That’s funny, when I was seven I moved from Iowa to western New York. At first people told me that I talked funny, but I think I assimilated pretty fast.
But to this day I’m self-conscious about short Os. It’s a balancing act between saaaaacks and swocks.
I grew up in the part of the Midwest where there’s not much difference between short 'i’s and short 'e’s. When I realized that in most of the country, pin and pen, Jenny and Ginny, Wendy and windy, etc. are not homophones, I worked at acquiring a standard short e. However, in the process, I’ve mostly lost the short i. So, I used to pronounce both pin and pen as pin, but now I usually pronounce them both as pen.
Not disavowed, just temporarily lost. After I lived in FL for about 2 years, people would comment on my southern accent when I was back home visiting in WI. The funny thing was that I would pick up my ‘yooper’ accent within a day or two of being back home. So, when I got back to FL, I’d get made fun of for that.
Now I’m back in the Midwest and pretty sure I talk like a Wisconsinite again. Though truth be told, I was never aware of any change of accents. I’m just going off of what people told me.
I had to reread my post twice to figure out what the heck you were talking about. Is there a term for reading something incorrectly because your brain skips over the error while proof reading?
IMO, my accent is pretty neutral. I have lived in the South, New England, Upstate NY and now reside in the Midwest. But if I am around people with a strong accent from these regions, I unconsciously mimic the accent. (to fit in I suppose). I even have a Canadian accent when I head up to the Great White North.
You ain’t from around here, are you?
My future daughter-in-law has that! She’s from Gloucester, Mass. Her “ki’en” cracks me up. 
That’s just not fair, man; my sympathies.
I moved around enough as a young kid kid that I really don’t have anything beyond a generic Northeast accent. I’m a bit of a fast talker, though, and occasionally folks guess that I’m from NYC. Wrongly - I’ve never lived there.
I kind of wish I had a bit of a Boston or Maine accent - both are fairly common in southern New Hampshire, which is where I spent grades 1-12. I’d never want to live there again, and have no idea when I’ll even visit again; my family and all my friends have moved away, so there’s nothing to bring me back. But it was a good place to grow up in a lot of ways, and I’d sort of like the regional marker. Oh well.
I did have a strong Southern accent at one point, but it didn’t matter because everyone else I knew had one too.
When I got older, I realized that everyone thought we sounded like morons, so I tried to get rid of the accent and I think I’ve succeeded in that. However, I do bring it back at times if it seems expedient.
The comedienne Brett Butler had a bit about accents. She said she was doing a show in NYC and a guy came up to her and said “Ay, you’re real funny, but I’d hate to have a southern accent, ‘cause it would make me sound so frickin’ stoopid!”
I got the bad teeth, but not the accent… :: sob ::
:: shakes self ::
At least I has a nice bike ride today.
No, but I’ve disavowed some regionalisms - like saying “warsh”…
I was born in northern New York, and spent my childhood bouncing between there and my current hometown in southern Virginia. I can code-switch at will between light Appalachian Southern and North Country (though not cricker, which is a different animal altogether…if you want a decent approximation, take a Canadian, beat him over the head with a rock a few dozen times, and have him read aloud from the script for Fargo. If he still pronounces more than 30% of his consonants, heave the rock at his front teeth for good measure).
When I’m not paying attention, my normal speaking voice is more or less newscaster-American with mixed regionalisms from both areas, ensuring that I get an ample share of :dubious:'s wherever I go.
I grew up in Louisville after coming to the U.S. from Vietnam at age 3.
I learned English from watching Sesame Street and Mr. Roger’s Neighborhood, and was able to avoid picking up the Southern drawl that’s endemic to the region. I’m pretty thankful for that, actually!!
I probably would have tried pretty hard to lose the drawl since I no longer live in Louisville.
No. I have a very strong south Lancashire accent. Even if I tried to disavow it (which I won’t be doing any time soon) I can’t. However, I must temper it slightly unconsciously when I’m around non-native Lanky speakers, though, as my Scottish girlfriend complains that my accent becomes literally unintelligible when I go back home. She can’t tell a word what my Dad is saying, neither.
I try not to speak with a Canadian French accent in English, replacing it with what I assume is a standard Canadian accent, but could be American-influenced as well. Of course, how “good” my accent is depends on how often I speak English. When I haven’t spoken it in a while, or when I’m more nervous, I revert to a stronger Canadian French accent.
In French, though, I speak with a relatively typical Quebec (or Western Quebec anyway) accent, and I have no problem with that.
Accent, not so much - I’ve always had just enough of one for someone familiar with the accent to peg me as a Newfoundlander, but not enough to stand out here in Ontario.
Dialect, on the other hand…
Central Pennsylvania doesn’t have an especially strong accent, but there are some quirks - e.g. doing something “rate away” = “immediately”, di’nt vs didn’t etc, Omitting “to be” from sentences e.g. “that needs washed” vs “that needs to be washed”, a bit more nasal than other regions…
Whoops, let me correct myself: “that needs waRshed”. I actually tried correcting Sister Mary Discipline, in 1st grade, when she misspelled it as “wash” on the blackboard :smack:.
I never had even as much as my brothers, and a lot of it warshed away, I think, because of being in the choir and studying French in high school, and also my father had a not-too-strong Georgia accent (mitigated by decades of living in Yankee-land).
2 of my brothers still have the strong central PA manner of speaking. The third moved to the Midwest - and has as a strong an Illinois accent as any native.
Typo Knig is an oddball: New York metro area, Jewish family… and you couldn’t tell by his accent at all! Everyone else in his family, you could cut it with a knife. As far as I know, he never did have the accent (certainly not when I met him, fresh out of high school).
I am Irish, born in London, but brought up in Scotland.
I was doing all right at school with my non Scots accent until we’d a history lesson during which the teacher gave an overly graphic description of what English soldiers did to Scottish people during some war or other (I can’t remember which one - probably something like in Braveheart) all eyes in the class turned to me and from that day forth I was hated with a passion for being English.
A few years later I’d ‘perfected’ a Glaswegian accent, and when I went to High School (yes, dear reader, that teacher had been talking to students aged 8 or 9) in another town, no one knew me, and no one guessed my terrible secret that I wasn’t Scottish!
Saved me from being beaten up on a few occasions…
No. Most people can’t recognise a Warwickshire accent anyway. Hell, most people don’t even know where Warwickshire is …