# "Americans don't speak with an accent"



## invictaspirit

Yesterday I racked up my hundredth American who thinks he has no accent.  OK...I'm joking. It is a few less than a hundred.  

However, yet again I was talking (on another board) about English accents and a very friendly, seemingly educated American asked me what Americans sounded like to us. Before I answered he made a supposition:

*"I guess we must sound different to you, but I guess it's more an ABSENCE of accent you are hearing?"*

He was genuinely surprised when I told him that ALL Americans not only have an accent, but an extremely strong one, which is easily identifiable by all other speakers of English and many non-natives too. I got the feeling he didn't quite believe me and was being polite even.  Having lived in the US, and met  many, many Americans, I think that a lot of Northern/Mid-Western people particularly feel they have no accent at all.  They can identify Texan, Boston, ebonics etc etc but think that they speak totally neutral English.

How widespread is this? Would it be fair to say that a majority of Americans believe that they have no accent but that all other speakers of English do?

I should clarify that as a Brit I also believe I have a strong accent. I do not subscribe to the idea that there is a world standard way to speak English. A phoneticist would be quick to point out that every human being has an accent.

It just sort of gobsmacks me that so many Americans believe they speak in a neutral, accentless way. It's ironic because the way Americans speak is *particularly distinguishable and noticeable *to the outside world. Brits, Aussies, New Zealanders and even Irish people are sometimes confused for each other by non-natives. But non-natives can nearly always pick out the sound of an American voice. I have heard Europeans who can't even speak English imitating the sounds of AE when US tourists walk past.

None of this is really a criticism by the way. You won't find many anti-American posts by me.  I just think it is odd. I dunno. I can *hear* my own accent. I am aware of it. I could describe the features of it easily. I am surprised that so many Americans I have met or talked to online can't 'hear' their own very strong accent.


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## Victoria32

invictaspirit said:


> Yesterday I racked up my hundredth American who thinks he has no accent.  OK...I'm joking. It is a few less than a hundred.
> 
> However, yet again I was talking (on another board) about English accents and a very friendly, seemingly educated American asked me what Americans sounded like to us. Before I answered he made a supposition:
> 
> *"I guess we must sound different to you, but I guess it's more an ABSENCE of accent you are hearing?"*
> 
> He was genuinely surprised when I told him that ALL Americans not only have an accent, but an extremely strong one, which is easily identifiable by all other speakers of English and many non-natives too. I got the feeling he didn't quite believe me and was being polite even.  Having lived in the US, and met  many, many Americans, I think that a lot of Northern/Mid-Western people particularly feel they have no accent at all.  They can identify Texan, Boston, ebonics etc etc but think that they speak totally neutral English.
> 
> How widespread is this? Would it be fair to say that a majority of Americans believe that they have no accent but that all other speakers of English do?
> 
> I should clarify that as a Brit I also believe I have a strong accent. I do not subscribe to the idea that there is a world standard way to speak English. A phoneticist would be quick to point out that every human being has an accent.
> 
> It just sort of gobsmacks me that so many Americans believe they speak in a neutral, accentless way. It's ironic because the way Americans speak is *particularly distinguishable and noticeable *to the outside world. Brits, Aussies, New Zealanders and even Irish people are sometimes confused for each other by non-natives. But non-natives can nearly always pick out the sound of an American voice. I have heard Europeans who can't even speak English imitating the sounds of AE when US tourists walk past.
> 
> None of this is really a criticism by the way. You won't find many anti-American posts by me.  I just think it is odd. I dunno. I can *hear* my own accent. I am aware of it. I could describe the features of it easily. I am surprised that so many Americans I have met or talked to online can't 'hear' their own very strong accent.


My father from Liverpool used to joke that he had no accent - "it's you (New Zealanders) who have an accent" he would say. Well, you know how strong a Scouse accent is, and we as his children grew up with one! 
All people have an accent, as you pointed out, and I can definitely tell an American accent from miles away - it interests me as language teacher and student that New Zealanders are adopting the American accent after decades of television programming that is 85-90% American...

That being said, many are taken aback by the strength of accents of real Americans, as opposed to the mid-Atlantic softening of televisual and filmic Americans...

Vicky


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## don maico

I have difficulty distinguishing a Canadian accent from  an American one from the northern states unless it happens to be  a French Canadian speaking English of course. The New York accentt is fairly distinguishable (or should I say "New Joirsey") as is the southern draaawl, but apart from those two they all sound the same to me. Neutral only as far as the US/ canada is concerned. They do seem to have less distinguishable accents than us Brits it would seem. Then again I have never lived there.


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## Paulfromitaly

Although I'm not a native English speaker, I think that the American accent is the easiest to pick out (along with the Scottish one): it's so marked that I can easily tell if an English speaker who's talking in Italian is American or British.
I do believe that everybody has an accent, regardless of what language they speak.


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## cubaMania

> ..."I guess we must sound different to you, but I guess it's more an ABSENCE of accent you are hearing?"...


 
Haha, cute story. I hope it helps that I can tell you that in over 6 decades among them, I have never heard a fellow American express such an idea (except in jest as in Victoria32's example of her uncle.) Everyone has an accent _by definition_.


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## cuchuflete

Speaking authoritatively for all 300 million, three hundred and some thousand mairkins, let me assure one and all that we have no lack of accents.  Within a few miles of my home you will hear at least three highly distinct versions of Mainuh, and in summer when the tourists arrive, you'd need a room full of machine translators just to keep track of all of them.


Victoria--  Pray tell, is mid-Atlantic softening what happens to a potato when it's boiled in Maryland or Delaware?


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## djchak

invictaspirit said:


> Before I answered he made a supposition:
> 
> *"I guess we must sound different to you, but I guess it's more an ABSENCE of accent you are hearing?"*
> 
> He was genuinely surprised when I told him that ALL Americans not only have an accent,
> 
> It's ironic because the way Americans speak is *particularly distinguishable and noticeable *to the outside world. Brits, Aussies, New Zealanders and even Irish people are sometimes confused for each other by non-natives. But non-natives can nearly always pick out the sound of an American voice. I have heard Europeans who can't even speak English imitating the sounds of AE when US tourists walk past.



