I’ve got a strange accent, or so I’ve been told. I seem to pick up bits of accents on certain words for some reason. I’ve had lots of people ask me where I’m from, and most people who want to know live in the area. I was married to a Russian woman for seven years and spent time in Ireland so you can imagine the strange accent I have. I have one friend that swears I’m not from Maryland, he refuses to believe me. I’ve never gotten anything for free though.
Australian actually. I just have a very strong Canadian accent that I don’t think I’ll ever lose. Means people from both sides of the Pacific won’t believe I’m Australian :).
And my dog plays deaf from time to time, does that count?
My mum gets the British one all the time – she grew up in and near Melbourne. My brother sounds like he’s never been outside Brisbane and my sister is about halfway between me and him.
We run the whole gamut :).
Incidentally you’re the first person I’ve heard of who melts over Canadian accents. You wouldn’t happen to have a sister? 
I always find it amusing that Americans tend to really dig foreign accents, but can rarely tell them apart. I’ve learned to always ask where a person is from before I make an idiot of myself by guessing.
I don’t travel, so my Southern Californian accent rarely gets me anything, but as a result of studying French in school for several years, I tend to speak German with a bit of a French accent, something which never fails to amuse my German teachers.
– Dragonblink, from the “If they sound like Michael Caine it’s cockney, if they sound like a Farscape extra it’s Australian …” school of accent perception.
My wife uses her American accent to good advantage here in the UK: If we’re out shopping and get stopped by a marketer or canvasser of some sort, she does the talking and makes out that we’re just tourists so they don’t bother trying to get us to sign up for double glazing, the RAC, a new power company or whatever.
When I was in the US, I had a couple of things happen that I found bemusing:
Kids under the age of about 8 and adults over the age of 30 could understand pretty much everything I said but older kids and young adults couldn’t understand a word. I’d notice that their eyes had glazed over and their faces were displaying a confused look, so I’d repeat myself v-e-r-y s-l-o-w-l-y. Then I’d get fed up and just ask the people I was with to translate for me.
For some reason - at least once a day the first week I was there - people would attempt to mimic my English accent. My wife and I would be in a store, minding our own business, when someone would overhear us talking, ask if I was English (Only once was I mistaken as Australian) then launch into some mangled aproximation of the accent that ended up sounding either like Prince Charles having a fit of some kind or Dick Van Dyke on acid. That got old really fast.
Oh, and I’m like Coldfire and KarlGrenze with the changing accents (I think it’s because I travelled as a kid). If I go up to Liverpool for a couple of days I come back speaking Scouse for a month. By my second week in the States, I had developed a pretty good accent. Which aided in getting young store clerks to understand me and stopped people ticking me off with bad British accents.
I swear, every time someone finds out I grew up in San Antonio, the first thing out of their mouth is “but you don’t have an accent!”
Yes, I have an accent, okay? It shows up when I’m tired, drunk, talking to an older person on the phone or trying to speak in another language. I decided in sixth grade to get rid of my accent because I thought it sounded stupid. If I conciously try to speak with a south Texas twang and bend, I sound like an idiot. I’d rather not, is all.
Kal, that has reminded me of a trick I play over here.
If someone comes to our door trying to sell something, I slip off my wedding ring and claim that I have only been in the country a short time and don’t have any money or checks with which to pay for whatever they are selling.
I’ve also had people try to mimic my accent. My wife does it all the time, but I won’t try an American accent because I know it will sound dumb.
I doubt I will ever lose my accent. I will try to keep it at any rate. I have found myself picking up certain phrases which I did not use before and my wife is the same with British phrases.
Yet another person here to tends to absorb accents where ever I go… and I’ve been in a lot of places across the U.S. (with a few forays into Canada).
This leads to people looking confused when I speak, as they try to pin down where I’m from by how I say things. (It doesn’t help that I tend to pronounce a word differently depending on what words I’ve said/am going to say around it.) So far, I’ve gotten everywhere from “somewhere in the South” to various British accents, various Scandanavian accents, and a few others. It’s always fun to watch people play ‘where is she from’ based on my accent, and seeing just how far off they can get. Haven’t been able to (yet!) get any goodies out of it, beyond some interesting conversations.
