George w. Bush was born in Connecticut and went to Ivy League schools. But he’s got the dialect of a west Texas born-again used car salesman. Although he spent some years in Midland tx and Houston Tx, I can only think he feels that this way of talking endears him to middle American. Is this accent for real? My father (from El Paso, along with many generations before him) thinks it’s put on.
For what it’s worth, it sounds very real to me. And I think I’m pretty good at detecting false Texas accents.
-Loopus, lifetime East Texan
I think it’s an oiler thing. I have an uncle that has an Oklahoma-Texas twang from working on Oil operations. It’s something that he picked up working with rednecks in his late teens and early twenties. He has a cool accent, something between Northerner and Southerner but a drawl and cowboy twang.
True, but the family moved to Texas when he was little, and he did grow up there. You’d expect him to pick up the local accent. He might play it up sometimes, but I think it’s genuine.
I had an English accent for a little while when I was twelve, due to hanging out all the time with my English best friend and her family. I was often asked if I was from Boston, because it was a hybrid blend that didn’t sound like it belonged anywhere, but when she and I went to England together, it smoothed out into a perfect London middle-class accent with hints of Midlands, and several native speakers including the customs inspector refused to believe I wasn’t English. The kicker: I wasn’t doing it on purpose.
I can believe being an oiler or spending half one’s childhood in Texas could give one a Texas accent. What I wish there was some way of knowing was what accent he spoke with while he was at Yale, in Skull and Bones. Did his Texas accent tone down and disappear the way my English accent disappeared when I got to college?
An accent can be real and still be milked for political edge, of course. I know I milked mine while I was in England.
The Bush’s moved to Texas when W was two years old. He was raised in Midland, and Houston, and those were his “homes”. W. attended Sam Houston Elementary School and San Jacinto Junior High in Midland, Texas. For High School he did attended prep boarding school in New England, at Phillips Academy in Andover, Massachusetts, the same school his father “41” attended. He famously did grad and post-grad work at Yale and Harvard. Did a stint in the National Gaurd at various sites, then returned to Texas for various “bidnesses” and public office.
Based on this, to me, I can’t scream “fake” at the accent (IANABush Fan).
:smack: He famously did grad and post-grad work at Yale and Harvard.
Meant
He famously did COLLEGE and grad work at Yale and Harvard.
Frued would sign me up for the fan club apparently right? :wally
It’s hard to believe anybody would fake sounding like that, but one never knows.
Some people pick up accents more readily than others. Some people shed their accents more readily than others. Maybe we can find a cite where he was picked on in Connecticut for sounding like a rube?
A fake accent, IMHO (and, yes, I am a linguist), is one that one purports to be from a particular area but really doesn’t match it. In my experience, such a fake accent would be the occasional “Southerner” accent I hear on television. If one is residing in a particular area, or has resided in a particular area for quite some time, or mingled with people from a particular area, then it’s perfectly reasonable for one to pick up and use the accent encountered. As with any other thing connected with humanity, different people have different abilities to (or defenses against) picking up an accent.
BTW, didn’t we do this “Bush’s accent is fake!” already?
This is something that I do, without thought or purpose. I’ve always thought it was a subconsious move on my part to integrate into a group, or make the group feel more comfortable. Put me in a strange bar drinking with a group, and by the end of the night I’ll have changed some of my pronounciations to fit with the group. Keep the association going long enough, and it’ll start to stick. I had two roommates in college from Wisconsin, and for the life of me I can’t stop saying “Boooat”, when I mean “Boat”.
I speak an odd patois of all sorts of regional American.
FWIW, Bush sounds exactly like a friend of mine (I’ll call him John) who was raised almost identically. John grew up in Midland and then went to prep school in New England (can’t remember where he went to college tho’) John’s daddy’s an oilman and he’s the son of the second “upscale” New England wife (as opposed to the starter Texas wife).
What does brother Jeb sound like?
I lived in Texas for almost all of my life. I grew up in a small town, then moved to Houston. Then I moved to Austin, then Waco, then back to Austin. My family owns oil wells and a ranch, and I spent a lot of my summers running around the hill country.
I’ve since moved to Oregon. The first thing anyone says to me when they find out that I’m from Texas is, “But where’s your accent?”
I’ve never had one. My wife, who also lived all of her life in Texas, doesn’t either.
Here’s the thing, though; when I act, the Texas drawl is by far the easiest accent for me to fake.
I suspect Bush’s accent is also completely fake. It makes him seem more down-to-earth, more “aw shucks”. I wouldn’t be surprised if one of his PR guys advised him to lose the yankee accent so he’d get better numbers in Texas.
If he was able to accidently acquire the Texas accent in the amount of time that he lived there, he’d damn sure be able to lose it in all the time he’s lived in Washington.
Why? Bush moved to Texas when he was 2, and stayed there until high shool, when he went to Philips Academy. Of course, he was home in Texas during the summer. Then he went to Yale When he graduated from Yale, he went back to Texas, where he lived most of his adult life, except for grad school at Harvard.
Why on earth would he have a yankee accent when he spent most of his life in Texas?
I don’t think there can be much question that his accent is “real.” The question is if he lays it on to create a more “common-man” sound in his speech. Pat Buchanon is the king of this. That guy turns it on and off like a spigot depending on which part of the country he’s in. Bush is at least consistent. He always sounds pretty much the same and it’s not an over-the-top sound. Personally, I don’t get the impression he’s putting on a show. Hell, he has enough trouble pronouncing words under normal circumstances. He doesn’t need to complicate matters by going into some piece of amateur theatre every time he opens his mouth.
??? He always sounds like he’s from Wash DC/Maryland area to me. That’s a pretty distinct accent. Not southern, more mid-Atlantic. Not Philly, but not Richmond either.
I think he sounds that way on TV talk shows, but when he’s on the stump, whew boy! Depending on where he’s speaking, of course.
Eerily enough, he sounds as if he is from Florida*. These guys are robots, I tell ya!
*Not a JEB fan, but imo he’s got a much more pleasant speaking voice.
Exactly. I hate when a TV show depicts a “Southern” family with members that have accents from all over the South. If Mom has a South Georgia accent and Dad has a North Carolina accent, I sincerely doubt the kids are going to sound like they’re from Mississippi and West Tennessee/West Kentucky.
I had a lecture by a neuropsychiatrist who claimed that accents are “fixed” by age 12. One doesn’t pick up or lose one after that – the one that you have when you are 12 is pretty much the one you have after that. Sure, you can fake it (see Charlize Theron), but Bush being in Midland in his childhood and adolescence means that his default accent would be the Midland one. Look at GHWB in comparison – he has a Yankee accent despite spending pretty much the same time span in Texas. Lending credence to Bruce Perry’s ideas. FWIW, I am in Texas and his accent has never struck me as faked.
I suppose I should know, too, because I was born in South Africa, left at age 2.5, and have pretty much spent the rest of my life after age 4 in Texas. I didn’t pick up the Texas accent, being confined to the big city and surrounded by South Africans, but I certainly don’t have a South African accent apart from certain words (very, really, carrot, a few others), more a generic bland American accent. Similarly, all of the kids who moved here from South Africa as kids have American accents, yet those who moved as teenagers retain the accent.