I agree with you on your main premise. 

But the mid-western accent is generally considered a nuetral accent... kind of an "american version of RP" ... and it is telling that by some it is considered a "film accent", as there are subltelties within this accent.

Think George Clooney/Johnny Depp (north Kentucky) ... technically it's mid western...with a bit of southern

Now think Harrison Ford (Chicago, IL)

And of course, in the windy city we have the "vowel shift"

See here.

http://positiveanymore.blogspot.com/2006/04/chicago-dialect.html


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## cuchuflete

The only thing neutral amount mid-western accents is that they are hard for non-mid-westerners to attribute to a particular place.  Anyone from within the mid-west can easily distinguish a Chicago accent from one from Minneapolis.  The parallel with RP is bogus, for reasons that would take us way off topic.  

I'm amused that Don Maico has some difficulties distinguishing Canadians and Northern US speakers.  The Canadians embroider little maple leaf flags on every vowel, eh?


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## Chaska Ñawi

No, no, no, you have it all wrong!

We are unique in having no accent at all! - it's the Amerkins who have funny accents.  I know about your accents because I've heard your president speaking on behalf of Americans everywhere, and boy, he doesn't talk like us at all, eh?

Canadians do indeed believe that everyone else has the accent .... but interestingly enough, we don't usually describe easterners and people from the prairies as having an accent.  It's just assumed that they speak Canadian.


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## don maico

We have this tv personality here who originates from Boston, and he has a most peculiar accent.Its almost as though he is trying to talk posh UK English, ie with a plum in his mouth.His name is Lloyd Grossman. I understand the accent is known as Lockjaw in the uS


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## Kelly B

Well, we've got a pretty broad range of accents here, too, yet you've lumped us all together in the same way we tend to do with speakers from GB/Ireland/Oz/NZ. I'll bet that you'd slap an American label on a Canadian in a heartbeat (sorry about that).

But more to the point, I contend that this is _not _a specifically American trait. I'll bet that many, many people around the world feel exactly the same way about the way they speak their native tongues. 

You are correct: a great many Americans think their own speech sounds standard, that they speak without an accent. But this is entirely dependent on how far you've traveled, and especially on whether you've ever had to make an effort to sound like the people around you. If you've never felt like "the foreigner" somewhere, how on earth should you be expected to know? We can travel three thousand miles without crossing a border here. We can visit dozens of major cities, hundreds of state and national parks, see every kind of terrain but rainforest, without crossing a border. If we do cross our longest border,  we find that most of the people speak very much like we do. The incentive to leave for any length of time is relatively low. edited to add: People who stay close to home, no matter where home happens to be, are simply more likely to think that it is the _other _who is _different_.

The other factor is learning a foreign language - that tends, also, to create that awareness of accent. And in that, I freely admit that our country does a worse job than most.


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## invictaspirit

The guy I was writing about has got back to me, asking if I would tell him what the features of an American accent are.    I'm sure he doesn't believe me!

I replied that the main identifying features of 'American' speech to a non-American ear are:

*rhotic R  *- the pronunciation of every R sound, no matter where it falls in the syllable.
*extended A* - to most non-American ears, Americans say "The caat saat on the maat."  Although the vowel is the same one in BE, for example, it lasts a much shorter time.
*AH for Short O - *I get into fights about this one.    Phonetically speaking, and thinking about what is said globally for short O, or what IPA would understand as an O, Americans say AH for short O.  Therefore, to non-American ears when Americans say _shot_ and _box _they are saying _shaht_ and _bahx_.  If you don't believe me, try saying _part_ without the R sound.  Say _part_ without the R sound over and over, until you realise you are in fact saying _pot_.  In some North American accents this doesn't work.  But in most it does. 

There are others I suppose, and quite some variation within the US too, but I believe it is those three features in combination that mark out most speakers as having a uniquely American accent.


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## invictaspirit

> But more to the point, I contend that this is _not _a specifically American trait. I'll bet that many, many people around the world feel exactly the same way about the way they speak their native tongues.


 
I'm not sure I'd agree with that.

In the small, crowded countries that make up Europe, accents are a source of constant fascination and debate.  There are Brits (mainly RP/BBC English speakers) who would contend that they spoke in an accent-neutral way.  There are also Brits who will joke around with Americans that 'the English speak English' and it is you that have accents...but that _is_ a joke 90% of the time.  Very few Brits would seriously believe that they have no accent.  The hundreds of accents here and the debate about them make that unlikely.

I would also suggest that the difference between, say, the London accent and the Manchester accent is *enormous*.  Much less like each other than Texan and Californian.  It is hard to know what a southern and northern England accent have in common...virtually nothing...they are _radically_ different accents with dozens of significant differing features.  I'm not sure you could make that claim about Canadian and American English.


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## cuchuflete

Invictaspirit has it right.  The mairkinz, being a charitable lot, noticed that the Britz were mistreating nearly all the "R"s except the initial ones---getting almost Frenchified in writing letters but neglecting to speak them.  Those kindly mairkinz took pity on the poor R, and decided to compensate for its feelings of inadequacy—being ignored is like being unloved—by giving it lots and lots of prominence.

Vowel stretching is taught to every mairkin child from infancy.
In the mid-west, home of the famous quarter-pounder vowel, they not only stretch it, but add a little nasal quality at times, and when feeling really perky turn it into a dipthong.

But we don't speak with an accent. It's the fernerz who do that.


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## panjabigator

Unless the entire population of English speakers speaks the same, we all have accents.  But generally, I never felt that I had an accent, mainly because I'm the majority and the majority doesn't have the accent....it's the minority.


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## djchak

Ah.

