I guess you could say that. But it’s not as if I ever spoke with the most egregious form of the “hick” dialect, nor did my parents. It’s more of a gradual shift over the generations.
I don’t intentionally code switch, but people often seem to think I’m a local, so I guess I subconsciously do it. I’ve caught myself mimicking accents that I have no actual ability to mimic. And I even have to fight not to lisp when talking to someone who does.
As fast as I could.
My family moved from Western New York to Northern Maine when I was seven. I distinctly remember being teased for the way I said, “socks,” … ‘what are saaaaacks?’ That, and everybody there spoke French. Most of my friends were bilingual. Most of the teachers I had spoke with thick Canadian French accents. It got to the point, where my sister and I developed Canadian French accents, despite not knowing how to speak the language past, “Oui, sil-vous-plais.”
There were the strange little French slang things that crept into the vernacular, and at that age, we just couldn’t help it. Wayon-wah, throw me down the stairs, that little bunnum, there, estee tabernacle. Fuck, it was brutal.
Then one day, I’d say around age 12 or 13, I stubbed my toe or something and exclaimed, quite naturally, “Ay-yoi!” (don’t ask me how that’s really spelled).
Ay-yoi? Did I just actually say, Ay-yoi? And now that I think about it, what’s with the ‘there’ after every sentence, and fuck me if have a clue what ‘wayon-wah’ means.
From that day forward, I vowed to shuck the faux French accent, and I actually regressed a little bit and got a little of the Western NY accent back. Probably to a fault – I’m sure most everybody I hung out with in high school thought that I thought I was a Lord of Flatbush or something.
I talk normal now.
I’ve stopped using contractions like “mayn’t” and expressions like “en so?”
Huh, what a coincidence, so have I!
I’ve ditched much of my particular regional Wisconsin accent to the point where most people from outside the Midwest can’t tell the difference between my husband (native of the Chicago burbs) and I. Locals, however, can peg me as having a lot of Wisconsin in my Midwestern-blend accent.
And what are your favorite Hollanderisms? 
I have a teeny, tiny little Connecticut East Coast accent that only another swamp-yankee would recognize…I tend to swallow double t’s "Ki’en (kitten), mi’en “mitten”, ect.), and I say Aunt like Awnt, not Ant. It’s so minor that I’ve never made an effort one way or another, but I think I still have it.
Interestingly, my maternal grandma always pronounced the “th” sound as “T” - is that an accent carry-over, or just a speech impediment/oddity?
Yes. People always remark that they never would have guessed I was from Texas. I tell them that accents are one of the things we have to work on in the witness reloc
Oops.
Ohmigod, like , yeah. My mother mocked and ridiculed my SoCal accent out of me when I wa a young teenager and I’m grateful for that to this day. What I want to know is how the hell the rest of the country picked it up.
Exaggerated accents from my area are associated with “still smells like the donkey he rode on in” (aka country bumpkin) in Spain; as well as the actors exaggerating, the local accents have become less pronounced in general thanks to mass media, but the reason I generally avoid my local accent and dialect is understandability.
I think it is important to differentiate the two underlined terms. Dialect is word choice, it means that not everybody understands “pop” to mean “those gassy drinks”; accent means differences in pronunciation of the same terms or sentences (do you say the second t in twenty, or not?; how do you stress your sentences?).
I grew up in a rural Southern town, but never really had all that much of the local accent–mine was mostly a sort of neutral Midwestern/newscaster accent with bits of other stuff mashed in almost at random. I’m kind of a natural mimic, so I often sounded like whoever I’d recently been watching on TV, and pieces of all those “voices” stuck.
I eventually learned to switch on a bit of the regional dialect and accent to make people more comfortable. I still do it when it seems appropriate.
I have a Deaf accent. Think Marlee Matlin or Heather Whitestone …LOL I remember VIVIDLY when she was crowned Miss America, I went to school the next day, and everyone was all " Hey About, Miss America talks just like you do!"
Oh, hell yes. I took voice lessons to get rid of my Southern accent. Could not ditch it fast enough.
As a consequence I sound like anybody I talk to for more than 10 minutes. My current accent is standard American crossed with Australian, and Australian is winning.
I have a broad regional accent of the general Pennsylvania-Maryland-Northern Virginia “mid-Atlantic” variety and I don’t mind that. I do, however, disavow anything remotely like a Pittsburgh accent or the local patois known as Pittsburghese. It sounds even more uneducated, grating, obnoxious and declasse than the deepest, darkest southern accent ever could. When I hear little signs of it creeping in (typically when I spend too much time around people who have it) I work diligently to train it right back out. No thank you.
Ah ain’t got no accent. Ya’ll do.
Seriously, I’ve never worried about it or tried to mask my origins. Sometimes it’s fun to let someone discover I’m really not an idiot.
Good point; I also ditched some of the more regional dialect as well. However, not only did I hold onto saying “soda” when moving into a heavily “pop” region, I also got my husband to start preferentially saying it as well.
I haven’t disavowed anything. I grew up in Indiana, and for most of my life I sounded like a midwesterner. After moving to North Carolina, I started to edge a bit into Southern.
Now I live in Maryland, and I’ve reverted to midwest. NC was fun, for lots of wrong and right reasons.
I’m originally from Birmingham (the British one) which, in most polls on the subject, is generally voted the least attractive accent in the UK and although my accent was never strong, I have made some effort to move as far away from it as I can. So I’m now sort of blandly RP with the odd Brummie word thrown in.
If you want to know what the Brummie (Birmingham) accent is, listen to Ozzie Osbourne.
I lived in greater NYC for a long time (transplanted Iowan, accent mostly intact but with the edges worn smooth.) As a result, I notice NYC accents. It’s my observation, FWIW, that fewer New Yorkers lose their accents in the process of education or social mobility.
Especially among scholars, activists, and people in arts and letters, those diphthongs, adenoids and inflections seem to carry the authenticity and intensity that we associate with New Yorkers. Watch BookTV on C SPAN, or listen to NPR sometime, and you’ll hear more New York voices than any other identifiable regional speech. It’s become the sound of American intellect.
I see no reason to get rid of my southern accent. If someone else is stupid enough to assume I’m uneducated because I have a bit of a twang, that’s their problem.