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What are your favorite and least favorite accents in the USA? If you could change your accent, what would you change it to?
My favorite accent is probably the texas southern drawl. It's so old school and traditional. I love it. My least favorite is that horrid Baahston accent. It's really off. I don't know who told them it was attractive.
If I could change my accent to anything it would be to a New York brooklyn accent. It's sounds so hardcore.
Minnesota hands down! I met a girl from there when I was in Saudi and followed her around for a week just to hear her talk (she thought that I was weird...so did I was) It is the only accent that I could not mimic that is why it intrigues me so much
Best > The New York accent and the New Orlean's "Yat" dialect as both cities "Tawk" similar.
Worst > New Jersey
How can you have New York accent as the best and New Jersey accent as the worst?
There really is no "New Jersey" accent. People in North Jersey that have accents are influenced from NYC. People from South Jersey that have accents are influenced from Philly.
Best > The New York accent and the New Orlean's "Yat" dialect as both cities "Tawk" similar.
Worst > New Jersey
Quote:
Originally Posted by 2e1m5a
How can you have New York accent as the best and New Jersey accent as the worst?
There really is no "New Jersey" accent. People in North Jersey that have accents are influenced from NYC. People from South Jersey that have accents are influenced from Philly.
2e1m5a is exactly right.
north jersey accents are a subset of the greater nyc area accent.
south jersey accents are a subset of the greater philly area accent.
the closer you are to nyc, the more similar the accent gets.
the closer you are to philly, the more similar the accent gets.
in parts of central jersey that have influences from both cities (e.g. mercer county), you can hear elements of both.
and in more remote parts of the state such as deep south jersey around the pine barrens, there's a completely distinct/country-sounding accent that outsiders would never associate with nj in a million years.
i should also note that MANY people who grew up in nj/nyc/philly do not have any sort of local/regional accent. i grew up in queens and north jersey, and yet i speak with a neutral/standard accent (and i'm hardly alone). people are always shocked when i tell them where i'm originally from, yet if you were to hear me speak with some (not all) of my childhood friends, you'd see that neutral accents aren't that unusual in the greater nyc/nj area, especially in wealthier communities but sometimes even among those of us who grew up with blue-collar folks.
i went to high school in urban north jersey, about 1 mile away from manhattan. tons of kids in my high school - mainly the ones who grew up in the inner city near the school - had thick, blue collar north jersey accents. plenty of us did not, with the common denominator often being that we grew up in suburban towns.
either way, it would be interesting to see if the people who claim to love the nyc accent but hate the nj accent could actually distinguish between the two. for instance, i wonder if they could identify my blue collar high school classmates as being from north jersey and my childhood friends as queens or brooklyn natives. go ahead, i bet 99% of you couldn't distinguish the two if your lives depended on it.
ya gotta hand it to the jersey haters, though. they think they know it all about the garden state, and yet they don't know jack.
and to echo openheads' point above:
i have literally never heard a single person in new jersey pronounce the state name as "joisey". NO ONE. not even in my inner city high school with more than a few kids who had super thick accents.
anyone who has lived in nj knows that a blue collar new jerseyan with a thick local accent pronounces it something like "jurr-zee", with the tongue pushed back toward the throat. hard to describe in words, but instantly recognizable to those of us who grew up hearing it.
here's a short video in which bill parcells and other north jersey natives (all of whom have distinct north jersey accents) speak about what it means to be from the state. pay close attention to how they say "jersey" - THAT'S how the locals pronounce it, not "joisey":
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