I am from Mississippi, and I studied in Spain for a semester. During that time, I was around a lot of Americans from the North that always had fun with my accent. Sure it was funny, and it wasn’t mean-spirited, but I did learn to speak with a more northern accent. After that, I stayed in Spain, and had a girlfriend whose native language wasnt’ english. So I sort of learned to use a general bland accent that is the most understandable. When I talk to people who don’t speak english natively, I speak like this. Now this isn’t baby talk. These people are good at English, and I can say anything, but just in this accent. I also speak like that with English friends that I’ve had but I noticed around them I tend to phrase things like them.
But when I would talk to my parents I would consciously try to change it back. It would require a little thought at first, but then I picked it up after a few seconds.
Another weird thing is that a lot of Europeans said my accent didnt’ sound American, but when I asked them where they thought I was from they couldn’t say. I guess because I don’t have that whiny accent, where people really draw out the vowels that is very stereotypical of Americans.
And finally, why is there such a stigma of changing your accent? Or maybe its because I come from the South. We tend to look down on people who go up north and come back talking differently. Is this a southern thing, or is it typical everywhere. What’s really interesting to me is that in Germany, the proper way of speaking, Hochdeutsch, is not defined by a certain grammar and vocabulary, but also an accent. Maybe this is they way Recieved Pronunciation was in England before?
My accent changes constantly, depending on where I’ve been and around whom.
My mother drilled all of her children out of some of the local accent. Around here, when you want to get clean but don’t want to take a bath, you take a shar. When you get a flat, you need to change your tar. The President lives in Warshington. We were absolutely forbidden to use that accent.
So I’ve got a melange, and so do my siblings. We generally can slip in and out of accents at will.
When I’ve done poetry recordings, I get a lot of questions about where I’m from.
Born in Michigan, but I’ve lived in Tennessee most of my life, and have refused to change my accent. Sure, every now and then a bit of southern drawl slips through, but not for more than a few words (It’s actually pretty funny when that happens. I get called on that alot). I often get questioned on where I’m from because I don’t have a stereotypical southern accent. If I wanted to, I suppose I could change the way I speak, but I kind of like my sort of northern/sort of southern accent.
This one’s more of an IMHO or a MPSIMS, but yes. I unconsciously adopt the accent of the locals almost anywhere I go, to the point where my bland high school French was mistaken for “the local French accent” in Alsace-Lorraine and Lucerne Switzerland, and my mid-Atlantic English has been mistaken for the local dialect in Florida, Chicago, and Virginia… and London, UK. It takes a few hours of being in the new place to start changing, but a few moments’ conversation with a local changes up my rhythms and starts screwing me up. And you definitely don’t want to hang out with me if I’ve been watching Trainspotting.
Recently I’ve gotten phone calls – wrong numbers – from an older woman somewhere in the Deep South. She’s trying to dial her friend in the 305 area code and keeps mis-dialling 301. Every time I answer one of her calls, my fiancée can tell it’s her within seconds, because I switch to a Mississippi accent to comfort her. She sounds so confused, all I can think of is to comfort her, and that’s the way I do it.
As for the cultural stigma of changing your accent, it’s as closed-minded a way to judge anyone as any I can think of. There’s a notion that if you speak differently than you learned to when you grew up, then you’re “forgetting your roots.” But if you never learned to speak effectively where you were raised, it’s just a new skill you’ve picked up, and anyone who begrudges you that skill is an insular local yokel, whether they’re from Boston, Minnesota, or Dixie.
I did it back when I was in middle school and high school. I had enough of the Minnesota left from when my family lived in that area and I knew that I would be spending my life teaching in the ivory tower that I made a conscious effort to control my voice until “American Stage English” became natural. It sounds generally American, but is very good for comprehensibility when speaking without a microphone in a classroom or a lecture hall. I also am naturally a baritone, but I try to speak “up the octave” since lower tones are more garbled to students sitting in the back rows.
I found it helped immensely to have practiced imitating many different voices when I was younger. If you have great flexibility in your voice you can more easily adjust to a new “baseline” voice that will come out when you aren’t consciously trying to affect an accent.
