I’ve been perusing the multiple “accents” threads in GQ (fave subject of mine) and thinking about my own speech. Here’s my situation; I’d love to hear you opinion and stories of your own:
I grew up in Utah (Utar), a region with its own distinctive accent.
I spent 18 years in SoCal. Again, a region that (can have) an accent.
I spent two years in Appalachian Ohio (heavy regional accent there!)
Now I’m in Central NJ and work in PA. To my ear, people sound very different.
So, here’s the question: I’ve noticed that I’m picking up some of the NJ/PA accent and (at times) have to consciously “remember” what I sound like. It’s not that I don’t like the accent, it just doesn’t seem like . . . well, like me. If I live here for 20-30 years, will I sound like I’m from here? Does the conscious effort to maintain a certain way of speaking eventually just fade with time and exposure?
I’ve lived enough of my life in Northern Illinois that I tend to sound like Elwood Blues sometimes, but I tend to fall into sympathetic speech sounds and patterns if I’m talking to someone for a long time who has a pronounced accent and I do it without thinking. I’m certain that if I moved somewhere with a strong regional accent that I’d start picking it up pretty quickly, but I still think I’d sound like me.
My wife has a cousin that spent the first 15 or 16 years of her life in Birmingham Alabama before moving to Cincinnati and she’s lived there the last 15 years or so. Except for a word or two, she sounds just like the locals up there.
On the other hand, I became pretty self conscious of my southern accent back when I worked in telephone tech support and have been actively trying to reduce it. I’m still in the same location so I still hear the accent I want to drop everyday. It’s been slow going but I’ve gotten out of some habits.
Seems to me that if you try to change your accent it’s hard but if you’re thrown into an area with a different accent and you aren’t trying to change, it’s easy.
Heh. I went to high school with a guy whose father was Yiddish. His mother was an Hawaiian of Japanese descent. By the time I knew him, his parents had been married for more than 25 years. His mother had a very interesting Japanese/Yiddish accent!
I’m like Cluricaun. I imitate accents I’m exposed to a lot without realizing it; it’s part of the reason I’m good at mimicry. If I lived in an area where nobody sounded like me, it would be difficult not to pick up some of their habits. And I am fond of my “accent,” or rather my lack thereof, because it’s generic and placeless. I used to work at a tourist bar and nobody could ever pinpoint where I’m from. (I am a fifth generation Texan. People in South Texas just don’t have the accent that a lot of our northern folks do.)
My boyfriend, OTOH, is from Connecticut. He has a noticeable accent, albeit pretty mild, and he’s lived here for over two years and I don’t see it changing. He’s terrible even at imitating other accents. (FTR, he doesn’t think he has an accent. He says, “You don’t have one!” and I agree, but gently point out that he does. I think it’s cute.)
I would assume that children are the only people who are really in danger of “losing” their accents completely.
What part of Utah? Utah’s Dixie sounds quite different than the Wasach front.
I’m from Salt Lake and my sister has lived in northern GA for a dozen years. I give her shit sometimes because she’ll drawl out some of her words.
It depends on the person, really. If you think of Henry Kissinger and his heavy German accent, even decades after living in the States, then you can realize not everyone loses their native accent.
I know some Japanese who lived in the States for less than a year and you would never know they weren’t born there.
Then take it down to a regional difference, and you get the answer: It depends.
I’m from New York. Specifically Lawn Guylandt (Long Island). Because I studied theatre in high school and college (which included public speaking) I do not have a pronounced LI accent, but if I am tired, I slip into a sort of Bronx/Georgia mix, if you can imagine such a thing.
Many years ago, I spent a week in England (London and Cambridge) at a conference and there met someone from Manchester. We became very friendly and spent most every free moment together. I picked up her accent, much to the chagrin of my parents, who picked me up at the airport upon my return, and could not understand a word I said.
eta
in answer to the OP’s last question, not necessarily. Some people do alter their speech patterns (probably subconsciously) to match their surroundings. Like me, some people are “dialectical chameleons”. Others most definitely do not. My friend’s wife is German. They’ve been living in the US for 30 plus years, and her accent is still very strong.
Audrey Levins, an accent is a way of speaking. Unless you are mute, you have an accent. Accents include even choices of words.
I have not seen any recent information on efforts to maintain accents. About forty years ago I saw a study that was interesting enough to repeat here. It may no longer hold true and I cannot provide a cite for it under that it was from a college textbook.