Good point.

Tell me invicta...do you find the accents of the people I mentioned before..George Clooney, Johnny Depp, Harrison Ford... more neutral than those of say.... GW Bush, Fran Dresher, or Carlos Mencia?


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## Outsider

A reason why many Americans may think they speak without an accent? 

I think American accents are only easily recognizeable to non-native speakers because they are the ones we get to hear most often in films and television. I also agree that the accent of "real" Americans tends to be more marked than that of actors and TV newscasters.


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## invictaspirit

Sorry but I don't know who Fran Dresher or Carlos Mencia are.

My being able to distinguish between different US accents really only runs to what I would think of as industry-standard American, Texan, Southern, Boston, New York and so on.


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## Tsoman

Here, even in the same city, you can hear different accents depending on whether you go to a Wal-mart or a Boarders. I suspect that social class/ education has an effect on accents everywhere in the world.


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## Pivra

invictaspirit said:


> Sorry but I don't know who Fran Dresher or Carlos Mencia are.
> 
> My being able to distinguish between different US accents really only runs to what I would think of as industry-standard American, Texan, Southern, Boston, New York and so on.


 
 Fran Dresher and Carlos Mencia are comedians, they do talk shows.


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## invictaspirit

Pivra said:


> Fran Dresher and Carlos Mencia are comedians, they do talk shows.


 
OK, thanks. They don't air on any networks here.

To respond to *djckak, *my perception of Johnny Depp, George Clooney and Harrison Ford in terms of accent is that I don't have a perception.  To me, their accents are totally indistinguishable and I have never thought about their accents in regional terms, suggesting that I think they are just 'standard' US accents. GWB, on the other hand, sounds very different and does not sound standard to my ears.

Of course, 'locals' are much more sensitive to accents than outsiders. A good friend of mine (from Atlanta!) swears blind he can not tell the difference between the accents of Daphne from Frasier (Manchester) and the GEICO gekko (London)...such radically different accents to me that they are as different as yours and mine and might as well be from different countries.

I guess I am arguing that the Daphne/GEICO accents are more different to each other than are any two US accents. I know I would say that, working on the 'you'd know and I wouldn't' theory of dern furriners not being able to distinguish between accents that well in other English speaking countries. But I still claim it.  

The difference would be that GEICO gekko and Frasier's Daphne would both immediately agree that they had accents in the first place, and my original posts sought to highlight that some Americans believe they do not have accents.

I appreciate all this input by people. A forum full of linguists, translators and people interested in language is perhaps not the best place to find people who think they don't have accents.


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## djchak

In another thread, Outsider wrote:

"So, General American is not really an accent, but a family of accents, which are spoken by the majority of the country's population. Clever!"

And right before that Chuchu said:

"It's close, but something like 30% to 40% of Americans do not speak General 
American, so it is not a good parallel to RP."


This is what I was trying to point out , and the reason I bought up fran dresher New/NJ accent ..strong) 

and Carlos Mencia (Honduran/Mexican influenced English mixed with a certain well spoken california accent)

is that there are differences between what you might call "general american"...so my thoery is that the person you were talking to thinks that speak "general american", but that is somewhat abiguous in and of itself.

I can notice differences...(mostly very subtle ones) when I just go 20 miles south, to the southern suburbs of Chicago.

But they would be too subtle for most people outside our midwestern area of the US to pick up. Where it's obvious (to anyone who pays attention) that Harrison Ford and George Clooney has different accents, but maybe not so much to your friend that doesn't pay attention to it.


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## modus.irrealis

invictaspirit said:


> The difference would be that GEICO gekko and Frasier's Daphne would both immediately agree that they had accents in the first place, and my original posts sought to highlight that some Americans believe they do not have accents.



To add to other posts, I think it might be sloppy terminology and what people mean when they "accentless" is "neutral" or "geographically non-identifiable," and within the (North) American context, that's what the accentless accent is. At least, that's the idea I got from various discussions on this forum, including the one Outsider linked to. But in the more technical sense, of course everybody has an accent, and I think it's just a clash between the two different ways the word is used.


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## dificilima

I spend a lot of time working overseas with colleagues from many different countries.  Although I normally speak with a midwestern accent here in the US (learned my English in Wisconsin), I was surprised to realize a few years ago that I lose it when I'm away.  My friends have commented on how I often come back with a kind of North Atlantic intonation vaguely reminiscent of Hollywood films from the 40s.  At the same time, I am always struck by how strong the American accents around me are when I first come home.  After a few days, however, those Rs fade into the background and I find that I'm speaking good ol' American again.


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## Victoria32

Paulfromitaly said:


> Although I'm not a native English speaker, I think that the American accent is the easiest to pick out (along with the Scottish one): it's so marked that I can easily tell if an English speaker who's talking in Italian is American or British.
> I do believe that everybody has an accent, regardless of what language they speak.


My most recent English student (an Italian) chose me as a tutor because he said, he didn't want to have an American or a New Zealand accent. My speaking voice is an amalgam of my father's North of England accent, the general NZ language I hear (minus all the Americanisms I hear recently), my ex's colonial=-non-NZ RP and goodness knows what! I wonder what kind of a mess my spoken Italian is?


cuchuflete said:


> Victoria--  Pray tell, is mid-Atlantic softening what happens to a potato when it's boiled in Maryland or Delaware?


Could be! I need to consult an atlas, I am a geographic ignoramus! 


Kelly B said:


> Well, we've got a pretty broad range of accents here, too, yet you've lumped us all together in the same way we tend to do with speakers from GB/Ireland/Oz/NZ. I'll bet that you'd slap an American label on a Canadian in a heartbeat (sorry about that).


I can tell Candians and Americans apart without the obvious cues, because I was once engaged to a Canadian, and he and his fellow Canucks took being mistaken for Americans very amiss... (This was in the 1980s, under the rule of Reagan..) 


djchak said:


> Ah.
> 
> Good point.
> 
> Tell me invicta...do you find the accents of the people I mentioned before..George Clooney, Johnny Depp, Harrison Ford... more neutral than those of say.... GW Bush, Fran Dresher, or Carlos Mencia?