<< Southern DOS: Y’all reckon? (Yep/Nope) >>
mmmm…accents. I have a mild obsession. I’m fantastic at figuring out where people are from based on their mild regional American accents. I speak no Spanish, but I can usually derive where Spanish speakers are from. (When they’re speaking Spanish. At least Latin Americans. Central Americans still tend to fool me.) And I’m alright at figuring out the various English accents. I can tell Germans from Austrians, in English and German. I can tell Cantonese from Manderin Chinese. West Africans are easy, because they speak near unaccented French, unlike the French Canadians I hear around Vermont so often. I have been consistantly baffled by Israelis and Slavics, though. Those both sound Russian to me. And, for an American, I can do fairly good Irish and Aussie accents. I dunno, I’ve always had an ear for languages, when immersed, can understand them fairly quickly, and have been told I have pretty good pronounciation when speaking other languages.
All this to say: all us Americans ain’t so dumb when it comes to yall furriners’ talkin’.
On the other hand, when I was in Germany, I was told by the English teacher that I spoke “quite good English.” After staring at him for a good 20 seconds he explained, quite embarrased, that he meant that when he was in school, there was an American from Alabama, and that his entire class began to develop Southern American accents when speaking English. This was especially bad since Germans are taught British English accents, and NOTHING can be further from that then Alabama talk.
I have an Icelandic and French flavoured Albertan Canadian accent. People here poke fun at me, but I do it in return. Especially to one of my favourite NY Dopers, Zette of the “Oh my GAAD”.
I visited San Francisco a few years ago after spending a week in San Jose on business. I particularly wanted to go to the Castro district as I wanted to see if it really was the big gay mecca I’d been told it was.
Well, long story short, I had to walk a very long distance from the bus stop I got off at (stupid tourist!!!) and after a few hours walking finally got to where I was going, Castro street! I went into Harvey’s bar and ordered a beer. The place was pretty much standing room only, so when I saw a table become free, I made a beeline for it. So did a group of four gayboys. We sort of looked at one another, and finally I piped up and asked if they minded if I sat with them.
The minute they heard my Aussie accent, they became my best friends. Those boys bought me drinks all night, showed me a few clubs and basically made that long walk worth every step. They refused to let me pay for anything, they treated me fantastically well and showed me a great time. They were so smitten with the “aussie” thing! If, by any chance, one of those guys is reading this post - thankyou so much for showing me a great time! You rock!
Max
I have a very slight Southern accent, which I make no attempt to hide. When I was teaching in Iowa (at the college level), I’m pretty sure that none of my students had ever been south of Missouri, or possibly Washington D.C. And when they heard the first “y’all” out of my mouth, they looked at me as if I were Sling Blade.
Once I figured out that they held deep anti-Southern prejudices (this is extremely widespread), I turned on the accent full-blast. I didn’t change my speech, and I was as always a competent and professional teacher; I just made sure to talk as if I were talking to another Southerner (this makes the accent come out in force). And when they gave the “he must be an idiot” look, I’d make sure they knew who held the gradebook.
I continue to hope that I may have shown one or two of them that some Southerners are intelligent, educated, professionals who read books and have all their teeth. But I doubt it; such ignorant stereotypes run deep.
I was born and raised in Alberta, Canada yet have been “afflicted” with a second-hand Scottish/Irish accent, courtesy of my much beloved grandmother who was born in Scotland to Irish parents.
When I was a kid I got hassled by classmates who teased me because I talked “funny” so I made every effort to speak normally. If I concentrate I can be very articulate with nary an accent.
I can generally pass un-noticed unless I am talking to foriegners or people who are from the other side of this great country, that being Quebecers or Maritimers.
My Polish co-worker says I speak with a Scottish accent and I have had people guess that I am from anywhere from the Maritimes to Scotland itself.
