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Hay! Yew tawk funnae!

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EE

20:33 / 26.12.03

Accents are fun. American women are suckers for a neat accent. Men are too, now that I think about it. They certainly come in handy. If you're trying to get accurate directions somewhere and folks are just giving you generic, almost cardinal directions, try asking in an outrageous accent. You have to be good at it though, because if they think you're faking it they'll be disinclined to speak to you. But if you can carry it off well, people will do all kinds of things to help you.

I did a thread like this a looooooooong time ago, and figured it was good enough for another go. The question(s) is this: what kind of accent do you have? What kind of accent do you wish you had, and why? Which is the most fun to listen to? Which is the sexiest? Which makes the speaker sound like an idiot regardless of what s/he is saying?

As for myself, I have no accent, really. Well actually deep down I have a southern U.S. accent, but it's hidden so well I couldn't even find it should I ever want to.

I'd enjoy an Irish accent, I think. Not so much the Lucky Charms kind, but a softer, more Dublin oriented sort. A not-too-thick Scottish would be fun as well, but I wouldn't take an English accent if you paid me.

Sexiest? Nothing coming out of a man's mouth has ever really struck me as sexy (except a Brazilian accent, of course, but that's obvious), so I'm afraid I can only offer an opinion on women's accents. Bulgarian (hell, slavic languages in general) have a surprising appeal to me. And (do I even need to say it?) latin american accents are always sexy. Brazilian especially. I don't know if everybody has a "dude, I met this brazilian girl/guy/post-op tranny over spring break..." story, but they should. German has it's charms, although really, the lady herself usually has to be pretty sexy for me to think it's cool. It's more of a supporting accent, I guess.

So. Accents. Get started.

Tryphena Absent

22:10 / 26.12.03

A thread a long time ago in, say, February this year?

Christmas a bad time for you is it?

Brigade du jour

22:19 / 26.12.03

Now this is a good thread.

I myself have what I might describe as a vague, tractable SE England accent, as I grew up in Essex and Kent and now usually employ that non-specific Cockney Mockney chirrup dependent on the dropping of Ts and Hs, as does almost every other London inhabitant I've ever met. Even the ones from, like, Wales.

But, I really would love to have a Scottish accent, preferably Glaswegian. I'm told (by a Scottish person) that I fake it rather well.

My other favourites are Liverpool, New Zealand, Iceland, Ireland and New Jersey (perhaps because it's the Essex of the USA).

Oh shit man, don't make me choose just one!

01:37 / 27.12.03

i have no accent at all, which is to say midwestern. the foxiest accents ever are english and scottish. i don't much care for irish. english can be cockney or bbc proper, i like both, as long as i can understand them at least somewhat.
seriously, if a guy has a british accent of some sort, his attractiveness level, in my mind, goes up several notches. for sure.

02:28 / 27.12.03

the east baltimore accent is a horrid one. I have attempted to skirt around it, and sometimes I am forced to deliberately put a spin on certain words to compensate. when I am excited in any way, I talk very fast and low and the accent pops out. but on the whole I've been pretty successful, and there are only certain words that trip me up at those excitable moments

I can't really describe the sound of it, other than to say that when allowed to run unchecked, it's a terribly, terribly abrasive accent, and lends itself to very unkind conclusions about your intelligence. c'mahn dahn da ochun nexx tahm yer in bawlmer, hon!

09:12 / 27.12.03

The Glaswegian accent used to be my favourite, but now I'm living in Glasgow the novelty is wearing off. Is liking different accents to our own just about the novely factor?
My other most favourite accent is yorkshire.
I've got an english southern accent but for some reason I've always wanted a northern one, I'm not sure why.

09:51 / 27.12.03

I don't have any accent at all (midwestern), but here in England a lot of people seem to think I do. 'Sfunny. Maybe it's because I live in a foreign country and have been friends with a lot of people from different countries since I was about 15, and I work with people from different countries, but I can easily say that I am an American woman and accents do next to nothing for me. I say next to nothing because the sound of drunk guy with a Southern (U.S.) accent is a big turn-off for me.

That said I do have some favourite accents. I really like a Korean accent and a Japanese accent, don't ask me why I just do. Also Brazilian is great, when Brazilians speak English they kind of sing it, and I also like that London east end accent. And I like mine.

11:34 / 27.12.03

Welsh accents. They crack me up.

20:19 / 27.12.03

Another hand up for liking yorkshire accents.