My answer would be... definitely!  I don't know Carlos Mencia, but Fran Dresher's voice made me wonder who on earth she ever got a TV show! When I was young my mother had a neighbour she called the "corncrake" because of the grating voice she had. (My Mum was very big on nicknames) I could call Ms Drescher the American corncrake! *


* Corncrake - the spelling is a guess - I believe it is an agricultural implement or machine from many decades back - my grandparents were born in the 1870s and no doubt wrere familiar with such things...


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## vince

To my Canadian ears, many Midwestern areas sound accentless. I was in Columbus, OH recently and the only time I noticed accents were people visiting from out of town to see the college football game.

American accents that are really distinct are Northeastern accents (e.g. New Jersey-ese, Boston-ese), Northern Cities accents, Southern, and Texan accents

It's basically the same as the Canadian accent except that they don't say "about" in that funny way that most Canadians do.


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## Riccardino

The reason that Americans cognize the Midwestern accent as a non-accent is because of its omnipresence in the media - its the accent we hear over and over and over again, to the point where it becomes a standard.


Something weird that I do is, my internal monlogue (the voice inside my head) has a standard midwestern accent (with the exception of the pronunciation of the word water), and I believe that I talk that way, but then what comes out in actuality is highly-accented Philadelphia English - an accent all its own, especially known for a unique pronunciation of the word water.



In general, I can place any English accent I hear fairly accurately - with the exception of British accents where I can only distinguish high from low class accent, and then London from non-London accents. The only one I have a problem with is South African English as spoken by whites - its so muddied sounding to my ears.


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## invictaspirit

Riccardino said:


> The reason that Americans cognize the Midwestern accent as a non-accent is because of its omnipresence in the media - its the accent we hear over and over and over again, to the point where it becomes a standard.
> 
> 
> Something weird that I do is, my internal monlogue (the voice inside my head) has a standard midwestern accent (with the exception of the pronunciation of the word water), and I believe that I talk that way, but then what comes out in actuality is highly-accented Philadelphia English - an accent all its own, especially known for a unique pronunciation of the word water.
> 
> 
> 
> In general, I can place any English accent I hear fairly accurately - with the exception of British accents where I can only distinguish high from low class accent, and then London from non-London accents. The only one I have a problem with is South African English as spoken by whites - its so muddied sounding to my ears.


 
The class issue in British accents is becoming less and less relevant and doesn't hold sway much any more. While it is still true that the very well-educated and the professional classes are more likely to use RP, there are now millions of them who do not.

Best examples would be Princes Harry and William and to a lesser extent, their late mother.

Diana said 'meaw' and 'nationaw' and her sons frequently drop Ts and have a strongly different way of speaking to their father. Some of the most famous tycoons in Britain speak with strong London or Northern accents. BBC news anchors do too.


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## Brioche

invictaspirit said:


> Sorry but I don't know who Fran Dresher or Carlos Mencia are.


 
Was "The Nanny" ever shown on TV in UK?
Fran Drescher played the role of the nanny_, Fran Fine. _
Her boss was an Englishman, Maxwell Sheffield, played by London-born, Eton and Cambridge-educated Charles Shaunessy, who speaks RP.
Fran, by contrast, is very New York.


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## Brioche

Riccardino said:


> The only one I have a problem with is South African English as spoken by whites - its so muddied sounding to my ears.


 
Well, I'm not American, but for me a South African accent is the easiest to place. I'd pick it up in the first sentence!
I heard my first South Africans in a bed and breakfast in Ireland.
Once heard, never forgotten!


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## Brioche

Victoria32 said:


> * Corncrake - the spelling is a guess - I believe it is an agricultural implement or machine from many decades back - my grandparents were born in the 1870s and no doubt wrere familiar with such things...


 
A corncrake is a bird. 
Its scientific name is _crex crex,_ which is what its call sounds like.
http://www.ipcc.ie/fscrexbird.jpeg


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## djchak

Brioche said:


> Was "The Nanny" ever shown on TV in UK?
> Fran Drescher played the role of the nanny_, Fran Fine. _
> Her boss was an Englishman, Maxwell Sheffield, played by London-born, Eton and Cambridge-educated Charles Shaunessy, who speaks RP.
> Fran, by contrast, is very New York.



I sometimes think that the inside joke is that (in the UK and other parts of the world), Maxwell was the one that didn't have the accent. The contrasting accents made it funny, even if it was kind of a cheap gag.


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## djchak

Victoria32 said:


> My most recent English student (an Italian) chose me as a tutor because he said, he didn't want to have an American or a New Zealand accent. My speaking voice is an amalgam of my father's North of England accent, the general NZ language I hear (minus all the Americanisms I hear recently), my ex's colonial=-non-NZ RP and goodness knows what! I wonder what kind of a mess my spoken Italian is?



I suppose I can understand. Opinions have usually differed, but lately the american acccent has become a liability.

QUOTE:
"There are many times when I hoped I had a different accent," she said. "This is the only way I know how to speak English. I can't help it. But it would really help me if I spoke the tortuous English that other people speak."

http://www.iht.com/articles/2005/02/09/news/letter.php#


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## Outsider

Brioche said:


> Well, I'm not American, but for me a South African accent is the easiest to place. I'd pick it up in the first sentence!
> I heard my first South Africans in a bed and breakfast in Ireland.
> Once heard, never forgotten!


In this case, this might surprise you: I find South African accents similar to Australian accents. I'm sure I wouldn't be able to tell the two apart, most of the time.


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## Etcetera

invictaspirit said:


> Brits, Aussies, New Zealanders and even Irish people are sometimes confused for each other by non-natives. But non-natives can nearly always pick out the sound of an American voice. I have heard Europeans who can't even speak English imitating the sounds of AE when US tourists walk past.