A large number of people from the United States – both the North and the South – were studied after they moved from either the South to the North or the North to the South. The following was noted. Males from the North tended to retain their accents when they moved to the South. Males from the South tended to lose their accents when they moved to the North. Females from the North tended to lose their accents when they moved to the South. Females from the South tended to retain their accents when they moved to the North.
Can you detect where Steven Colbert is from? He hails from Charleston, South Carolina. Neither he nor Edward R. Murrow retained their Carolina accents. I have heard Colbert say that he very intentionally rid himself of his. It would be interesting to hear him speak as he did before he deliberately changed. I suppose the dialect he speaks now is the traditional Midwestern dialect used in broadcasting.
There is often prejudice against some Southern dialects – especially with men who have them. But the most beautiful voice to my ears was that of Shelby Foote, historian from Mississippi.
Having lived deep in the hills of Eastern Kentucky most of my life, I know a thing or two about accents.
While I’ve not tried to totally eliminate my accent, I do my best to not let it sound TOO thick. I think I’ve done a fairly decent job of it. People from my hometown say that I don’t sound like I’m from there, but when I’m elsewhere in the country, people easily pick my accent out.
I’ve also noticed that my accent gets thicker when I drink, which is a bit embarrassing.
For example, both my FIL and I grew up in Montreal and moved to Toronto in the late 70s.
Our accents are slightly different as he grew up in a predominantly Jewish area (and so speaks very much like a Montreal Jew, which is a mixture of franco and yiddish), whilst I grew up in a predominantly Franco area (which means my accent is pretty straightforward franco).
I was 6 when I moved, and at the time I sounded kind of like a hockey player from the wilds of Chicoutimi (see also: Celine Dion, Jean Chretien). But since I integrated into anglo culture at a young age, my accent is pretty much gone unless I purposely trot it out for a laugh.
However, FIL’s accent is also still very prominent 30 years later, as he lived in Montreal until he was middle aged.
Mind you, it probably helps that there isn’t really a prominent accent here in Toronto (as compared to some other areas of the country, like the Maritimes).
These are really interesting stories! Keep 'em coming, please.
I’ve been thinking about the relative status of the accents in my repertoire. For example, the SoCal speech gives me an anywhere-in-the-U.S. “news anchor” with an inflection of “surfer”; the Northeast/Mid-Atlantic sound (might) have more cachet in academic circles, being the NE is where the “real” universities are.
The Utah and Appalachian patterns, while low-ranking outside of their respective regions, give entry into spaces (like neighbor/co-worker relationships). I was actually quite good at App-speak, as there are similar gerund-dropping and flat vowel sounds in Utahnian.
I guess when I start saying “wurder” instead of “waddur” (for “water”) I’ve become a Central NJ-Philly citizen.
On the lighter side - to sound like you’re from the NYC area (some think it’s more New Jersey, others say it’s more Bronx) repeat this little story out loud:
Toity poiple boids sittin ona coib
Choipin n boipin n eatin doity woims
Along comes Boit an hiz skoit named Goit, who woiks ina shoit factry in Joisey
Well, when Boit an hiz skoit named Goit, who woiks ina shoit factry in Joisey
Saw da toity poiple boids sittin ona coib
Choipin n boipin n eatin doity woims,
Boy! Was dey poitoibed!
Even in the Northeast there are certainly local (perhaps socio-economic) variations.
My extended family comes from the Lynn (2 or three city/towns north of Boston) area, and still has many members that live there. That accent is completely different from those in areas outside of the Lynn/Peabody line area. I’ve surprised more than a few folks when I’ve asked them, “Hey, are you from Lynn or Peabody? (P-Biddy if spelled the way it sounds)” Most of the time their reply is “Yes, but I’ve not lived there for years! How did you know?” It’s completely different from someone just a town away.
I’ve pretty much trained most of the MA accent out of myself, to the point that I’ve been accused of not being a “native” to New England on more than one occasion., and find that if I go somewhere else in the country, I sponge up their accent/slang very fast. The Mrs. is very much the same way, to the point that I used to be able to tell a day when she had called her friend from Western MA (Thankfully, that friendship ended).
Of course, if I’m tired, or have had “a few too many,” the accent slips back in. Drives me nuts when I hear it.
Although I agree one hundred percent with your first point (that everyone has an accent) I thought that “accent” referred to the purely phonemic aspects of a person’s speech - intonation, word stress, sentence level stress as well as individual sounds - once we talk about lexical items haven’t we moved on to talking about a person’s idiolect ?
