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Right. I've never met an adult who developed an accent. You may change your vocabulary and pick up local phrases, but once you are an adult you have learned your dialect. Of course there are peopl like Madonna who pretend to develop british accents, but I guess that is fashionable.
Johnny dope..ah depp is speaking with an english accent now.Comical.
I have definitely picked up a bit of a Southern accent over the last 10 years (I was an adult when I moved here). When I'm being nice to people and wanting them to like me, I ham it up with the Southern-ness. When someone is under my skin and I need to take them down a peg, I revert back to the Yankee.
So, what happens when the one getting "under your skin" is a Yankee?
I have a bad one but not as bad as it used to be growing up with one foot in Appalachia. I write much better than I speak Hubby and I were in Rome last year, and standing in line for Palatine Hill, we overheard a family talking and immediately knew they were not just from NC but somewhere near where I grew up, just from their accents. We had to ask and sure enough they were!
I disagree that an adult can't gain an accent - I lost my NY accent many years ago, and now my family (still living in NY) gives me grief about sounding like a southerner!
I agree we can 'affect' an accent. I have a very close Brit friend that I didn't realize, at first, was a Brit -- she spoke without a British accent, but I would pick-up on her vocabulary, or pronunciation. It wasn't until the Christmas we were discussing our plans for the holidays, and she mentioned flying to London to visit with her Grand Mum, that she shared that she was British.
Her husband says that when she flies 'home,' she is very much 'British.'
As a young woman, when I traveled north of the Mason-Dixon Line, I couldn't go any place it seemed, but what, I wasn't being asked to 'say something.' Seems the men found my accent 'charming.' I had never really thought about it. My husband has lived in NC all of his life, and people often have great difficulty placing him in the US as his accent is decidedly different -- not Southern, not North Carolinian. I don't seem to hear an accent, but do pick up readily on phrases, expressions, and vocabulary.
I've always been fascinated by the work of a voice coach, used to help actors perfect an accent. Most, I think, get-it-right, but I have on occasion watched a film set in the South and thought the accent was too thick, and came across quite silly, or affected.
I've always been fascinated by the work of a voice coach, used to help actors perfect an accent. Most, I think, get-it-right, but I have on occasion watched a film set in the South and thought the accent was too thick, and came across quite silly, or affected.
I saw Steel Magnolias in 1989 when it came out and I lived up North. A few years later, after I'd lived in Raleigh a while, I saw it again, and that time, the various horribly fake Southern accents were like nails on a blackboard!
I lost all respect for the actresses who didn't take the time to get the accent right -- I would have accepted any accent, as long as it was a Southern one, but theirs were a mishmash. But before I moved here, I didn't notice anything wrong with their accents.
I saw Steel Magnolias in 1989 when it came out and I lived up North. A few years later, after I'd lived in Raleigh a while, I saw it again, and that time, the various horribly fake Southern accents were like nails on a blackboard!
I lost all respect for the actresses who didn't take the time to get the accent right -- I would have accepted any accent, as long as it was a Southern one, but theirs were a mishmash. But before I moved here, I didn't notice anything wrong with their accents.
Ha--yes, that film is a textbook example of "hollywood Southern accents" sometimes! Of course, Julia Roberts and Dolly Parton have native Southern accents, so theirs are genuine, and Olympia Dukakis actually did a pretty good job with the "aristocratic" dialect. Darryl Hannah's was probably the most offensively fake, but Sally Field is just plain all over the map. I find it interesting that in her "distress" scene, at her daughter's funeral (sorry if that's a spoiler for anyone--it is a 20-year-old movie by now!), when she has her "breakdown", she loses her Southern accent completely. When in real life, under emotional distress, a person's accent typically gets stronger, if anything, because they "let their guard down" more.
Sorry folks, but I've lived all over the US, including Georgia and North Carolina, and though it is wrong, I have heard many people outside the South say that as soon as they hear a Southern accent, they assume the speaker is ignorant, biased, a redneck.
TV and movies consistently reinforce the stereotype.
Unfortunately some do tend to 'stereotype' us Southerners, based on accent or dialect, just as all people are, at one time or another, stereotyped too by different means. I hear the 'stupid, biased, or redneck,' however in an individual's choice of vocabulary, or subject matter, and less in whether the accent is Southern, Northern, Midwestern, Californian, etc. Stupid is stupid, as is bigoted, or red-necked, regardless.
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Hubby and I were in Rome last year, and standing in line for Palatine Hill, we overheard a family talking and immediately knew they were not just from NC but somewhere near where I grew up, just from their accents. We had to ask and sure enough they were!
I spent a lot of time growing up on tenant farms in the sandy loam of eastern NC.
Southern Accent Stereotype = Stupid Redneck