I can easily distinguish between several British accents - RP, Cockney, Lancashire, Scottish, but I think I would have troubles with distinguishing between Aussies and New Zealanders. 
But I would immediately recognise the American accent. The General American accent, that is. So, it's really odd for me to hear that the Americans "don't speak with an accent". 
You know, some time ago I talked to girls who are now in their first year at our University. They're currently mastering the English pronunciation, and one them said that they're being taught "to speak English without an accent". "Without an accent?" - I replied. - "Well, how can it be possible?" - "Oh, I mean, without a _Russian_ accent!"


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## Victoria32

Brioche said:


> A corncrake is a bird.
> Its scientific name is _crex crex,_ which is what its call sounds like.
> http://www.ipcc.ie/fscrexbird.jpeg


Thanks Brioche! I was comprehensively wrong, wasn't I?  


Outsider said:


> In this case, this might surprise you: I find South African accents similar to Australian accents. I'm sure I wouldn't be able to tell the two apart, most of the time.


To my (New Zealand educated) ears, a South African accent stands out in a big way! I can even distinguish a British-South African from an Afrikaner one... They are very distinct. (Heaps of South Africans here, even a while back, much more now).


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## Random1

When all of you are saying a New York accent, I assume you mean downstate NY - by NYC and New Jersey, and then in NYC there are a ton of accents to be found.

I live upstate NY and I can't tell the difference from my accent and those from the southern part of Canada, other than Quebec. Other than the occasional -eh? from the Canadian, we sound alike. The accent is the same for most of NY too, just not the southern tip.


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## galathea

Hi everybody:

I´m not a an english native speaker. 
And in my opinion, everyone have an accent, just because all of we are humans. Every and each one of us talk with differentes kind of entonacion, velocity, pronounce some letters or other some people don´t pronounce at all. 
I we were machines probably we don´t have any accent, but even machines have some kind of tipical "accent" . Don´t you think?

If I have some mistakes please correct it.

cheers


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## Random1

> I´m not a an English native speaker.
> And in my opinion, everyone has an accent, just because all of us are humans. Each and every one of us talks with differences kind in enunciation, speed, and pronunciation of some letters that some people don´t pronounce at all.
> If we were machines we probably wouldn't have accents, but even machines have some kind of typical "accent" . Don´t you think?


I didn't know machine could talk for themselves. I have always thought that what toys and things say were just recordings of people.


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## Sepia

djchak said:


> Ah.
> 
> Good point.
> 
> Tell me invicta...do you find the accents of the people I mentioned before..George Clooney, Johnny Depp, Harrison Ford... more neutral than those of say.... GW Bush, Fran Dresher, or Carlos Mencia?



I don't believe in any such thing as a neutral accent. All people have accents that give away information about their back ground.

Years ago it was a special hobby of mine telling from which part of the US people came from simply by their accents. But even US phonetics change over the years. I could not do that with the same exactness today. 
Movie-actors, however, are difficult. They spend so much time in California and usually pick up a good deal of the Californian accent, which already have influence from so many different parts of the Anglophone world. 

I can still recognize Canadians, but not by the same "key-words" that I could 20 years ago. (A good deal of my relatives are Canadians).


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## Poetic Device

Pivra said:


> Fran Dresher and Carlos Mencia are comedians, they do talk shows.


 
They aren't exactly talk-show hosts, they are comedians.  Carlos Mencia does a stand up/skit comedy show, and Fran Drescher is more known for her role as Fran Fine in the sitcom "The Nanny" (a sitcom about a woman that goes from selling make-up door to door to being a nanny to a high class family to marryingthe father of that family).

As far as the accent goes, it is my opinion that everyone has an accent.  All an accent is really is the sound of pronounciation that a person makes being foriegn to the person that is listening to it (if that makes any sense).  For instance, I am originally from Bleaker Street in Brooklyn, NY.  When I came to New Jersey--and even to this day--everyone that I listened to has an accent.  I am sure that those people can say the same about me.


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## Brioche

Outsider said:


> In this case, this might surprise you: I find South African accents similar to Australian accents. I'm sure I wouldn't be able to tell the two apart, most of the time.


 
Get an Australian to say "I was driving my car", and then a South African.
Chalk and cheese.


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## galathea

Random1 said:


> I didn't know machine could talk for themselves. I have always thought that what toys and things say were just recordings of people.


 

Wow what a lot of mistakes...thanks to correct me


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## ps139

invictaspirit said:


> *"I guess we must sound different to you, but I guess it's more an ABSENCE of accent you are hearing?"*


Wow... to be inside his mind to go through the twisted logic it took to come up with that one! How can one hear the absence of an accent? LOL!! 


> He was genuinely surprised when I told him that ALL Americans not only have an accent, but an extremely strong one, which is easily identifiable by all other speakers of English and many non-natives too. I got the feeling he didn't quite believe me and was being polite even.  Having lived in the US, and met  many, many Americans, I think that a lot of Northern/Mid-Western people particularly feel they have no accent at all.  They can identify Texan, Boston, ebonics etc etc but think that they speak totally neutral English.


That is odd, midwesterners have a really strong accent.  I could see if an American thought that newspeople and those types have no accent... it is definitely less marked compared to the rest of America... but _midwest_? That is very easily identifiable.


> How widespread is this? Would it be fair to say that a majority of Americans believe that they have no accent but that all other speakers of English do?


Not where I live... NY... everyone knows they have an accent and we are proud of it.


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## jabogitlu

I agree, it definitely depends on where you live.  I have good friends in Oregon who swear they have no accent whatsoever.  "But its' all relative!" I decry, in vain.

I'm from east Tennessee (think Appalachia-ville) so I know I have a strong accent.  Strangely, its characteristics (random diphthongation most prominently) completely disappear when I switch into español.

