Brian
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Post by Brian on Nov 26, 2011 12:06:00 GMT -5
Take the Quiz: lewrockwell.com/spl3/american-accent-quiz.htmlMy results: Your Result: The Midland "You have a Midland accent" is just another way of saying "you don't have an accent." You probably are from the Midland (Pennsylvania, southern Ohio, southern Indiana, southern Illinois, and Missouri) but then for all we know you could be from Florida or Charleston or one of those big southern cities like Atlanta or Dallas. You have a good voice for TV and radio. The West The Inland North Philadelphia The South Boston North Central The Northeast
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wheelspinner
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Post by wheelspinner on Nov 26, 2011 21:04:53 GMT -5
T "You have a Midland accent" is just another way of saying "you don't have an accent." You definitely do have an accent, at least to the ears of anyone who doesn't come from your part of the world. Who knows how Rockwell came up with that. Accents are an intriguing thing. When we came home, nobody commented on the accents of my wife, myself or my oldest son, but everyone swore that my youngest sounded like an American. When we went skiing in Tahoe, the lift operator asked me where I was from and we chatted about Australia for a bit. He then asked Liam where he was from. The change in his accent was so gradual that we never noticed it, and did not believe it when people pointed it out. Only when we came home and his schoolmates nicknamed him California did we realise how extensively he'd developed it. He has now lost it again, but some people can still pick a bit of an inflection. In my case I picked up some Americanisms instead. I still say lobby instead of foyer, elevator instead of lift and (to my undying shame) I occasionally say "zee" instead of "zed".
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wheelspinner
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Post by wheelspinner on Nov 26, 2011 21:10:41 GMT -5
BTW, Rockwell reckons I come from the Northeast. Lots of Aussies in Jersey are there?
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Post by joethree56 on Nov 26, 2011 21:10:46 GMT -5
I don't I have a UK north midlands accent which the characters created by DH Lawrence would recognise as close their own as would the characters of Sillitoe's writing. To the untutored ear it sounds like "All creatures great and small generic nothern which I/we found irritating. Accents are not bound but gradate from one to the other (at least they do in England). Before the emergence of the terrible lowest common denominator tongue of Estuary English and mid Atlantic Usaian I could place locals to within a mile of their home.
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Post by joethree56 on Nov 26, 2011 21:15:57 GMT -5
apparently I might get by in Philadelphia according to the quiz
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Post by MacBeth on Nov 27, 2011 14:01:59 GMT -5
They gave me a Midland rating as well - but I have a lot of my Southern accent still intact. It is even stronger when I am tired or angry.
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Post by Peltigera on Nov 27, 2011 14:58:31 GMT -5
Strangely, when I am tied, I develop a Welsh accent although I have only ever been an infrequent visitor to the place. My accent I a mixture of my father’s careful East/South London accent, my mother Edinburgh accent and the Cornish moorland accent I grew up with.
I had thought I had lost my childhood accent - I certainly have tried hard to (it d'be quite ard to unnerstand'n, ticularly if ee int ust to un) - but recently I was training a new recruit at work and he asked which part of Cornwall I came from. I asked him why he thought I did and he said because of my accent, of course.
As Wheelspinner says, everyone has an accent and most USians have clear USian accents.
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Post by Peltigera on Nov 27, 2011 15:00:40 GMT -5
The quizz says I come from the North East.
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wheelspinner
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Post by wheelspinner on Nov 27, 2011 17:51:53 GMT -5
The quizz says I come from the North East. Could it be that the NE accent is the most closely related to English, given that was where the original English settlers arrived (IIRC)?
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Post by joethree56 on Nov 27, 2011 20:07:55 GMT -5
The problem with this is that those English settlers would have had a whole range of different accents that was far more acute than it is today. Were John (pelti) and I to speak in our own vernacular there would be a communication problem but we both are products of a world that has become homogenised by films, radio TV and travel. Pre these innovations only the immediate needs of trade would prompt the learning of the language of the T'other chap.
