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Matthew McConaughey made the Southern Accent cool--- Yes the Texas accent is a variant
In Hawaii an accent, any accent, benefits you. Why? Because a "standard" American accent is associated with yuppie culture, mainly because of the number of wealthy Californians who come as tourists. An accent marks you as being of the same "salt of the earth" class as local people who have their own accent.
Yes, and it used to drive me batty. I don't really care much anymore, because it's such a simple-mind thing to point out. Like, the sky is blue, who gives a chit? Some minds are easily entertained.
Anyway my accent is regional and particularly distinct even for the area. I've been mocked by those with the same accent, if a bit milder, which is extra ridiculous. Now I just laugh it off if I'm feeling generous but I do think a tiny bit less of the person pointing it out...
I am from central NJ NOT north jersey and I have the same midatlantic/ general american accent they train people like newscasters to have as "no accent".
I am from central NJ NOT north jersey and I have the same midatlantic/ general american accent they train people like newscasters to have as "no accent".
Many, many people from NJ have no accent at all.
Yeah, but I like the ones who do. I enjoy a good Brooklyn accent, too.
On the whole though, I wish there was still as much emphasis as there used to be on the general non-accent for use by professionals. Broadcasters did, indeed, used to be trained to lose their regional accent but that's going by the wayside. To some of us, that makes things like newscasts, and especially commercials, range from annoying to hard to understand. Some advertisers today seem to prefer a regional accent to pitch their products.
Take just one word for example: sandwich. It's certainly not elitist to pronounce that word properly — its namesake, the Earl of Sandwich, was a person. Almost everyone pronounced it properly one time. In fast-food ads today, however, the pronunciation of that word ranges from samwich to sammich to sangwich. None of which are anywhere near appropriate since the word has neither an M nor a G in it.
Speaking of lost letters, listen to ESPN for awhile and you will note that the word football has lost its middle letter. So many of the broadcasters, white and black, male and female, say foh-ball, as if the word has no T. Who started that? Yet now that broadcasters are saying it, the new pronunciation is rampant nationwide.
I have one relative by marriage who always calls out people's accents in a mocking way. I find it annoying. She acts as though it marks her as superior that she can often tell where a person is from by the way they talk. It's a skill many people have, however, so to me it seems rather rude that she hits everyone she meets with, "Ah-ha! You're from X because you said X wrong!" Meanwhile she's from Michigan, so she herself says things people from 49 other states don't say.
i have been made fun of, in good fun of course, by having no accent. but i am also a bit of a mimic, as i pick up on accents rather easily, and often times without noticing it. many years ago the hotel i worked at played host to a group from australia, and i hung around with some of them after work. after about 20 minutes, these guys were looking at me rather funny, and they asked me if i was mocking them, because i was speaking with an aussie accent, nearly a perfect one by the way, i said no, i just pick up on accents easily.
I too moved from TN to Indiana and got made fun of as well. Thing is, i changed. I listened to how others spoke, i watched the local news and commercials, and i practiced practiced practiced until i lost my accent.
When I lived in Mississippi, a coworker was always commenting on my accent. I'm from CT originally. I never thought of myself as actually having an accent, I thought she was the one with the accent - a distinct southern drawl. It's all relative. Anything different will probably be commented on.
Having recently moved from CA to east TN, I get that "y'all aren't from around here, are ya?" all the time. It's funny because when I was in CA (all my life) I was often asked if I was from the south because my family were "Okies" in the dust bowl era and I grew up around some older relatives with an Oklahoma accent. I agree that people from other parts of the country unfairly equate a southern accent with being uneducated or racist. If only they knew how ignorant and intolerant their comments make them sound! My response to such comments would be "True, I may have a southern accent, but at least in the south we have good manners enough to know how rude that comment was".
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