'Ey, You Got an Accent Aw Whaht? - Page 2

Oddly enough I thought Detroiters had sort of a Chicago-esque accent much in the same way Philly has a Jersey-esque accent. Well, shows what I know.

I'm from BC, and we don't really have any discernable accent, but my parents are Croatian and my friends are freaks so I have picked up a few little things, I tend to roll my 'r's a lot and I usually say I'm 'goin' rather than 'going'

Hey, good for you!

After all, everyone hates a redundant Canadian.

The foppishness comes through in your typing, so that doesn't come as a huge surprise.

Yes, quite.

Mummy dresses me when I hit the submit button.

It gives me an overpowering urge to shoot at you from behind a tree.

We're closer to Ohio, which is the center point of the the "no accent" American accent. While Newscaster speak abounds, the long "A" thing is getting pretty prevelant as of late. It's kind of odd hearing an accent creep in and take over.

Traveling a lot for business, I've become incredibly adept at mimicking both local and foreign accents. The only guy to ever stump me was a Chinese guy who immigrated to Dallas, Texas with his boyfriend and had been there 10 years. I don't care how good a linguist you are, it's impossible to capture the magic that is the speech pattern of a gay Chinese cowboy.

That is about 150 kinds of awesome.

Great, another reason for Browncoats to lament the demise of Firefly.

When I am speaking to someone who doesn't have a midwestern accent, they frequently can tell where I am from (I once had a woman from Kansas tell me that I "sounded like the mom on Bobby's World." I. do. not.). My fellow midwesterners generally tell me that I don't have an accent, but that's just because people from certain parts of Milwaukee/Wisconsin can have absolutely brutal accents, so I come as something of a surprise. But anything with a long 'o' in it will give me away every time (so, though, boat, oh, hello, etc.).

It's not very prominent (and people have marvelled at that for some reason), but I do slip in and out of a Boston accent on occasion completely oblivious to my utter lack of 'r's; and mostly in relation to the Red Sox. And especially when I'm talking to Yankees' fans. Fucking Yanks...

Need to correct you here, Surge. They sound like the come from Southern Ontario, not Canada. We have nearly as many accents as the US. People just assume that the South Ontario/Toronto accent is Canadian.

I come from Saskatchewan (Ska-che-win, in the dialect, Sas-catch-e-won to those not from there) and my natural accent* is similar to the Albany, NY accent. Fairly flat with a hint of Minnesota. Mrs. H on the other hand comes from the Ottawa valley and her accent is a cross between the Irish accents heard around Boston and Newfoundland** (Newfin-lan' in the dialect). She goes to the bah in her cah. She doesn't warsh her cah, but her da' does.

I have a good friend from Orillia, Ont and he pronounces "Oh, yeah" in a way that sounds like it's going to go on forever. Imagine a very nasal Connecticut accent saying "Oooooooooh, yeahhhhhhhhhh" with each word rising toward the end.

None of this even gets into the Vancouver (SoCal meets Japanese), Quebecois (french patois), Acadian (irish meets aforementioned french patois), Manitoban (Ukrainian meets Minnesota), Calgary (Texas meets Minnesota) or various Native accents (Cree being the most common in the West).

* I have had to work on my accent as I used to do a lot of voice work when I was younger so it's mostly disappeared. But like most people when I go back home it comes back out.

** Old newfie joke: Where do they keep the trees in Newfoundland? Between the twos and fours, b'y!

LLOYD!

Oh, hate to break it to you, WG, but you BCers have a fair collection of accents. The lazy surfer dude of Vancouver Island versus the clipped east-meets-west surfer of Greater Van. versus the somewhat redneck drawl of the interior (particularly the Kootenays or up around 100 Mile House).

I did mean the Canadians who sneak across the Detroit river to take advantage of your superior dollar at our casinos.

And while you may have differing accents, at least you're still unified as a country in playing Hockey and drinking beer all day.

Sorry, Iggy, that's far more Eastern Canada. You may have run into a transplant when you were there but most Vancouverites actually clip 'about'. It comes out as A'bowd (As a rule Western Canadians turn ts into really soft ds).

Working in the sound industry has made me somewhat obsessed with accents, can you tell?

Not much else to do in Windsor and Kent 'cept build cars, play hockey and cross border casino trips.

True enough. I'm actually drinking a beer while being a third line left winger as I type this, eh?

When I was in Tennessee, people thought I was from England. I'm not. Nor do I have the Tarrannah accent you get in the East.

Mind you, in Tennessee, people don't call me Lyle, which they should. They call me Laaa. Perhaps my use of other vowels confuses them.

Pretty interesting reading, Ryan. I always thought Canada was short on accents, with the only major ones that come to mind being Newfie, Quebecois, and Native. There are a few die-hard cowboy types here in town, but these days that seems to be the minority. I don't know many flatlanders, so I can't vouch for that, but I'm BC born (the island) and can't really notice any difference when I'm visiting relatives out there. I've lived in Calgary since I was 5 so chances are if I was going to develop any kind of accent it would have been the Texas via Minnesota one you mentioned, but I think I just talk "normal", if such a thing even exists these days.

Maybe it's all really subtle and I just don't perk my ears up enough, working in sound would certainly help one focus in on the dialects.

It's usually very subtle but occasionally there are some very obvious accents. Myron Thompson (former MLA of Airdrie and environs) had a surprisingly thick drawl. Of course, the man was a natural born hick so...

And of course there's the T'under B'y Newfie/Quebecois blend.

Part of why it's so important for me to recognize them is that if we're doing a national radio/TV spot the announcer better have a flat accent so that the ad isn't recognized as being from a certain region. It may play well in Calgary to have that slight drawl but to a sophitimicated Trahntonian it just reminds them that they think we're hicks.