Accents

Accents, love them or loathe them we all have them. Traveling around the country this summer has made me realize what a funny accent I have. I thought it would be interesting to post some examples of my accent on here. I have lived in Michigan all my life and apparently Michiganders talk pretty weird.

To speak like a Michigander you need to
1. talk fast,
2.slur your words together and,
3.cut off all your hard consonants like"t"

Michiganders pronuncations
City: "Ciddy" Which ciddy are ya from?
Clothes: "Cloze"
Column:"CAHL-yum"
Both:"Bolth"
Crayons:"Cranz"
Disparate: "DisPARate"
Refrigerator:"Frigerraider"
Groceries: "GROSHries"
Hundred: "Hunnerd" or "hundrid".
Milk: "Melk" This comes from the Dutch influence.
Kind of: "Kinuh"
Soda or pop: "Phap"
Mosquito: "Muskeeda"
Nightmare: "Night-meer"
Sherbet: "Sherbert"

If you have any questions or would like to post your own examples please do.

Fiction903

I've actually studied accents (dialect) in my Linguistics class, so I know a lot of technical names for various things. Some of the stuff you mentioned on this list I think is also common among Standard American Dialect, such as both being pronounce "bolth".

I don't have my notebook with me so I can't exactly name off the things I know regarding dialects. I do know that some of these accent-related diversities are very historical in nature. For example, the northern part of the country where you live was settled by the Norse (I think. If I'm wrong - sorry) and so their phonetic patterns influenced the way English was spoken there.

Here's a link that gives a very brief linguistic overview of US dialects: http://www.evolpub.com/Americandialects/AmDialMap.html

Dialect is one of my favorite aspects of Linguistics.

So I have this weird accent. It's part Dublin, part Belfast, part Somerset, part London, part BBC. And I don't know where it came from- apart from the Dublin and Belfast bits. My dad's from Somerset but he lived in London and definitely doesn't have a Somerset accent so I guess that makes sense. But... yeah. It's strange.

I think it's changed a lot over the years as well. I've been told I sound like I'm from South Africa, New Zealand, Australia, Poland, Northern Ireland, England, Scotland and New York. But I've also gotten a lot of compliments on it- I was told by one of my favourite speakers at the European Youth Parliament, "Your speech was really good, but your accent made it amazing," then this week this guy said he loved it and how much he loved Dublin accents, and a lot of people say they want to have my accent and/or listen to me speak all day. I would happily acquiesce both requests, if only I knew why they wanted them. It's just strange. I really hate my accent, it draws too much attention for the wrong reasons.

The Midland Dialects

Midland dialects retain R in all positions, and long I is not flattened (monophthongized) as uniformly as in the South, but the Midland is otherwise not very easy to describe as a whole, since "each of the Midland cities -- Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Columbus, Cincinnati, Indianapolis, St. Louis, Kansas City -- has its own local character." (Labov 1997). More southerly Midland cities have a typically Southern fronted nucleus in ow, e.g. aout (out); more northerly Midland cities tend not to. Labov (1997) on this basis divides the area horizontally into a North Midland and South Midland.(2) Previous researchers have also seen east-west distinctions, separating the Pennsylvania dialect(s) from those of the Lower Midwest. (Kurath 1949, Thomas 1958, Carver 1989).

I'd be in the North Midland, and it appears nothing is different about my dialect other than having nothing weird about it? xD

My accent's pretty laughable...

Whenever I go on holidays, I always get asked whether I live in loads of different places. Some of the guesses are rather amusing, really. I think that it's mostly because of the way I pronounce some words. I swear, I speak half Welsh, half American, half English, half Irish, and half Australian... I use words from all kinds of different places.

I probably mostly get asked if I'm Irish. Apparently though, the Welsh and Irish accents are quite similar. They both sound sing-songy apparently... I'm not sure whether that makes sense, but that's what I've been told. Surprisingly, people seem to think that I'm Australian a lot when I'm on holiday. I have no idea why, but yeah. If you ask me though, I just sound dumb when I talk. There's something about my accent that makes me sound dumb...

I love accents though, they're great! My favourite accent would probably have to be Australian... I don't know why, but yeah. There's just something about Australian accent that I love. It's like a mix between English and American... XD

Hmm...

My accent is quite boring, just your typical South-England accent. For those who listened to the latest Radio Show, you'll have heard it. I don't talk like a chav at all. All of you guys have interesting accents, whenever I go on holiday everyone knows I'm a Londoner.

Even though alot of people where I live do have accents, and I've lived in this area my entire life, I don't have an accent. My accent is defintley American but other than that, nope.

It does sometimes show up in my speech though, when I'm not thinking about it and my prounciation is certainly based on my surroundings. Like "delicate".

My way - "deli-kit"
Everyone else's way "deli-cat"

Just the way it goes.

I also use words often occasiated with my area. If you've seen my posts you know I'm a big fan of the word "wicked" xDD

But yea, if I'm not thinking about it too hard, I do have a little bit of an accent. Like once, and I'm not sure WHAT accent this was but it was an accent, but in fourth grade my teacher was taking attendence and I wasn't paying attention at all but I heard my name and said "here" but it came out as "HAR" xD Everyone cracked up.

Supposedly I have a pretty Southern accent, although I don't hear it. I do say "ya'll" and "over hur" and "bURied". I guess it really comes out when I sing, but that's from listening to country music.

My accent is a bit of French mixed with a normal American one. To-ma-toe become Te-may-tah. Though, after I finish watching a movie with British people - like Harry Potter - I sound English for the rest of the day.

I have no idea what my accent is like. I come from an area in the UK which has quite a strong regional one but never really picked it up. Nobody has every been able to work out where I come from by my accent, it's like a mystery!

Er... American? I don't think I have much of a Southern accent, but the term "y'all" is required on a daily basis.

I moved further north from the south of England when I was seven, but I still have all the pronunciations - BAH-th for bath, PAR-th for path, AHN-sur for answer, etc. My friends think I'm incredibly posh, even though when I'm with my cousins from the south, I can hear the differences between my accent and theirs, so I must have picked up something in the nine years I've lived in the middle of nowhere. xD

Mine's nothing special really. American I guess. Though at times I do tend to talking like I'm from England and I'm not sure why, though it does happen quite a lot.

- Jessica

My accent is weird.
It's mostly South Indian heavily influenced by the American accent (not sure of which dialect and all that, but you know, the ones from TV shows.) but my grammar is British. So yeah, a mixed bag. =)

I have a northern-American accent. *feels so unique* And it still slips out once in a while. But when I moved a bit more south, my family and I have been trying to hide it. Now we just sound like mid-westerners with long O's. Though our northern accents are not that bad. The northerner with a really bad accent will turn one-syllable words into two syllables. Example:

Normal: "House."
Northern: "Hou-use."

We were never that bad. But words like "coat" are more stretched out still. Well, they sound like they're stretched out, but really the throat's just opened more. Long O's. Though I'll admit, I miss having my northern accent. XD Probably 'cause I'm hearing southern accents all around me, and I reeeally don't want to get one. So I'll consciously try to get my northern accent back. Fortunately for me, I've lived north for seven years, so my brain's already half-trained to say certain words with a northern accent. xD

Though I'm not quite ready to start calling soda "pop" in public yet. At the moment, I call it "sody-pop", so maybe I'll shorten it to pop eventually. xD