The American Accent

[Mightyqueen801]

Originally Posted by metaljaybird

This is a great thread! Coming from North-Central Connecticut, but now living in Northern New Jersey, I never thought I had an accent. I do remember thinking my great-grandmother sounded exactly like Katherine Hepburn, haha.

My wife thinks it is funny the way I pronounce the word "idea". I don't annunciate the vowels like they do in NJ, and instead it sounds like "idear". However, don't tell me I have a Boston accent, I grew up on the border of the Western Mass area, which is where the Boston accent suddenly dies. However, I do drop my "r's" when upset or excited. Another thing my wife pointed out.

My wife on the other hand does not have that noticeable NJ accent, despite living here her entire life.

Also, she thought it was odd how often I used to say wicked. Not really an accent, but more like a geographical phrase. "The Celtics are wicked awesome!"

My late MIL was from Maine. They say everything's wicked good. I found it amusing, but I didn't realize how much it was a part of speech until I was looking through the classifieds in the newspaper up there and someone advertised property for sale with "wicked good deer".

[Bluesmama]

It is soooooo rare that I post to threads this long. But I found the OPS post rather interesting.

If a "foreigner" was going to comment to me that Americans have a funny accent, I know what my answer would be ~ "WHICH ONE????" I mean, good Lord, it differs almost from state-to-state in the US! Even in the southern states there is variations in their speech.

So there's southern accents, Lousianan accent (which sounds like a unique mixture of southern-Brooklyn), Midwestern accent, northern Midwestern (thanks to those Finlanders!), New England accents, good ol' New York (which sounds different from borough-to-borough), and New Jersey. California probably doesn't have it's "own" accent; in fact, I'm born and raised there, and all my life my "accent" has been mistaken for a New Yorker or "eastern", and that's likely just a European-English result.

Oregonians supposedly have an accent but I honestly don't know what that accent is ~ especially considering that a huge count of the people living here are NOT natives.

And what about native Indians? They all speak with unique accents. Hispanics and Europeans and Middle Easterns living in the US speak with accents.

The point I am making is that you cannot generalize "American accents".

I do like the Australian accent ~ I like it better than English, quite frankly ~ but I do not consider it particularly "masculine".

[northstar22]

Of course, most foreigners probably can't tell the difference between American accents - they all sound the same to them.

[Hpdark]

I've lived in Colorado and Utah and around here we have what's called "mountain dialect" which is funny because we can't even say that "right". We don't pronounce our T's. Mou-in for mountain or lay-in for Layton. I can tell if someone is from out of town if they put the sharp t-sound in their sentences.
My grandma also says warsh-cloth "washcloth" cray-on for crayon. It might just be an old person thing or out of state accent?