had a lot of Irish settlers which influenced the lingo a bit - sounds similar in some ways. Also, there were lots of viking settlers there 1,000 yrs ago, which apparently is where some of the accent comes from (kinda sounds a bit far-fetched tho, that long ago).
Liverpool had a lot of Irish settlers which influenced the lingo a bit - sounds similar in some ways. Also, there were lots of viking settlers there 1,000 yrs ago, which apparently is where some of the accent comes from (kinda sounds a bit far-fetched tho, that long ago).
JustAsking
Sexy Member
One of the oddest accents I have heard is the back country accent of people in small towns in way upstate NY. I am talking about the region north of Lake Placid and west of Plattsburgh.
I can't seem to find a good YouTube example of it, though. I believe it has a heavy French Canadian component to it. In fact, sometimes French syntax creeps in as in the demonstrative, "I am going downtown, me.", or similarly, "Hey, ya going downtown there, you?"
I lived in that region about 30 years ago for about 5 years. I can still here an old guy I knew talking about his snowmobile, "Chroist, I took dat dere Artic Cat up ta tha flats aoutside-a Beekmantaywn and got er up about nuyndy muyles per owwer. Jaysus Chroist, yaas. Uy guess so!"
There is an odd way they pronounce words like fire or tire, where fire sounds almost like foyer, but maybe fuyer is more like it.
Colorful epithets, also. Such as "By the Jesus", when mildly emphatic, or when very emphatic, "By the jumped up Jesus Christ."
It is also laced with a midwestern component at the same time where a name like Dawn sounds more like Don.
I can't seem to find a good YouTube example of it, though. I believe it has a heavy French Canadian component to it. In fact, sometimes French syntax creeps in as in the demonstrative, "I am going downtown, me.", or similarly, "Hey, ya going downtown there, you?"
I lived in that region about 30 years ago for about 5 years. I can still here an old guy I knew talking about his snowmobile, "Chroist, I took dat dere Artic Cat up ta tha flats aoutside-a Beekmantaywn and got er up about nuyndy muyles per owwer. Jaysus Chroist, yaas. Uy guess so!"
There is an odd way they pronounce words like fire or tire, where fire sounds almost like foyer, but maybe fuyer is more like it.
Colorful epithets, also. Such as "By the Jesus", when mildly emphatic, or when very emphatic, "By the jumped up Jesus Christ."
It is also laced with a midwestern component at the same time where a name like Dawn sounds more like Don.
After years of thinking of the curious intonation that marks Ringo Starr's speech as Liverpudlian, I eventually noticed its similarity to the intonation of Irish speech. When I learned of the extent of historical Irish immigration to Liverpool, the pieces fell into place.
A curious thing that I have noticed is that some New Zealanders seem to have a similar intonation. That may be because a lot of the original settlers of the country were from Ireland.
ok...I was born and raised in Alabama. When people (while in my home area) first meet me, they always ask if I'm from around here or from up North. Now, when I'm up North, people want to sit and listen to my talk because of my Southern drawl.
I guess what people around here realize is that I tend to over enunciate my words, which I think is what makes me sound more 'Northern'
lol after thinking for awhile...I realized that I when I talk, I'm bad about saying ya'll, Coke, and other 'slang' terms, as well as you guys, soda, etc. No wonder people are confused about me. lol
I guess what people around here realize is that I tend to over enunciate my words, which I think is what makes me sound more 'Northern'
lol after thinking for awhile...I realized that I when I talk, I'm bad about saying ya'll, Coke, and other 'slang' terms, as well as you guys, soda, etc. No wonder people are confused about me. lol
Last edited:
That's surprising....
We have what is commonly known as the "Midland Accent" with cuts a wide swath across America. It's what most newscasters speak. Here's the test....
What American accent do you have?
Principessa
Expert Member
Thanks Earllogjam! That was kinda fun and pretty accurate for me. :smile:
What American accent do you have? Your Result: The Northeast
Judging by how you talk you are probably from north Jersey, New York City, Connecticut or Rhode Island. Chances are, if you are from New York City (and not those other places) people would probably be able to tell if they actually heard you speak.
What American accent do you have? Your Result: The Northeast
Judging by how you talk you are probably from north Jersey, New York City, Connecticut or Rhode Island. Chances are, if you are from New York City (and not those other places) people would probably be able to tell if they actually heard you speak.
Similar threads
