Regional Accents In The U.S.

[dancingdisneygirl]

I have a friend from Ware Masacusetts. He may as well be speaking english with a thick russian accent for all I can understand him just at booze and I just nod and agree with everything he says LOL.

I live 20 mins from Ware and Western Mass doesn't really have accents, they are all more towards Boston.

 

[Simba's Mom]

I have a friend from Ware Masacusetts. He may as well be speaking english with a thick russian accent for all I can understand him just at booze and I just nod and agree with everything he says LOL.

Ah yes, Ware-home of the famous Ware Valley Motel.

 

[bumbershoot]

From working in a call center (and hubby was still taking calls from all over the country just a few months ago, so he verifies) I can tell you that there are still heavy regional accents.

Heavy regional attitudes, too...ooh those people from up near where my mom came from (upstate NY) just START with attitude, and when you're talking to a laid-back northwesterner (transplant from CA, the CA still comes through sometimes) that is just NOT the way to start things off! Though I found that if I put on a North Dakota/Wisconsin sort of accent it could calm things down a bit so they'd hear that I was working to helping them, despite the attitude and threats.

Jinkies I do not miss those calls...Especially the lady that put her 4 year old on the phone for me to explain why his birthday present wasn't going to be there on his b'day, when SHE was the one that ordered the enormous toy only 2 days before, it was lucky it got on a UPS truck since it was supposed to go by white glove shipper, and, oh, there was an ICE STORM outside that halted UPS delivery that day near Schenectady! I had co-workers popping up like prairie dogs when they heard my voice change once I realized that she had put her small child on the phone...



All that to say, regional accents are still very much alive, however, I have noticed the California accent (ya know, like, and just the way of drawing out certain words) spreading. I once went to an all ages club in Spartanburg SC, and I heard college students from the area, speaking with a Southern accent, with a big of deadhead/rasta influence, with a CA veneer spread over the top. I can imitate accents well, but THAT one, along with New Zealand and South African, I cannot do for the life of me.

 

[GeorgeG]

We're living in a huge retirement community where we have just about every regional accent there is and it does tend to blend after awhile. There are some that stay pretty thick, but for the most part, we just get used to it.

I grew up and lived most my life just 30 miles outside New York City and never thought I had a "New York accent." That was for people who lived in the "city." Some people down here tell me I do have a New York accent while others don't hear it. Now, most people from New York City can tell what Borough (Brooklyn, Bronx, Queens, etc.) others are from by their distinct variation of New York accent.

 

[monorailsilver]

I'm a lifelong New Englander and at one time had a VERY distinct regional accent. When I was about 17 I decided to change it (you know, prouncing the 'r' and 'g' in the word 'parking' for example. 27 years later and I couldn't speak proper New England if I tried

I am a life long NEer too but I live in Southern CT. I don't have an accent.

 

[Nik's Mom]

I'm from Southern California and dh and I both have different "accents". We grew up in different parts of town. People from East L.A. definitely have a different accent, even if they are english speakers. I can't really describe it. You have to hear it to know what I'm talking about. Or listen to George Lopez.

Now that we live in Kansas City, I can hear some people with a slight mid-western accent. My college room mates were from Queens, NY and definitely had an accent. My Dad was from Oklahoma and had an accent. He used to say "warsh" instead of "wash".

I love accents!

 

[SanFranciscan]

OP you mentioned call centers and I wanted to chime in that having been a call center phone rep in the past, my friends and family tell me I have my "Customer Service" voice and then my real voice. My real voice is fast talking New Englander all the way, with some midwest thrown in from my college days. More than one person has commented on my "work" voice being different.

I have to change a few things about my speech patterns depending upon where the call is coming from or to what area I am expected to return a call.

I don't talk very fast normally anyway so I usually do pretty well with people from rural areas, even though I have lived in the city limits of densely-populated San Francisco for 22 years now. That is unless I am talking to someone whose first language was Creo, which occasionally still happens when I am talking to people in the deep south. Since the Creo-speakers tend to live in rather insular and sometimes very isolated communities, they can be a challenge for we outsiders to communicate with.

People from places like Iowa or the Dakotas are usually very kind. The crime rates are so low in their communities that they are very trusting, even of strangers on the telephone. You can tell that they are used to a slower pace of life though as soon as they come on the line so I slow myself a little with them so that they don't think that I am getting snippity with them.

I have met some perfectly friendly people from New York or New Jersey, but I pick up the pace with New York or New Jersey residents. They are more likely to think that I am wasting their time and maybe at least a little on the stupid side if I don't keep things moving along at a pretty good clip so that they can get off of the telephone.

 

[SanFranciscan]

I live in North Louisiana and I promise I haven't lost my southern accent. My poor husband (former military) wishes I would sometimes because both our kids have picked it up. Thank God they have good vocabularies for their age so they sound intelligent when they speak.

Turkeymama, I understand what you are saying that southerners have had an image of being quaint and backward and so forth, which has been encouraged by the media. I remember a Navy recruiter telling me that he could tell which part of the country a recruit was from by how he did on his admissions test. That doesn't mean that the south doesn't have good schools now. I would be willing to bet that many of theirs are better than many of ours in California, where the children often don't speak each other's languages and where it is often all the teachers can do just to maintain order in the classrooms.

It is just that the deep south was so poor in the past that it was the first source of outsourcing for cheap factory labor until probably the 1970's. One woman told me about a trip she made down to Louisiana during WWII. She didn't realize how insensitive she was being when she talked about how slow southerners were until the man she was talking to drawled "Well, lady, you come down here and get full of malaria and you'll be slow too."

 

[coneeny4]

I never thought I had an accent until calling companies and getting the automated person asking me to spell my last and and account number. After doing this and having to press 2 on my phone because it was repeated back to me totally wrong..I think I do have one.