I would say that all Americans in extremities (Texans, Gulf Coasters, Carolinas, Mid-Atlantic, Joisey, The City, Bostonite, Upper north midwest, Cali) know they have accents, with the exceptions of Florida, whose population has been overtaken by Midwestern American and Latin American immigrants, and the Pacific Northwest.

But in more central America, where people do take on the somewhat Standard American.. .there seems to be no accent at all! Muy raro.


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## panjabigator

So what regions are "Standard American?"

I think Florida is in some regions.  I am for sure
I DONT have an accent


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## ps139

panjabigator said:


> So what regions are "Standard American?"


I think it is mostly the media types, and people on many commercials... trying to appeal to the widest audience, careful with their speech. Of course everyone has an accent, but so-called 'Standard American' is less marked, less noticeable to the average American ear.


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## JamesM

The interesting thing to me is that some accents are not so much regional as "pockets".  For example, some people from New Jersey sound very much like Californians to me, as do some people from Washington (state).  But other people from the same state can have very different accents compared to the way a Californian speaks. 

I think there are some accents that are distinctly regional (some Tennessee accents, for example, or a New Orleans accent), while others seem peppered across the U.S.  

I'd love to hear more about this "Standard American" because I don't honestly think there's an entire state anywhere in the U.S. that speaks "Standard American".


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## cuchuflete

panjabigator said:


> So what regions are "Standard American?"


A good and long discussion of Standard American was referenced by Outsider earlier in this thread:

Read this.


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## padredeocho

None of us sound like Adam or Eve.   We all have accents.   Every language is so bastardized, or whatever you want to call it, that there is simply no way to say what should be standard.   Heck, I live in Utah, and we can't even agree if mountains are MOUNT-tens or MOU-ens


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## samanthalee

We had a short standup comedy kind of thing in Singapore about different English accents. If you can bear with the 1st minute of Singaporean accent, you'll hear Ruby Pan relating how her friend told her she had "no accent" and her imitation of our DJs' american accents and our newscasters' BBC accents...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QCsZdbfBuSY


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## mplsray

cuchuflete said:


> A good and long discussion of Standard American was referenced by Outsider earlier in this thread:
> 
> Read this.


 
I believe this is the first time I have encountered the term _Standard American._

_General American_ was (and on occasion is) indeed used to indicate an accent, although the term has fallen out of favor: The _Random House Unabridged Dictionary_ notes in its entry for the term that it is "no longer in technical use."

_Standard American English_ is definitely in current use among educated English speakers when discussing varieties of the English language.

But _Standard American?_ No. I would say that the problem with it is that it suggests that there is a dialect or branch of the English language named _American,_ that is, the word used as a noun, and such a use of the noun _American_ is a rare one. Most Americans consider our language to be English, which is why we find Homer Simpson's joke--in a flashback episode about his senior year in high school--about ditching English class to be funny: "Pffft, English. Who needs that? I'm never going to England." 

It is the rare scholar or other writer who calls American English simply _American._ The PBS program _Do You Speak American?_ and the book based on it are two such rare examples. I think that most educated Americans, if they were to encounter an American who referred to his language using the noun _American,_ would conclude that the person had not had much education.

_General American,_ on the other hand, is a term I remember hearing since at least high school, and it doesn't carry the onus that the noun _American_ for our branch of the English language does. In trying to figure out why, I came up with two hypotheses: First, that _General American_ is seen as a shortening of a phrase such as "the general American accent," and second, that it is a phrase (like _language register_) which is almost exclusively used by educated people, so that the assumption that the person using it is poorly educated would not occur.


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## Rodrigo_de_Burgos

HEHEHEHEHE, Oh yes we American have an accent, hell we have 4 big ones(Southern,Western,Eastern and MidWestern) and that is not even to say that we butchered the English accent to start with.


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## mytwolangs

panjabigator said:


> Unless the entire population of English speakers speaks the same, we all have accents. But generally, I never felt that I had an accent, mainly because I'm the majority and the majority doesn't have the accent....it's the minority.


 
Well that is a good way to put it. 

Of course someone will ask this stupid question like they always do - have you met every single English speaker? And tell them - "Yes I have, every last one..." 

Of course someone who is used to hearing their own countryman's manner of speaking is going to think they are without an accent.

BUT - not all foreigners have the same accent. One can tell a French accent from say a Mexican one to a Canadian one.


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## mplsray

Rodrigo_de_Burgos said:


> HEHEHEHEHE, Oh yes we American have an accent, hell we have 4 big ones(Southern,Western,Eastern and MidWestern) and that is not even to say that we butchered the English accent to start with.


 
That presumes that the British have not "butchered" their own accent. But of course they have, if by "butchered" you mean changed (and I expect it would be difficult to justify any other interpretation when discussing the accents of native speakers of a language).

See this paper on Received Pronunciation, in which it is noted that RP continually changed over time. If RP did so, the vast majority of speakers of British English must speak accents that have changed to an even greater extent, since standardization has a conservative effect on language, but no effort was made to standardize regional accents other than the one from which RP was developed.


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## caballoschica

vince said:


> To my Canadian ears, many Midwestern areas sound accentless. I was in Columbus, OH recently and the only time I noticed accents were people visiting from out of town to see the college football game.



Interesting, but go figure: a college football game (I presume OSU?)!  That's where you'd get the accents because people come from all over to Columbus just for a football game.  Trust me, people are nuts (crazy) for nuts (Buckeye football)!

Of course we here in the Midwest have an accent!  It's just horrendously boring!  At least in my opinion.  To defenders of the Midwestern 'merikun accent: No offense intended.  And I'm so glad I never had a full-fledged Midwestern accent.  

There are many Accents in the US.  I realize that some of you non-midwesterners cannot tell the difference between Minneapolis and Ohio accents.  Well, neither can I.  And I'm a Central Ohioan.  Don't feel bad.

