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Hay! Yew tawk funnae!

Tuna Ghost: Pratt knot hero

19:15 / 10.12.02

It's a well known fact that the vast majority of american women are suckers for european accents. I have no idea how this works in Europe, or any other continent in the world, but that's how it stands here. Which sucks because I don't have one, and I wish I did. I have a slight southern accent from my years spent in the American south, despite my best efforts to never develop one. I never say "y'all", but it comes out every now and again. Naturally, nobody noticed it in Tennessee, but here in Michigan when it slips out everyone spots it.

I hate it. Some people have told me that southern accents are cute, in a "hey darlin'" kind of way. I do not think so. I think many forms of the American southern accent are some of the most trashy in the english speaking part of the world.

So: What sort of accent do you have? Do you like it? What kind do you wish you had? What kind do you find most attractive in another person?

Obviously, I have a southern accent, and I hate it. If I could choose, I'd go for a scottish accent of some kind. Or maybe a Brazilian. I think Jersey accents are really cool, but I just spent the weekend watching the entire third season of the Sopranos, so who knows how I'll feel next week.

I looooooove a Brazilian accent on a woman. Come to think of it, I just really like Brazilian women. A really cool Spanish accent will also make me putty in someone's hands. I've also come to think of the Balkan accents as sexy, but that's probably just because I know some really hot Bulgarian and Romanian people.

Cloned Christ on a HoverDonkey

19:25 / 10.12.02

I have a Mancunian/Lancastrian hybrid accent, leaving me in a regional limbo, never feeling like I fully belong anywhere. I am doomed to walk this Earth for all my living days, knowing that where ever I go I cannot truly call it my home.

Personally, I find the French and certain Scottish accents the most appealing in ladies.

20:04 / 10.12.02

I could teach you the brazilian accent, plus a couple of grammatical mistakes to say with them.

20:46 / 10.12.02

Bastardised mix of RP+ Estuary, leaving me sounding like I'm taking the piss, whoever I'm talking to. I think it's too whiny. I'd love to have a Scottish accent.

Murray Hamhandler

21:02 / 10.12.02

I don't know that I have much of an accent. I'm told that there's a Midwestern U.S. accent, but if I have it, it seems to be fairly mild. I do, every once in a while, lapse into the southern accent I had as a child when I lived in Memphis. Mostly, I'm just nasally. My voice isn't too far off from Jim Henson's. So whatever that was.

21:04 / 10.12.02

That Southern accent=ignorance thing is malicious, post-War-Between-The-States slander!

Everyone *civilized* knows that the North was home to coffee-drinking industrial factory hands, unaware of even the most elemental social graces (with, perhaps, some rare exceptions in the fine cities of Boston and New York), while the South was where the gentle arts of refinement were polished to high degree on a daily basis, handed down through the generations from the original aristocratic landowners who planted below the Mason-Dixon line. Why, to this day, when nomadism rules the American culture, it's still easier to find a Southerner who knows the difference between "white tie" and "black tie" formal wear than a Northerner.

That said, I have a fairly Floridian accent. It slides between Southern and Mid-Atlantic. I also have (or had - I haven't noticed it lately) a way of talking back to people the way they talked to me. My parents both have peculiar accents, too, which I don't really share (as far as I can tell).

21:08 / 10.12.02

I have an accent of my very own, the bizarre blend of being transplanted from Tennessee at the age of 8 months to Connecticut, but still growing up with North Carolinian parents. The result is odd. I usually speak in the New English accent which I can't define because I'm so used to it, but Southern undertones creep in. And if I get angry, then it's all hickory all the time. Add to this the fact that, due to a bone development on the roof of my mouth and the fact that that little piece of skin that attaches the tongue to the floor of the mouth goes almost all the way to the end of my tongue, I have a lisp. So we have a warped-ass blend of Jodie Foster in Silence of the Lambs and Jennifer Jason Leigh in Hudsucker Proxy.

The cherry on top: I talk really fuckin' fast.

It doesn't much bother me. I guess I wish I sounded a little more girly sometimes, since my accent combined with my natural cadence makes me sound kinda old. It's annoying to have to slow down all the time to be understood clearly, but it's amusing to have people try to guess what my accent is. So far I've been asked if I'm from Germany, Spain, Russia, Eastern Europe, and a variety of other locales.

While I don't really care for strong accents of any kind, I'd love to speak with a mild Indian accent. It's just so damned melodious and soothing, particularly in women, I think. Like having your ears massaged, I find it very attractive.

Matthew Fluxington

21:19 / 10.12.02

Normally, I speak with a very mild northeastern US accent, I barely even notice an accent at all. However, when I am anxious or angry the bits of New York accent that I've picked up since my childhood come out, which may be an unconcious mimicry of my mother, whose Long Island accent becomes very pronounced when she is angry. So, if I'm in a very very bad mood, I sorta sound like a very wussy version of a Sopranos cast member.