I dont think I have an accent. Which is shocking, yet fortunate, for someone who went to school in Cromarty. People speak god-awful there. But nobody can tell if Im scottish, english or american. I just talk.

Matthew Fluxington

20:28 / 27.12.03

As anyone from Barbelith who has met me can attest, I speak almost EXACTLY like Tony Soprano.

The Knights Templar Boogie Machine

21:09 / 27.12.03

I live in warwickshire, I have a non descript accent with tinges of brummie, (if that makes any sense at all)when i get pissed i sound more brummie, which incidentally is the most weirdest accent to talk about quantum physics in :
'...alright like, its this multi dimeshunul theory like, sooper strings like...' if you get my drift.......

Anyway, what factors contribute to making an accent? is it the geo magnetism of a certain area that creates an accent or is it biological? Since people pick up accents it can't be the latter? How are accents created? Is it reactionary constant sonic enviromental imprinting or some other sinister force? Move this thread to the laboratory now!

P.S. How about the qaballah of the accent for the magick section, sephirotic correspondences etc?!)

21:21 / 27.12.03

I may go for, and tell me if im talking absolute bollocks which is likely: but perhaps, as different areas develop different dialect works, they accomodate a different way of speaking and capabilities for sound-making, that in turn affects the sound of everything they say. Possibly?

Apparently Inverness accents are the purest because of something to do with ye olde englishe people coming up here after the battle of culloden, or some crap. Anyway, the result is, we have shitloads of call-centres on the enterprise zones roundabout here.

And is possibly why I have no discernable accent.

05:30 / 28.12.03

American women are suckers for a neat accent.

that is so deeply, deeply stupid.

i have standard american english pronunciation, but live in the deep south - and I've noticed something weird that I do. When I've been working at any of the slew of terrible service jobs I have been or am about to be fired from, sometimes with difficult customers I lapse into a southern accent. Isn't that strange? It's like when I have to front like I care about the customers, I try to use a southern dialect. I think somehow I think it will make them be nicer to me.

primarily we get our dialects from whoever it is that teaches us to speak, usually parents - but other people influence us as we get older. this mostly follows, i think, what we call in linguistics accomodation theory - we pick up the speech of people we like or look up to. i'm sure everyone has noticed this - whenever you start spending a lot of time with someone, you pick up their speech habits. this guy i've been seeing calls everything a "homie" from jellybeans to serge gainsbourg and as much as it bugs the shit out of me, i've started doing it too. dialect/phonetic tics is the same way.

another thing i learned in linguistics was that almost nobody thinks s/he has an accent. but that makes sense, i guess. i don't think i have one, anyway.

The Apple-Picker

11:49 / 28.12.03

I'm from the Midwest, and so I think that means I speak with a standard American English accent, too. On occasion--when I've drunk too much--I'll slip into an accent that's slightly Southern... which might make sense if I spoke the way my father's family does, but that's not how it is. That would be an accent they wear in the hills in Georgia or an accent tinged from years in the West Virginian Alleghenies. Appalachian hillbillies, my kin.

I can attest to Matthew's sounding like Tony Soprano. We talk on the phone nearly every night.

12:21 / 28.12.03

My accent is a mystery to all. I haven’t picked it up from my family (common cockneys, don’tcha know) or where I grew up (way out in the deepest, most uncivilised of Lincolnshire fens). I think I got it from the telly. Haven’t got a clue what it sounds like but people are always asking me where I’m from, so it can’t be, y’know, normal.

Never actually met an accent I didn’t like, as long as it’s on the right person. Met plenty of people I don’t like, in which case not liking their accent is as good a reason as any not to answer the phone to them. I like Steven Hawking’s accent, and my favourite accent-related fantasy is to get a copy of his voice-program thingummy and teach it to say filthy things.

13:06 / 28.12.03

Anyway, what factors contribute to making an accent? is it the geo magnetism of a certain area that creates an accent or is it biological?

Someone once tried to convince me that the Australian accent came about from the early settlers' habit of squeezing their eyes half shut against the blazing sun, which sort of elongates the mouth and twangs the vowel sounds.

I'm pretty confident that that's bollocks, but I like the fact that I made you screw your face up when you read that.