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Post by Peltigera on Nov 28, 2011 5:28:40 GMT -5
Were John (pelti) and I to speak in our own vernacular there would be a communication problem but we both are products of a world that has become homogenised by films, radio TV and travel. Pre these innovations only the immediate needs of trade would prompt the learning of the language of the T'other chap. Where I grew up in Treskillard, there was one old boy we youngsters could not understand at all. And the Redruth accent was looked down on for miles around - it is flat, unexpressive and monotonic, much like the people who live in the town. You know, I do not actually miss Cornwall at all.
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Post by patchoulli on Nov 28, 2011 7:04:54 GMT -5
I got "Midland" also. Which is spot on since I live in southern/central Indiana. The Hoosier accent is similar to a southern accent in that we tend to give two sylables to words like 'bear', 'door', etc. Sounds very hick-like. Weirdly I've noticed myself and others in the past few years pronouncing words like 'house', 'about', 'out' more like the Canadians (or sometimes Chicagoans) with the 'ou' coming out closer to 'oh' than 'ow'. Don't know how or where that's coming from.
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Post by rubytuesday on Nov 28, 2011 8:34:26 GMT -5
I have heard said that the American accent is derived from the local English accent in the Bristol area about 300 years ago. It's just that the Bwitish accent has since become more refined since while the US accent remains in the past
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.
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Post by joethree56 on Nov 29, 2011 14:40:52 GMT -5
I have heard said that the American accent is derived from the local English accent in the Bristol area about 300 years ago. It's just that the Bwitish accent has since become more refined since while the US accent remains in the past Except as I have pointed out there is not one British accent and by the Bwitish accent I assume you refer to the home counties accent a parody of which Hollywood always assumes to be THE British accent. On the subject of the Bristol accent anyone who had heard the Briszle burr would need a great deal of imagination to in any way tie it to any US accent I have ever heard. Here is a link to sound archives which illustrate what we really sound like. sounds.bl.uk/maps/Accents-and-dialects.html
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Post by Peltigera on Nov 29, 2011 16:03:39 GMT -5
On the subject of the Bristol accent anyone who had heard the Briszle burr would need a great deal of imagination to in any way tie it to any US accent I have ever heard. I don't know about so far north as Bristol, but there is an area in (I think) one of the Carolinas (east coast, any road) that was settled by Cornish fishermen whose descendants still speak with a passable Cornish accent
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Post by Peltigera on Nov 29, 2011 16:12:48 GMT -5
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Post by rubytuesday on Nov 30, 2011 12:22:57 GMT -5
"Except as I have pointed out there is not one British accent"
There is only one Bristol or West Country accent. Funny enough when I was a lad most of my relations came from West Wiltshire & I remember then thinking that they sounded a bit like Americans
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Post by rubytuesday on Nov 30, 2011 12:27:58 GMT -5
Part 1: Frozen in Time When the British began to colonize North America the English accent sort of 'froze' in the colonies. So as the English accent had begun to change back in Britain, America's isolation caused our accent to change very little. Due to this, the modern American accent is closer to how Shakespeare would have sounded than the modern British accent is. www.abovetopsecret.com/forum/thread608868/pg1
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dee
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Post by dee on Dec 30, 2011 14:26:07 GMT -5
What American accent do you have? Your Result: The Midland "You have a Midland accent" is just another way of saying "you don't have an accent." You probably are from the Midland (Pennsylvania, southern Ohio, southern Indiana, southern Illinois, and Missouri) but then for all we know you could be from Florida or Charleston or one of those big southern cities like Atlanta or Dallas. You have a good voice for TV and radio. The West The South The Inland North The Northeast Philadelphia Boston North Central
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dee
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Post by dee on Dec 30, 2011 14:28:38 GMT -5
Interesting what my results came out because we have lived in Miami, Florida, Houston, Texas and Atlanta, Ga. also. Now we're back in Missouri where we were born and raised.
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Post by shiftless2 on Feb 26, 2012 18:18:06 GMT -5
Not a very good test. According to the results I come from parts of the US where I've never set foot. [In fairness, I've spent one day in Chicago but that was an issue with flights, not because I wanted to.]
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Post by Peltigera on Feb 27, 2012 3:17:57 GMT -5
Amazing what you can pick up in an airport, Shiftless!
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