22:07 / 10.12.02

I shound jusht like Sean Connery and expect it to make me rich and famoush, and shexy when I'm 60.

22:11 / 10.12.02

I have a slight southern accent; it comes from spending the past ten years of my life here in Tennessee. I don't go around saying "y'all" or any of the other words or phrases that people identify with the South unless I'm not paying attention. If I'm not paying attention, you can be damned sure that my speech will be peppered with "y'all's" and a bunch of other Southern turns of phrase. I've only had one person comment on my accent and that was years ago. I was up in Michigan for my grandparent's anniversary party and when I went up to the bar to get a coke, the lady that served me said that she loved the way I said "coke".

I don't really mind my accent, it's just not something I notice much. As long as nobody says, "You know, you really sound stupid when you say y'all" everything will be hunky dory.

Goodness Gracious Meme

22:13 / 10.12.02

I shound jusht like Sean Connery and expect it to make me rich and famoush, and shexy when I'm 60

Nurse, the shots please... he's getting delusion again.

22:15 / 10.12.02

The pished Scot was ZoCher, sorry, impersonating Ganesh impersonating Connery.

I wouldn't like to change it much, although I'd prefer it to sound as bass on tape as it does through bone conduction.

I would like to have the ability to mimic other accents, convincingly and at will. I can do a bit of Belfast because I used to live with an Irishman but that's it. Bit like Connery too, really. His repertoire of accents is small.

00:04 / 11.12.02

Even after living in the same spot for the first 20-odd years of my life, I've been told I have an American accent (how an American accent differs from a Southern Ontario one I don't know), an Irish accent, and an English. Part of it comes from reading too many Hellblazers and other Garth Ennis comics and watching The Committments over and over at age 16.

00:14 / 11.12.02

Jesus, this thread is crawling with Tennessee folk.

04:10 / 11.12.02

I think 'ya'll' is one of the better American idioms. It's friendly and inclusive, with no gender or racial specificity.

No really, I'm serious. Right, then. Fuck ya'll.

09:07 / 11.12.02

I don't like my accent, but apparently that's not a problem, since everybody says I have no accent at all, even coming from a region famous for its strong accents. They just say I don't sound like anything they heard, or that they "just know" what my accent is similar to, but they can't really explain it...

09:26 / 11.12.02

I'm not sure what my accent is, I guess technically its Scottish but I'm starting to wonder - I grew up between Inverness and Aberdeen so I guess its a mix of them both. Most people think I'm Irish though, just the other week an Irish guy asked where about in Ireland I was from.

Scotrish I guess

09:39 / 11.12.02

i get accused of being all sorts of things, but most smart folk know i am scottish. its nowhere near broad enough to be glaswegian, but it is.

i think any rough as shit accent sounds good on a girl, as long as it is really thick or really musical. i am afraid this counts out people from most big english cities. and fuck me, but this one girl i met from merthyr tydfil who sounded fucking awful.(there was one welsh girls voice i fell in love with, and in fact there was another, called faith, on the phone last week, so i think that was just that chick)

i wish i had an accent like james mason. i can, on occasion, fulfil this dream, but it is a rare occasion. i get masonfright when launching into it.
i seem to find accents easy, as long as you arent wanting an exact person.

The Natural Way

10:30 / 11.12.02

Southern, southern, soft and shite. Bengali describes me as the poshist person she knows (which is weird considering I went to a normal comprehensive and, whilst spoiled, would hardly describe myself or my family as ever having been rich or moneyed...grumble...don't box me in!), so, yeah, I've got the kind of English accent the americans dig. I think.

10:31 / 11.12.02

I have no idea how I talk, so if anyone who's heard me can describe it, I'd be most happy to hear it. What I do know is that I hate hearing it on a recording. It just sounds... so bland. It's way more interesting than that in my head.

Tryphena Absent

12:44 / 11.12.02

Very sarcastic and posh, you have an ability to talk in italics that I find quite astounding.

13:33 / 11.12.02

Ah yes. My amazing ability to talk in italics. I remember that.

But cheers, Janina. No really, thanks. "Posh". Bleargh. (Sarcastic I can live with, though I find it as a signifier of my accent a little disturbing).

13:40 / 11.12.02

South Jersey accent, which is pretty much your normal American television accent, but with a few really mispronounced words thrown in. Ask me to say "water" some time. I'm told it's very entertaining.

13:58 / 11.12.02

Well obviously the correct pronunciation of water is wa-ir

14:06 / 11.12.02

My flat Lancastrian vowels are distinctly unsexy, I'm afraid. Second only to Brummies in the ridicule stakes.