My accent is the standard middle-class southern English, with a touch of the estuary but also with certain notes of Yorkshire/Lancashire as a result of living with northerners for most of my adult life. So, for instance, although bastards are still 'barstards', I pronounce 'school' closer to 'skewel' than 'scoll'.
I find it hard to say what the most appealing accents are as it seems to very much depend on whose mouths they are coming out of; the things I associate with various accents are tightly bound up with very particular archetypes. In that way I suspect that it's a lot like our favourite names: I have a theory that lots of people subconsciously name their children after someone they fancied at some stage or other. But that's another thread.

EE

18:11 / 28.12.03

A thread a long time ago in, say, February this year?

Christmas a bad time for you is it?

Nah, I'm thinking of one I started back in an earlier form of the board. At least, I don't remember starting anything like this in February. But I admit there are large gaps in my memory. And I love Christmas.

American women are suckers for a neat accent.

that is so deeply, deeply stupid.

I've always thought it was pretty silly as well. Why should a normal, decent woman act any differently because of an accent? And yet they do. Go figure. Guys with accents get away with murder. Ah seen it!

i have standard american english pronunciation, but live in the deep south - and I've noticed something weird that I do. When I've been working at any of the slew of terrible service jobs I have been or am about to be fired from, sometimes with difficult customers I lapse into a southern accent. Isn't that strange? It's like when I have to front like I care about the customers, I try to use a southern dialect. I think somehow I think it will make them be nicer to me.

You know it will. I wish I could use my southern accent at my current table-waiting job. They're great for false sincerity. And, up here in the north, everyone thinks it's "charming". I could get away with murder...

solid~liquid onwards

18:33 / 28.12.03

my accents a bizzare blend of various parts of the highlands (of scotland), with a dash of the lake district (north england).

for some reason english people often confuse this with a light irish accent.

Matthew Fluxington

18:41 / 28.12.03

Sometimes I'm ashamed of my accent. I've been working hard to 'fix' it. For example, I've worked my way up to the point where I almost always say "you guys" instead of "youse guys." Trust me, I've come a long way.

00:30 / 29.12.03

I have a "migrant desperately trying to fit in and mimick his peers' speech, oh shit now I'm grown up and speaking with an accent thicker than some natives" Australian accent.

It annoys me sometimes because of the whole yob association or the usual 'broad accent = country = uneducated' thing people seem to have. It's good when travelling though, because it becomes something interesting rather than cringeworthy.

00:51 / 29.12.03

Apparently based on my pronounciation of 'Detroit' (Dee-troy-it rather than Dee-troit), I have an Ontario accent... oddly enough when I was in England no one ever thought I was American, and a lot of people thought I was Irish... I wouldn't mind having an Irish accent...

uncle retrospective

01:25 / 29.12.03

Well I have an Irish accent and I've been confused with Americans, Canadians, Australians and English. While I don't have the horrible accent of the area I grew up in. (I should sound like Owen McLove from Father Ted, the actor is from my village.) I've developed an odd neutral south side Dublin accent. I have no idea where it came from, maybe the elocution lessons when I was a kid messed it all up for me.

As for accents I like, well I like the Oz accent but that may be just be a side effect of the Ozzies I've met. Light Scots is nice and like 'Nesh I find the Welsh accent really funny. Mind you it's so much fun to sing in, listen to Fire in my heart by the Super Furry Animals and belt it out. It's great fun.
Boyo.

03:17 / 29.12.03

My accent is another odd one- Southern parents plus Connecticut upbringing plus a bit of a lisp. Lispy/lockjawy/drawl. With extra drawl the more excited I get.

A girl I go to school with has the most beautiful speaking voice- she's from India, and English is her second language, and everything sounds so much better when she says it.

05:06 / 29.12.03

I quite like posh-ish English accents, if they're from nice fluffy empathetic people, not sloany horrible bastards.

Mine's quite Glaswegian although have tweaked it over the years, largely in a bid to seem less incomprehensible to people from other countries - a plan which I now feel has backfired, as now not even people from my home town really understand me. Had an amusing crossed-purposes convo with someone a while back where they were talking about the music mag Kerrang! while I was talking about the Qu'ran
I really liked someone once from Orkney and I think I kind of unconsciously picked up loads of their rhythm and intonation - it's a cool voice, I think.
On holiday in California at the minute and so far two people have presumed me Russian (!), while others have opted for Ireland and Australia

06:30 / 29.12.03

Having hopped about all over the North of England, I now sound like some Manc car thief reading aloud from The Road to Wigan Pier in a special hour-long episode of Emmerdale.

09:18 / 29.12.03

I speak Estuary English, due to having lived in Kent for 18 years. I don't think I've picked up a Southampton accent yet, but maybe I wouldn't notice.

