# do american's have accents **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [July 21, 2003, 2:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-americans-have-accents/189917 "2003-07-21T14:33:10Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 9\ **Page:** 6
**Author:** ![jjimm](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/ba8739/32.png) [@jjimm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jjimm)\ **Post date:** [July 22, 2003, 2:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-americans-have-accents/189917/103 "2003-07-22T14:43:23Z")
**SIMFOG** , your post reminded me of an ex-girlfriend of mine from the US. We were discussing a (black) friend of mine in the UK, and she said “but he’s not really black, is he?” I replied “yes he is”. She said “but he doesn’t talk like a black man”. I was incredulous, but then I realised that she’d got it in her head that to talk with a “black” accent was to talk like a proportion of the US population that would be identified as African-American. This is crud. I can assure you that cultural homogeneity that exists amongst African Americans is there for specific US-based historical reasons, and that black people the world over are as culturally diverse as non-black people. ---
**Author:** ![Cervaise](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cervaise/32/16693_2.png) [@Cervaise](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cervaise)\ **Post date:** [July 22, 2003, 6:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-americans-have-accents/189917/104 "2003-07-22T18:05:12Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by hyjyljyj \* > **Got some “news” for you there, pardner.** Please don’t patronize me. > [@](#): > > **Lots and lots of people actually speak this way in real life, especially in the midwest (not up north like MI, ND, MN), including me.** No. In my vocal training classes, we listened to hundreds of speech samples. Not one sounded like the artificial “standard” we were learning. The “standard” dialect I’m referring to was _specifically and artificially created_ to meet a particular purpose. > [@](#): > > **Yes, where I’m from in St. Louis there are some accents that one can discern with practice, but most of those whom I know from there speak generally unaccented English.** _There is **no such thing** as unaccented English._ > [@](#): > > **Not just that we “can’t hear it” because we are the speakers; I focus attention on this from a linguistic interest standpoint.** I’m shocked beyond words that somebody professing a background in linguistics would assert that such a creature as “unaccented English” even exists. > [@](#): > > \*\*People speak this way, although probably not as well or as uniformly as a trained actor like yourself. \*\* Then _they don’t speak that way._ Even assuming that “unaccented English” exists, if a group doesn’t speak it “uniformly,” then _they don’t speak unaccented English._ They speak a regional dialect of English. _By definition._ ---
**Author:** ![Doobieous](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/da6949/32.png) [@Doobieous](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Doobieous)\ **Post date:** [August 20, 2003, 12:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-americans-have-accents/189917/105 "2003-08-20T12:23:20Z")
Well, in the Philippines, english as a first language would be common for a very minute segment of the population. I do know of one woman who is from the Philippines who speaks english better than tagalog, but she’s very rare, and it would only be the very highly educated or rich. Most people speak Tagalog, or their local languages as their first languages, and only in school or here and there do they pick up English (though, most Filipinos if educated for any amount of time do speak some english). ---
**Author:** ![Algernon](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/a183cd/32.png) [@Algernon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Algernon)\ **Post date:** [August 20, 2003, 3:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-americans-have-accents/189917/106 "2003-08-20T15:12:28Z")
> [@](#): > > _Originally posted by gerikel_ > i know that its virtually impossible for me to understand what the british hear when they hear an american talk… Not really apropos to the OP, but here are a few threads that sort of address **gerikel’s** related question: [What does English sound like to a foreigner?](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?s=&threadid=119772) [How do other cultures mimic English?](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?s=&threadid=191753) [The sound of English](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?s=&threadid=23804) [What does English sound like to foreigners?](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?s=&threadid=143054) ---
**Author:** ![gluteus\_maximus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/f17d59/32.png) [@gluteus\_maximus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/gluteus_maximus)\ **Post date:** [August 20, 2003, 5:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-americans-have-accents/189917/107 "2003-08-20T17:59:16Z")
Hmmmm… Or should I say, “Blah blah blah!”? Watching any given American movie (film), I can tell you from which coast an actor originated by the way she/he “flips the bird”/“gives the finger”/gestures “fuck you!”. Now, if _gestures_ can denote origin, how can spoken language possibly be free of regional identity? Until I was 18, I though _everyone_ pronounced “color/colour” in a way that rhymes with the surname of a famous blind and deaf woman named “Helen”. Where am I from? ---
**Author:** ![gluteus\_maximus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/f17d59/32.png) [@gluteus\_maximus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/gluteus_maximus)\ **Post date:** [August 20, 2003, 6:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-americans-have-accents/189917/108 "2003-08-20T18:18:00Z")
Dear gerikel, Yes, Americans have accents. They also seem to have trouble with standard punctuation and spelling. Americans also have regional dialects, as do speakers of every other living language. ---
**Author:** ![Capt\_B.Phart](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/9fc29f/32.png) [@Capt\_B.Phart](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Capt_B.Phart)\ **Post date:** [August 20, 2003, 6:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-americans-have-accents/189917/109 "2003-08-20T18:52:37Z")
\*\* gerikel,\*\* For me:- I’m “Here”, you’re “There”. (= you have an accent) But for you:- You’re “Here” and I’m “There” (= I have an accent) - it’s **all relative** if we were both in the same spot we’d both be “here” thats the equivalent of you not hearing a accent - but it wouldn’t make the whole frikkin’ universe revolve around the point we stood on 😉 ---
**Author:** ![hibernicus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/hibernicus/32/2802_2.png) [@hibernicus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/hibernicus)\ **Post date:** [August 20, 2003, 10:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-americans-have-accents/189917/110 "2003-08-20T22:29:11Z")
Living in Ireland it seems hard to imagine an Irish person asking “do Irish people have accents?” People tend to be aware that they themselves have an accent, and that other people can infer information about what part of the country they are from, their social and educational background, etc. The same goes for British people, in my experience. Maybe it’s because the tapestry of accents in Ireland is so rich, and we grow up with so much local variation that it is something we are very aware of. To address one of the OP’s questions, to a non-US English speaker, all US native speakers of English have what we would call an American accent. Even if newsreaders sound to you as if they “have no accent”, to us they just sound American. ---
**Author:** ![Sonyadora](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/dc4da7/32.png) [@Sonyadora](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sonyadora)\ **Post date:** [August 21, 2003, 12:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-americans-have-accents/189917/111 "2003-08-21T00:03:16Z")
As a Southern Californian, I am _very_ aware that I have an accent. Now that I’ve been transplanted to Northern California, I can usually tell which part of the state someone is from based on their accent so I’m curious to see statements in this thread describing Californians as accentless. Even if there were a way to speak any language without an accent, California has several accents of it’s very own. Curiously, some people can’t tell where I’m from, because despite a clearly SoCal accent, a long series of moves as a child (to places like Maryland, Japan, and the Midwest) has left me with an oddly diverse slang library. 🙂 [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-americans-have-accents/189917.md?page=5)