I believe someone mentioned something about the "AH" and the "O" and how we extend our vowels, and how the non-rhotic "part" sounds like paht or pot.  It does! I tried it!  I just remembered from my extremely non-rhotic years something...(I say extreme because I couldn't even pronounce it at the beginning of words or blends which are words like Tree correctly, I can pronounce it at the beginning and during blends now, but I still don't completely pronounce it in the middle of words like horse or at the end of words like later and I'm not making an effort to)... People confused my "r" for "o".  Midwestern Americans confused it.  I spell out my name: [letter-letter]-R-[letter-letter] and people would respond, [letter-letter]-O-[letter-letter]? And I would say no, "Aaah(trying my best thinking I'm rhotic, when in reality I'm not)" You mean "O"? I guess if "paht" sounds like "pot" then "ah" could sound like "o".  That makes sense now.  I always wondered where the heck people got "o" out of R!  It was a pain to spell my name out.  So I go ridiculously rhotic when pronouncing my last name to anyone.  

I'm one of the Americans who thinks they have an accent.  I'm just absolutely horrendous at telling the difference between other American dialects except for the most obvious and what I would consider the "big three" Midwest/Western(I have a tough time distinguishing the two), North Eastern, and Southern.


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## gaer

Until about an hour ago, I had never heard the term "General American". Within the last few months I have run across "American Broadcast English".

I found this link very interesting:

LINK

By clicking on each line, you will hear a recording of that line. I assume that reader is supposed to have a "General American" accent.

How many people perceive this as "standard", "normal" or "very common" for those in the media? How many people disagree?

One of the first things I noticed is that although the pronunciation of "either" rhymes with "ether", this most definitely is NOT the pronunciation used by most of the broadcasters I've heard, nor it is used by either by the majority of those who do book recordings or the majority of actors in TV series. I'd wager that "either" is now taught to rhyme with "eider".

How many people would agree that "either", rhyming with "eider", is now the more common pronunciation in the media (American) and in most TV series?

There are also some very important words left out. Broadcasters and readers make a careful distinction between "are" and "our".

Regardless, I found the pronunciation on this site very close to what I have come to associate with what I hear on CNN and other such channels that seem to aim at a "neutral" accent.

Johnny Carson, Tom Brokaw and Paul Zahn are listed in a Wiki article as being typical of those who speak (or spoke) with this accent.

WIKI LINK

How many people would agree with that?

Finally, the Wiki article shows a picture with a region, in orange, that it claims is most representative of this general or broadcast "American English", it seems to me that many actors who were not born in this region also speak with an accent that is very close to that indicated.

So I have yet another question: which of our famous American actors do you think come close to having this "neutral" accent? By "neutral" I simply mean that we accept it as "normal" because it conforms to a way of speaking the reflects the largest percentage of people in the US.

Gaer


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## padredeocho

Rodrigo_de_Burgos said:


> HEHEHEHEHE, Oh yes we American have an accent, hell we have 4 big ones(Southern,Western,Eastern and MidWestern) and that is not even to say that we butchered the English accent to start with.


 
Which English accent?  Which region.  Besides, the English butchered the accents of whom?  The French and Germans, who butchered them from the Romans and Anglos, and Saxons, and Franks and Jutes.   And they butchered it from whom?

Who has the right accent?  Eve?  Nope, she butchered it from Adam.  Nope, Adam butchered it from God.


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## cuchuflete

Gaer said:
			
		

> By "neutral" I simply mean that we accept it as "normal" because it conforms to a way of speaking the reflects the largest percentage of people in the US.



See the linked thread, in which census data is quoted to show that "General American" or any of the related terms refer to an area of the country that, at maximum, is home to less than a fourth of the population.   Sounding "like TV personalities" is different from sounding like a majority of people in the country, and we have ongoing confusion about this.


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## gaer

cuchuflete said:


> See the linked thread, in which census data is quoted to show that "General American" or any of the related terms refer to an area of the country that, at maximum, is home to less than a fourth of the population. Sounding "like TV personalities" is different from sounding like a majority of people in the country, and we have ongoing confusion about this.


I did read all the information from links. Did I understand it all? I'm not sure. 

I said:

_…conforms to a way of speaking the reflects the largest percentage of people in the US…_

This is probably misleading or confusing. My impression was that the rather small region shown in Wikipedia, just part of three states, is a rather small percentage of the total popluation of the US. In other word, the "largest percentage" of people in the US who speak in a manner that is rather close to what we hear taught to broadcasters is probably rather small!

Here are my questions, since I have never been to that part of the country:

1) As you move through the area shown in the map shown directly under "Regional home of General American", 

link

is the accent fairly consistent? In other words, if you traveled through southern Iowa and into eastern Nebraska or into west-central Illinois, would you notice a strong standardization in that region? (I don't know.)

2) Would that accent seem closer to what seems to be taught to broadcasters that that found in other places in the US? (Again, I don't know.)

One thing I am quite sure of is this—the majority of people in the US do not sound alike. I never meant to suggest that they do.

And this whole subject is almost impossibly complicated. 

Gaer


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## cuchuflete

gaer said:


> I did read all the information from links. Did I understand it all? I'm not sure.
> 
> I said:
> 
> _…conforms to a way of speaking the reflects the largest percentage of people in the US…_
> 
> This is probably misleading or confusing.
> 
> 
> One thing I am quite sure of is this—*the majority of people in the US do not sound alike. I never meant to suggest that they do.*


We agree. To spare people the trouble of following links, here is proof that you are correct:  (Quoted from a linked thread.)



			
				outsider said:
			
		

> The million-dollar question, though, is: When each of those GA speakers listens to TV newscasters or actors, can he tell if they are from away?





                                 The Midwest...home of General American, had, as of the last national census, 22.9% of the US population, and it was losing share to other parts of the country. TV has a declining share of the news business, so the preferred newscaster/news reader accent will continue to decline in importance.

That said, it's probably useful for a non-native student of AE to learn GA. They won't sound like four fifths of the population, but will be easily understood.