I cant help it, it just happens and I dont usually notice it. I lived in Ohio for awhile, and after a few weeks, Id talk on the phone with a friend in Cal and theyd make fun of me, when I didnt even hear it. Same thing from when I lived in Ct for a bit. I was in Scotland for a few weeks and it started to happen but wasnt consistant yet; I didnt notice it but the owner of the B&B I stayed at thought I was making fun of his accent a couple of times towards the end, when I wasnt even aware I was talking in a half-Edinburgh style.
Adopting different words and idioms is differen though; I consciously and deliberately use words common in Cal/the west coast. In New England I refused to say Spirit Shoppe or package store for instance, and kept calling all of them liquor stores. Same thing with ‘rubbish’, I kept saying ‘garbage’.
Here’s the deal, or at least how linguists and biologists understand things currently.
As children, we are all capable of immitating any human sound we hear. As we get older, and particularly once we pass puberty, we lose this ability somewhat. We tend to have “hardwired” in our brain only those sounds that we have heard growing up. As an adult, your brain is litterally unable to “hear” some of the sounds necessary to speak another language like a native speaker.
Of course things get a little trickier when you’re talking about different accents in your own language. With TV, probably no one grows up anymore NOT hearing the “standard” American accent. And there are obvously people with beter and worse capabilities of adjusting their own accents.
When i moved to the US just over four years ago, one of my mother’s final exhortations was not to come home with an American accent.
I’ve been here, as i said, just over four years now, and i don’t think my Australian accent has faded one bit. This was confirmed by friends and family (including my mum) when i made a trip home at the end of last year.
I guess that maybe i could change my accent somewhat if i made concerted effort, but i see no reason to do so. Who knows? Maybe after i’ve been here for another twnety years or so, i will have picked up something of an American accent.
I’m of the opinion that one can certainly change their accent, however, in some situations the “primary accent” still sneaks out.
In my case, I’m from a small town about 30 minutes north of Boston MA. My extended family (Parents, aunts & uncles) come from a city further south, just slightly north of there, and all have a VERY thick “Boston” accent.
I think it sounds like trash, so when I started in my working career, I decided to learn to speak with a more “neutral” accent. (Read pronounce my "R"s, and other words much better). I’ve actually been accused of not telling the truth to folks that ask me where I’m from because “I don’t sound like I’m from Boston.” Put a few drinks in me though, or late at night, when I’m overtired, and the "R"s drop away, Park becomes Paaaahk, etc.
Can you do it? IMO, yes. Can you do it with great accuracy? IMO, not really, not on a 24/7 basis. Sometimes the old accent will still sneak through.
I have a similar experience. I grew up near Boston and had a “mild” Boston accent until I moved away as a young adult and it just sort of faded over time. You’d be hard pressed to detect any trace now, but put me back with my old friends in Beantown, and before you can say “Pahk the cah in Hahvahd yahd”, those old pronunciations creep back in. Still, I refuse categorically to call anything “wicked cool” or “wicked hahhhd”.
We moved around a lot when I was a kid. I never developed any regional accent at all, because we never lived in any one place long enough. But, wherever I go, eventually I start talking like the people around me. I cannot help it. I went to school in Scotland for awhile and ended up with a Scottish accent while there. I still slip into it when I want to. I also can pick up any accent I hear. My mother, on the other hand, grew up in the deep south and never left until she was 21 and married to my dad (a damned yankee, just ask my grandfather). She still has a very thick southern accent some forty years later, or so I am told. I cannot hear her accent - she just sounds like mom to me. I can hear the southern accents of her brother and sister and their families, though.
