I have the generic American accent when I speak English, which is a bit weird since I spent most of my early childhood near Atlanta. Apparently when I was really little I spoke “ghetto” English, owing to the fact that I attended preschool in a rundown area of Detroit. I think when I was actually living in Atlanta I had a slight twang, but now it’s disappeared.
My Korean accent is also pretty generic. God, I’m boring.
I have been told I have a ridiculously heavy Detroit accent but honestly I don’t even know what that means.
The first time I visited my in-laws in Oklahoma, I couldn’t understand what they were saying! If someone asked me a question, I often had to put a big smile on my face and elbow Mr. Del to translate. I’m better at it now, though.
I am from Western New York, and I do have an accent. It is not as strong as it used to be, as I have lived away for many years. If I have been talking to my mother on the phone, it gets stronger. When I was in college, I had a friend named Don who wanted to know why I kept forgetting his name and calling him Dan. I had to explain that I DID know his name was Dan, just like Danald Duck or Danald Trump. If his name was Dayn, like Dayniel Boone or Dayn Marino, I would call him that.
When I first spoke to my American friends in the early days of the Internet, I was told my Australian accent ( I thought I had none) made me sound like Alec Guinness in a submarine.
In Ireland, in the more country areas, I was asked if I was American. So I have no idea.
To me I sound normal.
Of course, everyone speaks with an accent.
My own is clearly Northern Irish, but my fellow countrymen and women have mistaken it for an irish Irish accent, or Scottish or English. It’s what I get for pronouncing words properly 
Everybody thinks I have an accent, but I don’t. Seriously though, yes, I know I have an accent, and people from other places have told me it’s pretty heavy. I’m from Buffalo, and I sound the same as everybody else here, so I don’t think my accent makes anyone think anything about me. My family lived near Atlanta for a little while, and I got teased mercilessly for saying “you guys” instead of “y’all”. I picked up a bit of a twang, then quickly got back to normal once we came back to New York. I saw a PBS program on American dialects that called it the Great Lakes Vowel Shift. (Or the Greet Leeks Vowel Shoft)
But the OP asked if you speak with a **strong **accent. To me that means Southern drawl or the Brooklyn or Boston accent mentioned, or even the Fargo one. Yep, everyone has a way of pronouncing things, but some are a lot stronger or more recognizable than others.
You’re right, but it’s common for people to really think they have no accent at all. I was addressing that. If people just meant they have a mild accent, then I withdraw my comments!
A colleague’s fiancee, recently arrived from DC, commented on my “adorable Canadian accent” a couple of months ago.
It’s actually not that strong, as far as I can tell, nor is it common unless you know a whole bunch of anglo Montreal expats (I grew up French-Canadian, but speak completely fluent English). I just tend to overenunciate some words, especially if they end in “-re” or “-er” types of sounds and my “h” sounds aren’t as hard as they should be (“human” occasionally comes out more like “uman”, especially if I’m tired).
That said, when I was little and we first moved to Ontario, my accent sounded exactly like Celine Dion’s.
I have an odd accent. My accent is the product of being from Appalachian Ohio but having a mother who didn’t want her children to sound like hicks. I can sound like a hick, and often do, but this is my normal speaking voice.
That doesn’t sound odd at all to me…it sounds like a typical midwest accent.
I always think I have very little accent, but sometimes when I’m traveling, people will ask me if I’m from Chicago. I think I clip off my “th” sound a little bit at the beginning of words.
My mom would be so pleased! It’s definitely not the SE Ohio standard. 
Yes, I’ve traveled down there some, so I know that’s true!
I should add that you have a very nice speaking voice.
Don’t you mean a toshin “bah”?
Thanks to Stephen King, I love the Maine accent!
Yes, I have a very strong American accent. No one would ever think I was British or Australian or South African.
Bizarrely, I was once asked in Dublin if I was from “around here”, which I took to be a joke at first, but soon realized that the asker (Firefox says that’s not a word, screw them) was dead serious. I don’t know what was going on there.
I have an accent speaking Bulgarian, but no one can figure out what it is because there are so few English speakers who speak Bulgarian. (Possibly because it’s such a fucking useless skill.) I’ve been asked if I was Macedonian, Ukrainian, and Russian.
Heh. when I first moved up here, I wondered why people were referring to potty favors and going to a potty. In quilt guild someone referred to an Ott light and I wasn’t sure if they really meant an Ott light, or an art light.
My Long Island accent is only noticeable (I think) when I pronounce words with the “ah”/“aw” sound - “water”, “mall”, “coffee”, etc. Maybe even when I say “Long Island” - but not to the point where it sounds like the stereotype - “Lawng Eyeland”.
I can tone down my accent, but it takes a conscious effort.
It was indeed a “bah.” Fortunately I had a frame of reference to correctly translate that piece of Dadspeak into bar, while “toshin” had to wait for high school science to have some meaning for me.
I love how Stephen King has not (to my knowledge) attempted to modify how he sounds. Which is kind of like my dad only with a potload of money. (We are from the same town as King.)
I once had a conversation with a person from the midwest in which we discussed the name “Bah-nee.” To him, it was a girl named Bonnie, while I pictured a man named Barney. His Bah-nee lay over the ocean; mine wore an animal skin and hung around with a dude named Flintstone.
Ah yes, she does.
[sexist anecdote]There is a woman with a voice like that working one of the Air Traffic Control radio frequencies in Australia. Sometimes we’ll ask for an updated weather report, even if we don’t really need it, just so we can listen to her voice.[/sa]
[quote=“trupa, post:34, topic:486605”]
This is a bit complicated. I grew up in French, and live in English now.
In French, I have a pretty strong Quebec accent, which is to say that, to a Frenchmen, I sound like the English equivalent of someone from the deepest, darkest corner of Mississipi or Alabama. That’s ok, European French sounds incredibly feminine to my Canadian ears, which is good for the MaDemoiselles, and, err, not so good for French guys.
In English, I normally have a regular Canadian / accent (I say pr-oh-ject, not pr-aw-ject), but when I’m tired or a little drunk, then my French Canadian hh-accent comes out ( 'I, HHI’m 'appy to see yooo).
Oddly enough, after a 1 week business trip in Dallas, I came back with a “Southern” accent I had to work to get rid of. It irritated my wife to no end. Now it comes out when I’m mad, esp. at my son, or if I talk to an American with a similar accent for more than 15 minutes. Sometimes I think I sound a bit like a cheesed-off Foghorn Leghorn /QUOTE]
We all started speaking French around the dinner table one night and one of the girls was doing a great impression of a french farmer (or so I though) - complete with mannerisms, but I couldn’t place the region. Turns out she wasn’t “doing” an accent - I’d never heard Quebec French before! The Paris accent seems a bit bleh to me too. I don’t speak a lot of French but I like to use a Marseille accent when I do - more fun!
British Library about six miles from my village. Anyone from the area can guess my accent to within about 10 miles even though I’ve watered it down considerably. There’s a limit to how many times you can tolerate jokes about “the sticks”. I think I sound fairly blandly southern english now, but I’ll sound more local when talking to anyone from my region.