I often wondered about Americans with heavy accents and what they think when they hear the “nonaccent” that most Americans speak in on TV. Can they hear the difference in how 99% of people speak on tv versus how they speak?
I can’t bear an accent from North Carolina, or for that matter South Carolina I suppose. I’m not knowledgeable enough about the area to drop a pin in the correct locale.
For a long time I thought Paula Deen came from North Carolina, but Wikipedia tells me she’s from Georgia. That woman’s voice makes me want to stab an ice pick down my ear canals.
Dropping t’s is New England, and I’m guilty. Hilariously, it drives my Bronx born and raised uncle (by marriage) crazy and he never misses an opportunity to mock. Whatever, dude, you sound like Rhoda Morgenstern.
Not if they’re real, but fake ones drive me crazy. It took me a long time to realize that I don’t watch Modern Family because Sophia whatz-er-name’s accent makes me want to scream. I know that IRL she has a bit of one but she lays it on so thick in the show that I just can’t listen to it. Fran Dresher makes me want to kill; I can’t change the channel fast enough. The kid on That '70s Show I can somewhat tolerate but I think the only one that doesn’t bother me is Raj on TBBT. To me it’s barely disernable and I don’t even think about it being “different.”
Mostly I am annoyed by it when people exaggerate it as part of a public persona. For example Paula Deen or Sophia Vergara. Sure, their accents are based on how they really talk, but I don’t for an instant believe that’s their “real voice.”
And since these folks have been mentioned time and again by other posters, no elaboration needed. 
That nasal twang like Savannah Guthrie has sends me into seizure mode. I honestly can’t watch the national news whenever she guest anchors.
Like George Bush, I have a hard time saying " nuclear". I have a tough time with “powerful” as well (it comes out pare-ful). I have a problem when someone equates certain accents or dialects with a lack of intelligence (especially the time a guy with a Canarsie, Brooklyn accent cast aspersions on my intelligence due to my East Tennessee accent).
I just discovered that Wikipedia has a page on “nucular.”
Do you also say “real-a-tore”? <shudder>
You are not alone. Some accents bother me because they remind me of someone, and some sounds like vocal fry bother me if they seem super fakey.
I know I shouldn’t be irritated because I have a terrible raspy voice due to stupidity in my youth*, and I know my voice is not soothing to hear. Yet things irritate me.
*Smoking and an over-enthusiastic sing along at a Def Leppard concert which damaged my vocal cords, causing me to mostly lose my voice for 3 months.
You all (not" y’all" - I mean each of you) are cracking me up and making me feel better about my little, er, problem. Since I hate the sound of everyone’s voice (just kidding) I could weigh in on everything that has been said here.
I adore Sohpia V. so for some reason her voice doesn’t bother me, but Penelope Cruz makes me want to scream " oh puhlease girl, you’ve been here fifteen years. Let go of the “cute foreigner” thing already".
It seems like the midwestern dialect is supposed to be the “standard” or most “neutral”. W T F??? Unless I’m misremembering or I don’t actaully know what is refered to as the midwest (Illinois, Wiconsin, Michigan, Indiana, right?) I must *vehemently *say “HELL NO”. That’s got to be the one I loathe the most (sorry, my midwest dwelling Dopers- remember *I *confessed to sounding like Baritone McBrady;) ).
Currently I work with a boss who, mercifully has lost most of his NY accent, but still says “foward” for forward. That’s a really common thing for some reason and I want to smack him with his own damned smartphone. There’s the newly graduated gal who is smart as a whip, but I can’t tell if she has growths on her nodes or she’s just a fryin’ the vocals. Then we’ve got Lispy McLisperon; also extremely intelligent but seems unaware of his unbearable vocal likeness to Sylvester the Cat. Let’s not forget Big Ebb McCracker; six foot four, handsome, and straight out of the cast of Green Acres. And finally, our Michigan transplant who, among other irritating things, pronounces Tampa as “Tam-PAH”. There’s a reason why WOOK streams music all the live long day 
This is exactly what I meant by “leaving off the ends of words.” There was a documentary on TV about the world’s forests, and the narrator, a PhD, spoke excellent standard English . . . except for the plural of “forest,” which he pronounced “foress.” And of course “the question that needs to be ass.”
It’s not a regional dialect, and I’m hearing it practically every day now.
Holy cow; I haven’t encountered this particular abomination yet :eek: I can’t even imagine what the producers of said doc were thinking.
Shall we talk about supposed professionals, trained in voiceover work, who cannot pronounce social security? Even I, Cindy Brady, can say SO-shull security, as opposed to “SOsal security”.
I’m ok with good mornin’ for good morning but what really gets me is “good morneen” which I guess is a sort of failed compromise between the two. Double plus ungood.
pronunciation defect.
One of the regular AM stations here in LA has a weather forecaster who I switch off as fast as I can when I hear him. Fellow Angelenos may be able to identify him, but no matter; the point is that his sign-off gimmick irritates the hell out of me, Irrationally, even. He ends his bits with a standard 'This is (forecaster’s name) with your (radio station)'s weather foreeeecassst". Or maybe he’s toned it down some recently, but I don’t want to listen to find out.
Nothing but a gimmick, a completely irritating gimmick.
And not every expert interviewed on Public Radio knows how to give good interview. One lady this morning, when asked a question, would too often start the response with a brief, “Right.” As in, “I expected this question, and here’s my rehearsed answer.” Mildly irritating.
I can’t stand the NY and Boston accent. It creates such an uncontrollable amount of hate in me!
I do indeed. Also, a lot of throat clearing irritates me.
Where do you come from? Your profile doesn’t say but includes
Do you know where that statue stands? Do you know there is more than one “NY and Boston accent”?
No, I’m pretty sure the whole system was done in one or two sessions, and the announcer managed to suppress dropping the t half the time, and failed the other half of the time. And I can just see the engineer grimacing every time it was dropped.
I have a Midwestern accent, and feel lucky as it is the ISO 9000 “American Accent”. I think it became so because cultural icons like Walt Disney and Johnny Carson came from the same background.
Dan Rather, in his autobiography The Camera Never Blinks wrote about having to learn to tamp down his native Texas accent when he first got on the radio. He was assisted in this endeavor by a listener who would call the station every time he made a slip, like saying “…the sheriff’s depity” and she’d call in saying, in a very schoolmarmish voice “It’s DEP-U-TEE!” and hang up. When he first was offered a network job, he was told he should sound like he was raised in the network vice-president’s office.
I don’t want to hurt any feelings
but I hate the Joisey accent. The one the Housewives of New Jersey use.
I have several friends from New Jersey and they don’t talk that way, although one will just to annoy me.
There is inner city Baltimore accent that I hate, not because of the accent but because I can’t understand a word of it. One of my bosses used to describe it as ‘he sounds like a horseshit salesman with a mouth full of samples’.
All the words run together and the endings get dropped off.
An ex-bf would slide into it when he was tired and I got to where I could understand him, but I had to be paying attention.
It also drives me nuts when intelligent people from Baltimore say curve for curb, chimley for chimney, liberry for library, zinc for sink, Dezember for December, mirrow for mirror - the list goes on. I know they are smart people, but the Baltimore speak is too deeply embedded in them.