When I worked in the Bahamas most of the locals automatically assumed I was from Scotland as I did not have a Canadian accent. It’s those damn R’s… they always want to rrroll of my tongue…
Kamelion you and me both!! I am Australian, born here, never been to England - yet I always get asked if I’m English.
The reason I have an accent though is because my mother is English and I probably picked up on her accent from a very young age.
I was picked on at school for my accent - kids would tease the way I pronounced words.
The upside is that I get complemented on it alot, such as when I go out clubbing I’ll have English guys come and ask me which part of England I’m from.
I generally speak without an accent (years of voice and dialect training makes everything very flat and soothing, so I sound like a ‘smooth jazz’ radio annoucer), except when I am very tired or emotional: then the UNY (Upstate New York) AAAAAAA shows up (very broad, nasally “a” as in “cat”). I have been told that I occasionally speak in some weird Brooklyn/Lawn Gileland mix accent (“kwooooooo-watah”), but I’ve never noticed it.
Silentgoldfish, count me as another who adores Canadian accents (and Canadians themselves). Got an extra brother/uncle/cousin/best friend who is Canadian?
Please don’t! The Danish counting system is what separates us who like to learn things from those who think that Danish is a throat disease.
Compared to my friends, I have no accent.
Although I was born,rasied and settled in the South, I have been accused by strangers of being from New York. I also absorb accents quite easily. I once went to the Bahamas for a week, and my own family could not understand me when I returned. I do find that when I am among people with strong accents, my speech pattern automatically mimics theirs. However, if I conciously try to do this, my southern accent becomes stronger.
I have worked hard all my life to avoid as much accent as possible. I grew up in southern Missouri, in the lakes of the Ozarks, then my family moved to Rockford, Illinois. One of my only friends at the time (who also had a hillbilly accent) was pushed down a hill at the school by kids bullying us about the accents. They wound up breaking her arm.
This impressed me at quite a tender age how dangerous having an accent perceived as different and lower-class could be. I shed the hillbilly accent by dint of a hard two-year effort, with the help of a speech therapist at the school and phonics training.
We moved to Corpus Christi, Texas, in my junior high school years. I managed to avoid picking up the southern drawl, but I remember having to conciously force myself to wait for those in conversation with me to finish a sentence. Everyone seemed to speak so slowly!
Then I took Public Speaking in college; the instructor was a great lady who instructed me on exactly how to conquer my stutter. I only had problems with it when I was nervous, but speaking in front of more than two people made me nervous. It was rather a vicious cycle.
Now, however, people say I have no accent at all, in the United States - usually the guess is that I’m from Virginia (where I’ve never been). Overseas, the Glagowian Scots could nail me as not only Texan, but a Dallasite in a matter of two or three words. Of course they would say, “You’re from Dallas, Yank!” I could never make them understand that wasn’t the thing to say.
I could distinguish the regular Scot brogue from the downtown Glasgowian (as I couldn’t understand the downtowner, but neither could his own countrymen) from the Brit and the New Zealand.
I can also tell a Russian accent in English very quickly; it seems very distinctive. Of course, French is usually clear, as well, if only by the attitude that an American accent unforunately sometimes incurs on a continental European’s reactions.
I’d love to be able to fake a good Canadian accent, sometime, but unfortunately, I have never had the opportunity to learn one. Maybe I need to vacation in Nova Scotia one of these summers…
I find that having a southern accent is very useful in dealing with soldiers when they have done something wrong or stupid. Say someone goes out a door that is clearly marked as emergancy exit only, the drawl comes out and their reading comprehension is called into question. It is like watching Andy Griffith pointing out the obvious.
Has anyone ever woundered why NCOs have a southern accent?
Have you ever heard someone with a northern accent yell and be underestood.
My first boyfriend was from Wales. Oh man, did that Welsh accent make me weak in the knees.
My daddy is from Alabama, so I just love southern accents.
I get to go to New Orleans next week - looking forward to hearing a Cajun accent in person, in real life (instead of in the movies). And I get to go to Texas next month… The Texan accent is one of my favorites.
Got one of each, but as of last month I’m available! 
(for the low, low, price of)