As far as attractive accents go, Scottish definitely. Sometimes Scouse. And I do like to hear Antipodean ladies swear like troopers, for some reason.

Tuna Ghost: Pratt knot hero

14:12 / 11.12.02

That Southern accent=ignorance thing is malicious, post-War-Between-The-States slander!

It's true, it's true. But still it exists. When people (well, non-southern people) hear a southern accent, they immediatly drop twenty IQ points and add twenty gullability points. Although personally, a slow foghorn-leghorn/Plantation owner accent, which is supposedly the american accent closest to "the queen's english", sounds very refined to me.

If I'm not paying attention, you can be damned sure that my speech will be peppered with "y'all's" and a bunch of other Southern turns of phrase.

A funny and probably little known southern bit of slang is that every soft drink, every soda, every carbonated sugary beverage is called "coke". Even pepsi. It doesn't matter. When someone says "get me a coke" they mean "get me a sugary carbonated beverage, preferably dark brown in color". If you pay attention down south, you'll hear the natives say things like (in a restaurant)
"Do you want a coke?"
"Sure."
"What kind?"
"Gimme a Doctor Pepper and a Sprite."

I still do this. You'll never get me to say "pop". Ever.

15:03 / 11.12.02

my dad has the weirdest accent ever; canadian but having lived in the uk for 25 years, its mostly southern british but he still rolls his "r"s and pronounces his "a"s weird. cos i grew up wiv it i dont even notice it, but everyone else does.

miself? living in the centre of Brighton all my life has given me that bastard "mockney" that everyone seems to have...

"alright fella? meet ya down the boozer? Shaaaat it!......

17:00 / 11.12.02

Middle-class Londoner, occasionally degenerating into Streatham trash. It depends who I'm speaking to. With my mother I sound quite posh. Buying fags in Norwood I don't.

I think, since I've been in the US, I've started to sound posher. Probably the reason is that I can't use any of the colloquialisms I used in England, because nobody would understand them, but I don't use US slang either, so I'm just left with a more "correct" vocabulary.

I doubt anyone finds my voice sexy, unless they're attracted to people who sound like they have bees up their nose.

18:02 / 11.12.02

Because of my fondness for English slang, my ability to actually comprehend the Newcastle/Northumbrian dialect, and my being raised up and down the east coast, yet having stayed in the Midwest for nearly 12 years...

I have a very flat accent. Like a tired American female DJ.

But when I'm drunk, I sound like my granny from Belfast.

::a::

pointless and uncalled for

18:59 / 11.12.02

I have the annoying trait of chameleoning my accent to the local surroundings.

05:48 / 12.12.02

My accent switches from Russian-accented mumble speech to New Yorker accent slurred speech.

If I articulate people understand me better.

I don't understand why some people make a big deal about Southern accents. I mean when I first heard it I was surprised by how different English sounds al over america and yet remains pretty much the same language.

Can I get a soda? How bout some coke? Maybe some pop?

07:20 / 12.12.02

Much like Tea Boy i too "I have the annoying trait of chameleoning my accent to the local surroundings." but it's more like i pick up terms and how "they" say things and mix it in... i'm from the midwest, have a mid-west flat accent (and through my years of television study've found it's the one televison news casters try for! YAY for me!) but i toss in some southern "ya'll" and say my "O"s as in "boat, coat, road & coke" in a very northern Wisconsin accent... through my reading of GM and Barbelith i say "shite" (much to the amusement of my friend UKDave), "wank" "pissed" (for drunk) & "takin' the piss" but w/o an accent much to the annoyance of some people... i also use old slang (rad, swank, jake) and odd slang (waz, twank, squaz, durb) my friends and i make up... i also say things like "hoodwinked", "yoink" & "moxy" w/ no hint of being ironic... and i'll still use German works like "sportlich" quite often... but what do you expect from an American boy of Northern Euro descent who calls himself Jose

09:42 / 12.12.02

Depending on who I'm talking to my accent is either typical Surrey boy, well spoken, proper pronunciation (which is my natural accent) or "Alrite geeza" bit of a South London thing going on.
It's weird because when I talk like that, it's completely natural to me and I only do it when talking to certain friends of mine (some of whom think that is my only accent.)

Reasonably happy with both though and don't really want to change.

22:39 / 12.12.02

Went through a period of having a slightly over-dramatic, Ewan McGregor-in-Trainspotting Scottish accent, when I first moved to London (from Glasgow) a few years ago. This was initially just adopted as an amusing affectation between friends, but then I couldn’t quite shake it off- heheh.
People in London are often just obstinate bastards when it comes to understanding different accents, though, I think. It’s all “owwwwh- ah dunno wot e’s sayin!”. You almost feel like going “Why don’t you just FUCKING LISTEN!”