I live in Cornwall in england… but I was born in Essex - which to any of you who don’t know is right by London…
I have what I would describe as a “bland” accent - - which I think makes it easier for me to adopt different accents (which I do, but not for any length of time - unless i’m doing an impression - or playing a character)…
when I go and visit family in Essex it doesn’t take long for me to slip into a much more common accent, ( like Wal’Ah instead of Water - - no T, no R for example )
but after living in Cornwall for 19 years - - I hardly ever slip into a Cornish accent - - in fact, it’s one of the harder accents to actually mimic…
another thing, I make rap music… when I started I used to put on an American accent (obviously - I was 15!) but then tried a more “British” accent - before finally settling on an accent that is close to my own, but also slightly Americanised - - e.g. pronoucing rhyme, as rahm ( I can’t actually describe the way I normally say it - - because obviously it depends on your accent! - -and almost treads on another thread entirley)…
anyway, the point being - when people listen to my music, a frequent criticism is that I should rap in my own accent…
Like the rest have said…my accent varies depending on where I am and who I am listening to. Born and raised in Southern California, I have no accent of my own, so I “adopt” whatever local accent there is. I can pass for a native of just about anywhere in the US with just an hour or so’s exposure to the locals. About the only accent I don’t fall into is the hard rasp of Missouri and surrounding areas. The rest are a snap!
This comes in handy when trying to teach my students the proper accents for pieces they are doing for Speech.
My primary accent is the Worcester one, which is an even muddier version of the Boston accent. No last Rs or Gs in that one! I sound a little like John Kerry at times.
I can instantaneously switch to a generic “John Edwards” accent. This is especially useful if I know someone speaks English but doesn’t seem to understand me - it exaggerates some sounds and is very clear.
I’ve also got a crisp, high-pitched Cleveland accent available, and I’ve also got the “BBC Presenter” generic North London accent from watching too much TopGear.
The one I want to have but can only maintain if I’ve just consumed a lot of water so I don’t dry out is the rumbling, authoritative voice of Ralph Nader. Even if you don’t want to hear him speak, listen to him for a few seconds just for the voice. It’s at least two octaves lower than Al Gore’s and it is also very loud and professional-sounding.
Before I moved to the US I spoke either French or Marathi most of the time so the evil combination of those two resulted in much teasing during junior high. I consciously made it sound American to fit in but when I relax it comes through a lot more. I still stress syllables and pronounce words slightly differently but for the most part I can pass.
Um. Southern California most definitely has an accent. Or are you talking more about San Diego than L.A.? The only place in the United States that I’ve ever been that truly has an “American neutral” accent is Northern California, around the Bay Area. And still, people say “bowlth” instead of “both.”
I’ll never forget when I was a freshman in college and we were going around all the people on our dorm floor, introducing ourselves and such. One woman’s roommates were making fun of her California accent, and she got all exasperated and said, “Uh… I TOtally don’t have an accent!”
Thanks for the quotation marks around the word standard. You’re getting warmer! There is no standard American accent. There is a broadcast dialect which is generally a Mid-western dialect.
I wonder if Southerners would be given more respect if those broadcast schools had been located in Georgia, Alabama and Mississippi!
In response to the OP:
It’s been decades since I read this study, but this was what I was taught when I was studying linguistics in college:
Studies indicated that men born and reared in the Southern U.S., but who moved to the Northern states as adults tended to lose their Southern accents. Women who were born in the South, but who moved to the North tended to keep their Southern accents.
The opposite was true for those born and reared in the North. The men who moved South did not change their Northern accents. The women who moved South tended to pick up Southern accents.
I can say that I get a lot of positive feedback, especially from men, about my Southern accent. People who have known me only on the internet just break up at first when they hear me – unless they are from the South too. They say I sound like Scarlett O’Hara. (Why don’t they ever say Kim Bassinger?)
There are dialect tapes available for those wishing to deliberately pick up an accent. Actors use them often if they cannot afford a coach.
A good example of how much a voice can change is Grace Kelly. She had a lot of sinus problems and had a very nasal voice. She got rid of that. I don’t think she sounded like most people from Philadelphia.
Who would have thought Audrey Hepburn was Belgian? (I think she was.
I also pick up the accent English speaking foreigners that I’m around. I cannot help it. I even spoke English with a Danish accent around my parents when I had a Danish boyfriend back in the Dark Ages.
I was born in Chicago, lived a few years in the South, New Jersey/Philadelphia, and one year in England. I don’t know what people generally make of my accent (heh), but I do know that I pick up accents pretty quickly when I’m around others with particularly strong accents. This was particularly noticeable a couple weeks of ago when I fielded a phone call from a woman at the Beeb! I’m more than a little self conscious about this and hope that the person at the other end of my conversation understands it to be a reflex, not a pretensious act. :smack:
