Accents

[LisaMommy]

How good do you think you are with accents? Can you do impressions of other accents? Can you place where someone is from just from their voice?

Personally, I can't. I was born and raised in Liverpool, England, and living in the States I've noticed more and more people questioning my accent. Apparently I don't sound "British". Anyway, fess up, how good are you?

 

[pr surfer]

I'm bad enough to not convince anyone that the accent is authentic, but good enough to make people ask, "Where ARE you from?"

 

[Obi-Wan Pinobi]

Ehh. I can do a passable Australian (but not great). My Brooklyn accent has gotten better, mainly from listening to a co-worker born and raised there. My German sounds like Bernie Koppel's character from "Get Smart".

I can usually pin down a British accent from a Scottish or Irish one, but not enough to tell what part of England someone is from.

Oddly enough, my accent is hard to place. I was born in Georgia but spent the first several years of my life outside GA. My father was in the Army and we moved around a lot, and we moved back to GA when I was 9 and I lived there for 20 years. I've had people tell me they love my Southern accent and I've had people tell me I don't have much of a Southern accent. And it's not being told one thing by non-Southerners and the other by Southerners. I guess it depends on how much I say "y'all" around certain people.

 

[Buckalew11]

I'm decent. My nieces loves for me to do accents around them. For some reason, I'm great entertainment for them!LOL It embarrasses DD (everything does these days though) but I just keep telling her that I'll never be lonely because I can talk to myself in two different accents. LOL, Yep, she loves to hear that one!

I have a Southern accent even though I was born in NJ. I can do a S.NJ accent easily but people do no thinkit is NJ because all they really know is Joisey or NY which is not a S. NJ or PA type accent.

 

[MushyMushy]

I can recognize a lot of the different dialects and accents from the US -- Minnesota, OH, Michigan, southern states (though I can't really tell them apart), Massachusetts, NY, NJ, Pittsburghese, Brooklynese, etc. My DH and I are both from PA, but we have two totally different accents. His is closer to a Brooklynese, and mine is a little more southern hick because I live so close to West Virginia.

As for British accents, I can't even come close to speaking in one. I just sound like an idiot. I'm getting to where the standard British accent doesn't even sound like an accent to me, but Welsh or Cockney do. Maybe I'm watching too much BBC America.

 

[Aardvarks]

How good do you think you are with accents? Can you do impressions of other accents? Can you place where someone is from just from their voice?

Personally, I can't. I was born and raised in Liverpool, England, and living in the States I've noticed more and more people questioning my accent. Apparently I don't sound "British". Anyway, fess up, how good are you?

Heh, yep I can spot most people in the UK to their home town and I can sometimes tell if they have been raised by a parent from another region.

In the US I can spot a New York, a Boston and any Southern state accent, but I cant tell which southern state, I would not be able to spot Alabama from Lousianna or Georgia for example.

If you are a 'scouser' can you do the hard 'k' sound or when you say the word Chicken does it come out as Chicchen?

As a Scouser, the Americans will not recognise your accent as British. More often than not I am taken for Australian as well. The expected 'British' accent is a type of mockney or mock cockney. Every time an American tries to do a Britsh accent they end up sounding like Dick Van-**** in Mary Poppins, where his accent actually spans a range of mockney to Geordie with a dash of Strine.

I think that Kelsey Grammer is able to pull off pretty good 'Queens English' but the chap I love is the actor who plays the boyfriend of Nina Van Horne, his west Midlands accent is the tops. I think the actor is trying to do an 'Ozzie Osborn' impression and it is pretty good.

edit......I just love the Morality filter on this board ^^ por Dick Van **** can never see his name in print

Let me try a few more

Town in North East Lincolnshire....... Scunthorpe
Town in South Yorkshire.............*****tone
Type of garden bird.................Blue Tit, Great Tit, Coal Tit
Male of any bird species.......... ****
Female of any dog species..... *****
English meatball..... ******
Flakey pastry filled with cream.... Cream Puff

 

[ConcKahuna]

Hey now, some of my best friends were scousers!

That and the Southern accent are pretty easy for me (I had some friends from Bornmouth [sp?]), but the Manc accent always messes me up for some reason

I can tell Long Islanders from the rest of New York, and although I can tell the differences between NYC accents, I can't tell what's what.

 

[Danauk]

Heh, yep I can spot most people in the UK to their home town and I can sometimes tell if they have been raised by a parent from another region.

Probably not with my accent. I grew up in Yorkshire (all my ancestors for at least the past 300 years lived in the village I was from), had a broad Yorkshire accent and then moved away to go to uni. I soon lost my accent and now I have what my American friends say is definate English (kind of Queens English, or as my Yorkshire friends and family say, I sound posh!!)

 

[LuvOrlando]

-

 

[sdarwkcabemanmy]

I love accents..especially British/Scottish ones. But I can't do them very well. I can do a bad British one that sounds like Mike Meyers in the Austin Powers movies and my Scottish accent is even worse.

One day, a few years ago when I was still working, we had a customer with a very strong British, almost Cockney, accent and my coworker couldn't seem to understand a thing that came out of the poor guy's mouth. When I noticed they were having trouble, I stepped over and asked what the customer needed. I understood him PERFECTLY. Afterwards, my coworker asked me how I was able to understand him and I said, "That's what happens when you spend most of your life watching British comedies."

I am from the South, but I don't have a Southern accent at all unless I get around my mom's family who have a VERY drawly accent. Flowers become flars. Towels become tals. Lights become lait. It drives my husband CRAZY that I start talking like them because I don't normally talk that way.

 

[Loverly]

When I watch various British shows-I'm fascinated by the very different accents there are in England! Are there names for these various accents?

I'm Southern and can usually tell a Texan from a Mississpian

 

[EEYOREMAMA]

I was born in New York and lived in Florida for over 20 years. People always ask me where I'm from (until I say a word that ends in "a.") Apparently, soda, cola and sofa don't end in the letter "r." "I guess throw out your sodar can" is a dead giveaway. Who knew?

 

[islandmum]

I can mimick most accents pretty accurately - maybe its because of the mix I grew up with ...

Trinidad mother
South African father
grew up in UK, Caribbean and a while in Brunei

now live back in the Caribbean where my 2 blonde haired blue eyed kids have a thick west indian accent and sound like Bob Marley!

 

[jackskellingtonsgirl]

I can usually tell Scottish, Irish, British, and Australian apart. I know several people from South Africa and I think their accent sounds Australian.

I can't really imitate any of them.

 

[Aardvarks]

When I watch various British shows-I'm fascinated by the very different accents there are in England! Are there names for these various accents?

I'm Southern and can usually tell a Texan from a Mississpian

Yes, here are afew names

Tyke
Geordie
Brummie
Black Country
West Country
Scouse
Cockney
Manc

They generally take the name of the larger town in the region. For Example a 'West Midlands' accent will be reffered to as 'Brummie' after the city of Birmingham, but actually the best example of this accent is the 'Black Country' accent as heard in Dudley or Wolverhampton.

Pure Cockney is hard to find these days. Most of the Thames Estuary now speaks a type of 'Estuarine English' which can be heard from Middlesex through Essex, nothern Surrey and North West Kent.

Listen for the 'th' sound coming out as 'f' and the 'rrr' sound coming out as 'w'

so 'thought' would be heard as 'fowt'

I though he did it............becomes .........A fowt ee dan it

 

[debster812]

I'm born and raised in Massachusetts, just an hour or so from Boston, and am constantly asked where I am from because I don't have the 'typical' Bahstahn accent.

We're getting better at telling different accents from the UK and Ireland, as DS is playing on a soccer club where all his coaches are from England, Scotland or Ireland. I still can't tell you where they're from, but I can tell you that there are several different accents from the English coaches.

 

[AmericangirlinFrance]

As a Southerner, I can definitely tell different Southern accents apart - I live in Tennessee, but my family is from North Carolina. TN accent (especially East TN) is a lot more "redneck" or "hick" - sounds more like Kentucky or Arkansas. NC is a lot more "Southern Belle" - sounding, if that makes sense (and more so as you move eastward and southward across the state). That accent I hear more in people from NC, SC, GA, but it changes into Alabama and Mississippi. And obviously Louisiana is a totally different game!

I can pick out some foreign language accents (when the person speaks English), for example I can differentiate between a Portuguese speaker and a Spanish speaker when they speak English. And some other European languages I can tell.

Can't distinguish other English speakers beyond British, Irish, Scottish, and Australian. I have a friend who was born in Ireland from Irish parents, raised in Australia, and now lives in the UK, and he has a very weird, hard to place accent!

 

[Feralpeg]

DD is amazing with accents. She has studied them and perfected several. She actually bought tapes from a linguist and learned how to do the proper pronunciation based on the area. For instance, she does a wonderful job with an Irish accent. She does several variations based on location. In addition to speaking with several accents, she can normally tell you where a person is from based on their accent. We are around a lot of foreign tourists. She can tell what area in the UK a person is from by their accent. She guesses and then asks them. Most of the time, she is correct. She has considered getting a degree in linguistics.

 

[arminnie]

I can't do accents on purpose - but I will unconsciously start to mimic those that I am around for awhile.

I have an accent no matter where I am. Born in California, raised in Michigan (and later Arkansas) - but have lived most of my adult life in Texas and California.

Everyone in California would ask about my southern accent (mostly inflection not pronunciation). When I moved back to Arkansas everyone commented on my different 'yankee' accent.

In New Orleans you can pretty much tell what part of the city someone grew up in just by how they pronounce New Orleans.

 

[NMAmy]

I can tell several different types of British accents apart--mainly because DH's family lived all over the place growing up and everyone has a different kind of accent. My FIL and MIL have a Yorkshire accent, one brother has a Geordie accent (according to DH), one brother has a Lancashire accent, the other has a very posh accent. DH has lived in the States for so long that many people think he's Australian but when he gets back home, he'll pick up a combo of all their accents.

I have a definite tendency to unconsciously pick up the accents of those I'm around all the time. I have a Michigan accent but with a touch of southwestern--I had to slow down a lot when I lived in New Mexico because no one could understand me. And after two weeks with my IL's, I was developing a British accent. DH says I'm actually pretty good but I wasn't doing it on purpose.