To the second question, just ask someone from any of these states if those from any of the other states speak the same way.

Illinois
Indiana
Iowa
Kansas
Michigan
Minnesota
Missouri
Nebraska
North Dakota
Ohio
South Dakota
Wisconsin


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## gaer

cuchuflete said:


> To the second question, just ask someone from any of these states if those from any of the other states speak the same way.
> 
> Illinois
> Indiana
> Iowa
> Kansas
> Michigan
> Minnesota
> Missouri
> Nebraska
> North Dakota
> Ohio
> South Dakota
> Wisconsin


I would be interested in answers from people in cities such as:

Peoria, Illinois 
Des Moines, Iowa
Omaha, Nebraska
Lincoln, Nebraska

(and any other cities town close by)

These cities lie within the very small colored area shown in the map I saw. 

Gaer


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## MarcB

Yes Americans and Canadian do speak with many accents some of which are similar and others are not. 
Regarding General American accent, I do not find it as a geographic accent but one that exists in many states. It is not a lack of an accent but a group of accents that follow a similar cadence and basic pronunciation that does not stand out in the same way as some of the accents which are very regional or extremely recognizable. Possibly do to conformity of media speech, improvements in education and the highly mobile US population, we can find people from any part of the country who have relocated to anywhere else. We hear people from various states and provinces of Canada who have a similar speech pattern certain words or phrases are noticeable while much of their speech is not. This I find even in places with strong accents their neighbors have an accent which is less identifiable. That does not mean if we pay extra attention we will not notice differences, they are just not noticeable as easily.
If one listens to two people from the same region they may find that one has a strong accent and the other does not. Since we hear people from around the globe frequently our ears are more accepting of minor differences than people who are isolated would be.
This series of similar but not identical accents are what I would say are the closest to a GA accent.


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## gaer

MarcB said:


> Regarding General American accent, I do not find it as a geographic accent but one that exists in many states. It is not a lack of an accent but a group of accents that follow a similar cadence and basic pronunciation that does not stand out in the same way as some of the accents which are very regional or extremely recognizable.


I think that's a good description, although we all have a different idea of what stands out, what is regional, and what is extremely recognizable. Furthermore, it may be that the accent most accepted as "neutral", with the idea that we don't notice anything that "sticks out", is both regional (being especially common in one area) and scattered all around the country due to the mobility of our society.

For instance, how many people grow up in a small or medium sized town and stay there for their whole lives? 

I sometimes wonder if people are not as molded by media in my area as much as by friends or family simply because, in South Florida, there is such a weird mixture of accents from all over the country.

If American accents change as much in the next hundred years as they have in the last, God only knows what people will sound like in a few decades.

Some people claim that speech is becoming more standardized, while others state that there is evidence of just the opposite.

I don't really have any strong opinions, but I am fascinated by the whole subject. 

Gaer


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## jabogitlu

Good points raised by MarcB.  Perhaps General American is more like an accent without a home;  it originated in the midwest but was quickly lifted and shifted and now is used by the population of America who attempt to speak "without influence" of other accents.


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## mplsray

gaer said:


> I think that's a good description, although we all have a different idea of what stands out, what is regional, and what is extremely recognizable. Furthermore, it may be that the accent most accepted as "neutral", with the idea that we don't notice anything that "sticks out", is both regional (being especially common in one area) and scattered all around the country due to the mobility of our society.
> 
> For instance, how many people grow up in a small or medium sized town and stay there for their whole lives?
> 
> I sometimes wonder if people are not as molded by media in my area as much as by friends or family simply because, in South Florida, there is such a weird mixture of accents from all over the country.
> 
> If American accents change as much in the next hundred years as they have in the last, God only knows what people will sound like in a few decades.
> 
> Some people claim that speech is becoming more standardized, while others state that there is evidence of just the opposite.
> 
> I don't really have any strong opinions, but I am fascinated by the whole subject.
> 
> Gaer


 
I mentioned my accent (Central Illinois) having been taken by people in the East and the Upper Midwest as sounding southern. I was particularly intrigued by someone from Virginia who had lived in the area adjoining the District of Columbia taking my accent for a southern one.

That part of Virginia, of course, is inhabited by people who have come from all over the country, so that the accent of many the inhabitants is not southern at all.


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## roxcyn

Every person has his or her own accent.  It doesn't matter where he or she is from---the person can tell the difference between a different city in their own State in the USA, so I would have to disagree with the statement that "Americans don't speak with an accent."  Everyone has their own accent.


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## Saimon

I used to work with a woman from Indiana and she had a noticeable accent. For example, "bank" sounded more like "benk" and "bench" sounded more like "binch".


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## gaer

mplsray said:


> I mentioned my accent (Central Illinois) having been taken by people in the East and the Upper Midwest as sounding southern. I was particularly intrigued by someone from Virginia who had lived in the area adjoining the District of Columbia taking my accent for a southern one.


I was using the little map shown in the Wikipedia article I mentioned, and that shows only a small part of Illinois as being part of the region _*supposedly*_ representative of the accent it claimed is "standard. That seems to be roughly from around Peoria (no more to the south) and west of there.

There must be many more factors to consider, among them education.

The more I read about this whole subject, the more confusing it becomes. People are obviously taught something that is more or less standard, and that seems to be reflected by both dictionaries and the pronunication of those who are taught "correct" pronuncation for broadcasting.

The biggest question in my mind is this: how many people in the US listen to certain people in the media without noticing anything unusual about the way they speak? For instance, many people on channels such as CNN sound so much like each other to me that I think of them as "news-clones". I hear nothing distinctive. When I'm only listening, if person A were replaced with person B, I would not even notice. This is especially true of the women announcers/journalists/news-women.

It's not that these people sound better to me than others. I just don't notice them. For me they are like countless other "things" that I never notice merely because they are too neutral or too common to catch my attention. 

Gaer


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