I don't really like my accent, and would like to sound more generic. I'd also like to be able to understand other people's accents better.

I quite like some Canadian accents.

Cheap. Easy. Cruel.

12:23 / 29.12.03

I have a pretty generic American accent. I grew up in the southern US with parents of hillbilly (foothills of the ozarks) and coonass (cajun) origin. About the third grade, I made up my mind that southern accents sounded very unintelligent, from then on I trained myself to not speak that way. I suppose it has worked because no matter where I have gone, I have had people ask where I am from because I don't sound like them. When I get drunk or very tired, the southern redneck accent comes out.

If I could choose any accent, I would choose a German accent. It would help with my engineering career. For some reason, people think you know what you are talking about when you say something scientific in a German accent. I mean, Einstein would have gotten no respect if he had started the theory of relativity with, "Hey y'all!" On women, I like Slavic accents. A nice lilting Irish accent is always nice as well.

12:58 / 29.12.03

I speak like a US news broadcaster: What Americans would call "no accent." In the part of Assachusetts where I grew up, most people had "no accent" but some had the Mass accent, which I hated as a kid but now have a strong fondness for. When I lived in Rhode Island a few years ago my friends there were deeply jealous of my no-accent but I liked the way they talked. US-wise I also like Philadelphians' accents though they usually hate it. In general I like when someone has just a slight accent so that you only catch it in certain words, that can be very intriguing.

There's a French woman who's ridden the same bus as me in the morning for over a year - recently I heard her say that she thinks English is a very beautiful language, but even more than that she loves the sound of Americans speaking French. Go figure.

14:22 / 29.12.03

What does a Rhode Island accent sound like? Or Philidelphia? I never knew there were so many American accents...

Matthew Fluxington

15:49 / 29.12.03

Really? America is HUGE and has been settled/populated by a wide range of cultures. We'd probably have even more accents and dialects were it not for television and radio.

16:14 / 29.12.03

As anyone from Barbelith who has met me can attest, I speak almost EXACTLY like Tony Soprano.

my mom talks kind of like Carmela. somehow, despite growing up in a family full of Jersey accents, i have managed to escape with a sort of Manhattan/SoCal/newscaster "unaccented" speech pattern.

some had the Mass accent, which I hated as a kid but now have a strong fondness for.

i lived in Massachusetts for four years, and now i think that the accent is wicked cool. i also crack up every time i see that SNL sketch with the game show where they ask three New Englanders for directions. hilarious.

Really? America is HUGE and has been settled/populated by a wide range of cultures.

weirdest American dialect: Pittsburgh. it's a really isolated area. if you're in Pittsburgh, and your room needs cleaned, you'd better go red it up.

20:21 / 29.12.03

Matthew sounds more soprano than Soprano, if you take my meaning.

My Brooklyn accent, more GOODFELLAS than SOPRANOS, increases the farther I get from home. In Connecticut, I drop an occasional lingual and hack up an aspirate here and there (they're so effeminate!), but by the time I get to the West Coast, my tongue lies flat in my jaw and the corners of my lips get stapled to my teeth. That's the basic accent. Don't move your tongue or the corners of your mouth.

I've never noticed a desire to have an accent I don't have. I would like to be the only guy around with my accent. I should move somewhere, I guess.0

This will probably be insulting to more than a few of my good friends at Barbelith, whom I love like a motherfucker, but the London accent gets right up my nose. It sounds like how a snotty cat would talk if it was all stupid and English and stuff. And Liverpudlians sound like funny cartoon animals. Those are the only two I know by ear. The other ones are fine, I guess. What's Sting? "Geordie", right? I love Sting. He's the man.

My ex-girlfriend thought that Scottish sounded like dogs barking, but my grandmother had a thick Scottish accent and I always understood her. I never understood her dog.

All right. See you bitches in six weeks.

20:30 / 29.12.03

That's the basic accent. Don't move your tongue or the corners of your mouth

Then, if people from London talk like cats, people from Brooklyn talk like fish. Yes. Pretend you are a macho fish who has just eaten too much stromboli and feels a little sick, and is also trying to argue his way out of a parking ticket. Nausea + aggression = Brooklyn.

The Apple-Picker

02:10 / 30.12.03

My vote for strangest American accent: Philly.

Oi loike TasteeKakes!

Matthew Fluxington

14:14 / 30.12.03

Yeah, Philly is WEIRD. "Nem Nare Flyahs!"

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