I’m from Northern California too, so no, not so much.
I’ve had the proverbial Boston accent all my life. When I was younger I thought everyone else’s accent was strange, especially New Yawkers 
But my accent’s mutated since then. For awhile I worked with a lot of people from RI – I call their accent a mixture of Boston and New York – and I’ve seemed to have picked it up as my own. Not that you couldn’t tell that I’m not a native Rhode Islander (my accent’s a bit too “Boston” for it), but there’s enough to think that I could be if you didn’t know I came from Boston.
If that makes sense.
Makes perefct sense to me kiz .
My parents both have ‘RP’ (received pronunciation) which basically means they sound ‘posh’, Mum even uses the pronoun ‘one’ at times (as in ‘one does rather think that’). I was brought up in a part of England where folk have a distinct northern accent - think D. H. Lawrence - then I lived in South Wales.
So, although I’ve lived outside the UK for the last 10 years and my accent has become more neutral, I’ve got short ‘a’ sounds in ‘bath’, ‘grass’ and ‘laugh’ and ‘oo’ sounds in ‘bus’ ‘up’ with the slight sing song Welsh thing coming though at times. Both elements get much more pronounced ( 
) when I’m speaking to people with accents from those parts of the UK.
Oh and close proximity with Ponster has lent an Irish influence sure.
I don’t have an accent, everyone else does. but I have been told I pronounce certain words funny. For example the state I live in(see location above and to the right).
Here we also use the word ‘once’ in a weird way. “Come here once and look at this”. “Hey, can you got get me a Coke once”. I hear that’s from the old Germans who came here and passed it on. A friend from Philly also laughs at us when we say that, and it takes us a second to figure out why. I also have, to a smalllll degree the *Fargo *(movie) accent of “ohhh yahhhh” and such. Not that bad like the movie of course, but sometimes it comes out.
My cousins in Chicago sound so much different than us, and we grew up in Milwaukee. Weird how it’s so different with only 90 miles difference.
I sound like the trashy black Puerto Rican New Yorker that I am. Ju wanna make su’im ofit?
Ditto. My step-brothers and -sister have that accent (they’re from Bowden/Red Deer), but my sister and I do not. We grew up a half-hour away from where you did (Fort Macleod).
You don’t, though.
I grew up in Jacksonville, FL with parents from North Carolina. I imagine at one point I had a fairly common Southern accent. I’ve lived in New Jersey for 10 years now and I don’t think I have any accent. I certainly don’t have a mid-Atlantic one, and my Southerness is only evident if I’m angry or tired.
My brother, on the other hand, moved to Kentucky. He sounds like an extra from “Deliverance” to my ears.
VCNJ~
I have a slight Picksburgh accent (GO, Stillers!) but I learned to surpress it when I went into radio. I now live in Texas and everybody here says I talk too fast. At least I know that you write with a “pen” and stick a note to a bulletin board with a "pin, " not vice-versa as they do here.
www.pittsburghese.com will give you an idea of how we pronounce things. I gotta go, the car needs warshed…
i grew up in omaha, nebraska. i am not sure what a “midwestern” accent should sound like, but my speaking voice sounds exactly like dennis hopper’s. my singing voice is too horrible to contemplate.
I’ve been hearing myself on the phone a lot at work lately, so I notice my New York accent when it pokes through. My roommate also says it makes my Howard Cosell impersonation that much more effective. But it doesn’t do that very often. I grew up on Long Island and I know people can’t tell that from hearing me talk. Which is good because I worked to make sure of it.
Definite “Minisooooodah” accent here. I’ve got the long “o” and the “t” that occassionally becomes a “d”.
Ayuh, you can more or less tell where I’m from when I talk. I tend to say things the same way as other people do around here. However, even though things like theyah(there), stayahs(stairs), draw(drawer) and doe’ah(door) fall out of my mouth at times I’ve occasionally been told that I don’t have a distinguishable accent. That makes me wonder if there’s something more than common pronunciation that makes a true “accent.”
I have a nothing accent. I was born in Michigan, raised in southeast Texas, and then moved back to Michigan. When I was a teen, my Michigan and Texas accents combined into a new, horrid accent that sounded rather valley girl-ish.
I started taking speech and diction lessons when I was fifteen, and it obliterated all traces of any accent. Now I’m told that I sound like someone trying to sound American. Weird.
I’m from Northern CA as well, so I have no accent. Or are we just being haughty?
I have a question for others… Can you identify a northern californian, or non-val-speak southern california accent? If I ran off to Alabama, would they know I was from CA?
As a schoolteacher formerly trained as a journalist, I have managed to shed most of my southern accent. However I’m an oddity in that I LOVE my South Carolina/Georgia accent and it takes me less than two days to let it seep back into my voice at full strength whenever I’m back home around my people.
There are regional foods that I eat that I refuse to pronounce any way but the southern way. Grits. (GREE-its) Fried Eggs. (FRAIGHED AIGS) Hot sauce. (HAHSAWSE) Sweet tea. (SWEE TEE) Lemonade. (LEMONAY) Pecans. (PEE-CANS) Sweet potatoes (Swee-puh-TATERS) Peanuts. (PENIS or GOOBERS, depending on usage) and fried chicken and fish (FREUD CHUKKEN NAN FUSH-- that’s my Charleston/Geechee influence)
I’m from south Ga, but lived in the midwest for 20 years. I really don’t have an identifiable accent now. As impossible as it may seem, it looks like the two regional accents cancelled each other out.
I learned to speak in southern Ontario. Then, almost immediately, moved to between the three great Massachusetts accents: Bawstohn, Caancud, and Woostah.
I have been told that I have a(n) Southern, generic Northern, Californian, English, Scots, and French accent at one point or another. Apparantly I’m something of an unconscious mimic. Frankly, I’d rather have a pronounced accent. I get accused of mocking regional accents when they find out I’m not from there, myself.
And Elfkin, it’s not simply the sound of the words that makes for an accent. Word choice, diction, and even grammatical quirks make for identifying traits for accents. Failure to meet all standards will leave people familiar with that accent aware that something is off, no matter whether they can identify it consciously, or not.
I used to think that, too, until someone pointed out I still prounounce “three” “five” and “nine” as “thray” “fahve” and “nahne.”
I mentioned this in my earlier post, but one of my coworkers is from Northern CA (SJ) and sounds like she’s never left California in her life. If we hadn’t been introduced with “she’s from California too!” I’d have recognized her accent immediately.
CA has a lot of transient people from other states and countries, though, so it’s hard to pin down one specific accent. Another of my coworkers is from Los Angeles and has that half-Valley/half-Spanish accent that I’ve heard a lot in the Chicano community.
As for telling Northern and Southern Californians apart, it’s less an accent thing than a diction thing. There’s the “the/no the” with freeway numbers difference and, of course, the “hella” divide.