Official Post Your Accent Thread (while the rest of us guess what city/state/region you're from) (fit in, apartment)
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I made this video of me talking and, as a regular poster on CD, specifically made an account that didn't have my location on it so that you can hear me speaking without the influence of my previous posts or location. Let me know what you think.
You sound like you might be from Boston but have lived somewhere else for some time as it is slight. Or, you moved to Boston and maybe have picked it up.
flyingwriter, very Minnesota, which is influenced by the Canadian accent, I think. And also, your imitation of other accents, yeah, not so much, I can still detect the MN-accent, lol. The CA accent you did, that's more of a subculture accent of CA, which is surfer/skateboarder/pothead. I hope that isn't your perception of general CA, yikes.
Lifeshadower, I'm detecting a faint accent from somewhere in Asia, are you Asian?
Fillmont, completely neutral as neutral can be, I thought he was from SoCal; I've heard, perhaps I'm mistaken, that the no-accent is also dubbed the Hollywood accent, as in film and television.
Define "Asian"? Technically, my ancestry is from a country OFF the coast of Asia, making me a "Pacific Islander" rather than "Asian"
I'm an American, born and raised. BUT, my parents are from the Philippines. I guess if you live around Asians and/or have sustained conversations with them, you can pick up my really faint Asian accent (I thought it was obvious, BTW).
It used to be MUCH MUCH worse. Like, almost FOB status. However, I learned much of my English from TV and reading, so its becoming more and more faint, year by year.
iowacountryboy, why so concerned with what people say here? They may very well be, how do I put it, unaware. You have a southern accent, to me. I can't really distinguish the varieties of southern accents but it is one of them.
Your accent is nothing like anything outside this country as you put it, "from another country", at all, anyone who says it does is deluded. Are you sure you read it right? I think I remember someone saying that you sound like you're from "the country", as in farmland, as in a really-really unpopulated area, as in the boonies; which is different from saying "from another country", meaning foreign country, as in another nation like Brazil, Canada, the United Kingdom, South Africa, China, Russia. Get it?
No, here in Iowa, most people speak with a neutral accent but I have met Iowans who speaks with a bit of a Southern drawl. I could never pinpoint where exactly the accent changes from Midwestern to Southern, if you are heading down I-35, it is somewhere in Southern Iowa just before you cross the Missouri border. In Missouri, especially in the small towns, people can have a very thick Southern accent.
I was born in Brazil but I have always called Texas home and thats where my "accent" comes from.
Thanks. I'm actually from southern Minnesota but the accent is the same across the state, I would think.
Oh, OK - I was actually going off the speech of my friends from Minneapolis, whose accents sound different from yours, but it may just be that the more urban/suburban area of the Twin Cities has a slightly different accent. Or it could simply be individual variation. I've never been to MN, unfortunately.
The accent is nonexistent in Minneapolis. It's an urban/rural thing. People from the Twin Cities and immediate suburbs (Edina, St. Louis Park, North St. Paul, Robbinsdale) tend not to have any form of Minnesota accent. The outer burbs have a slight MN accent, while outstate has the strongest accent. It's not really a north/south thing until you get WAY up north (on the Iron Range) and then it does get much stronger. However, someone from Bemidji would sound no different than someone from Mankato.
I don't know. To me a good example of very Texan would be Matthew McConaughey. Fillmont doesn't really sound like he has a specific regional accent, just very neutral American English. If I had to guess where he's from my first choice would be somewhere from the West Coast.
You appear to have the so-called "pin-pen merger," which occurs in the areas marked with red dots on this map. Aside from this feature, however, your speech sounds more Midland than Southern, so I'm hesitant to place you somewhere like Texas or Arkansas. I know there are outliers with the merger in Colorado, but you used the 'broad A' sound in "Nevada" rather than the short A, which is pretty common in most of the West. But maybe you just go against the flow?
I guess southern Nebraska is a possibility too...?
You also have a particularly high/tense vowel in "-ing" sequences, which I heard all the time from my friends in Missouri. But I've heard it in California as well, so that doesn't really help me narrow things down.
Really interesting. I'm actually a fourth-generation Texan, born, raised, and living in Lubbock. As you might be able to tell, I'm a little younger than most that have posted here so far, so I think I have been more influenced by the General American accent in pop culture than many.
I definitely have the pin-pen merger, and I heard Nevada pronounced "Ne-vah-da" first, so that's what I've always gone with. (Also, with my mother being a Spanish teacher, I can't bear to say a Spanish word with such an Anglicized pronunciation. ) I think my video was a decent representation of my accent, but I think the Texan comes out a little more in everyday conversation.
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Please tell me what I sound like!
