Loosing your accent

Never 'ad to luv. Estuary English is wot I born speakin'. I speak it too fast mind.

But I do think that was a typo.

But I do think that was a typo.

Honest.

However to return to the question, I am always surprised how quickly people manage to lose their accents. Or is it because I stop noticing them. TV might have something to do with this.

I feel very foolish now.

I don't sound as posh as I am, except on the phone.

For tragedy of losing ones own accent one should look no further than Terry Stamp in the Limey. A real cockney lad unable to do it anymore. Embaressing.

It's too late to try to make it up to Anna now.

(although I have just messed up *another* post on another thread)

This must be what happened to me. Although I have just proved I can look stupid without any assistance from vile West Midlands nasal accent.

I won't be living in Dublin all my life though so theres always hope.

I bet this post is still spelt better than Pete's. (Only teezin, fella! ;-)). Don't listen to 'em, Anna.

Hey - they're playing Bacharach in the Internet café!

And I do not sound like newf.

i hear myself as sounding quite gauche, born into a shrill bogan family, having had elocution lessons. so i'm still loud and crass, only now i pronounce rude words correctly and project.

Seriously, my parents have told me that I'm starting to sound more and more like a New Yorker. Precisely how a New York accent differs from a New Jersey accent escapes me. Especially since the stereotypical New Jersey accent is a parody of the Brooklyn accent.

That's why they call it 'Estuary'

I suppose Estuary's tentacles are reaching out...plus maybe a lot of people move to seaside towns from London and environs. Tracy Emin's very Estuary and she's from Margate, but I'm not sure if her accent is an assumed one.

I have been made aware how twangy my accent gets at times, and though I think it sounds pretty annoying and dumb somehow I think I'll just stick with it. The alternative would be ending up like Madonna, and having the most phony-ass British accent in the world seems a lot less attractive than even my accent.

No - I'm not convincing anyone am I? Embarress is the word I spell wrong the most often. How embarressing.

Pah! They are all ganging up on me. I can't help it if she goes to bed five hours before me. Though when I am keeping her up singing it is invariably with cockerney classics like "Roll Out The Barrel" or "My Old Man".

I always thought they were kisses! Another childhood illusion shattered.

New thread for this discussion though maybe?

That puts accents into perspective, I must say. And will confuse everyone who can't remember what I was rambling about on the Oxford Tube approach to Shepherds Bush on Monday night, I supose.

self-hatred is nagl

Unlearning to Tawk Like a New Yorker

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/21/nyregion/21accent.html?_r=1&src=ISMR_HP_LO_MST_FB

WTF. I want to a) slap these people or b) maybe hug them so they don't hate themselves.

Love NY accents!!! Any accent, pretty great IMO but jeez, therapy?

I mean, I get that it can be alienating, I got tired of being stopped mid-sentence when I first moved here from Oz, but theres also the joy of *not* sounding like everyone else. You gotta own it is all. If it's sending you to therapy it's probably not the accent that's the reason imo

I kinda regret that my southern accent went away once I moved to Florida from Georgia. It wasn't a conscious decision, it just faded over time.

Mine has definitely faded, but people still notice it which makes me happy. Also if I talk to Mum on the phone for any length of time, or watch an Australian movie: whoosh! It's back! Mr Veg laughs sometimes how quickly it comes back, it's pretty cool.

I sound like your typical droney mumble-teen. Honestly I think as far as the States go, unless you live in rural parts, if you're a city-dweller you sound just like everybody else in the nation. Moving from California to Colorado as a kid, the only noticable difference I ever experienced between dialects is that old women referred to soda as "pop".

Which is total bullshit because it's clearly meant to be called soda.

Honestly I think as far as the States go, unless you live in rural parts, if you're a city-dweller you sound just like everybody else in the nation.

what??

I dunno, I have a friend who grew up in LA before moving to SF and you can definitely hear her LA, Moon-Unit Zappa Valley Girl "fer sure" thing even now, 20 years after the fact. Not ott, but it's there.

I hear accents all the time, I think it's amusing when people say they dont have them

Yeah but girls I've met from everywhere have that faux-Valley Girl thing going on... it spreads thru television (not trying to be deep here, but just saying, mass-communication = mass accent). 70% of all the women I ever meet drop at least 14 "likes" in a 9 word sentence.

i used to be able to tell the difference between halifax, keighley, bradford, dewsbury, leeds and wakefield accents. then i moved to london and now they've merged into one:/

Think I still have most of my Irish accent but I guess when you're in England you can't speak in as relaxed a manner if you want people to understand, so you get a bit more neutral. I find when I'm home it's nice and relaxing to be able to mumble more and soften everything up.

I have about three different accents depending on who I'm speaking to. I have a broad Inverness accent when I'm speaking to my family/am drunk, a hybrid West of Scotland/Inverness accent most of the time, and a posh-ish polite version of the hybrid one for when I'm at work. My own husband has failed to recognise my voice when I answer the phone at work.

I don't have any sort of regional american accent though I'm probably guilty of the faux valley girl thing to some extent. When I lived in England I guess I picked up some sort of accent without realizing it because American friends I talked to would comment on how "cute" my accent was and when I moved back here after a couple months and lost it my English friends would all comment on how American I sounded. To be honest this wasn't something I did consciously and I sort of cringe at the thought that I may have sounded like some Madonna weirdo but to some extent I guess picking up new ways of speaking depending on where you live is inevitable.

i vary depending on who i'm speaking with tbh. have collected accents since childhood due to a lot of moving round.

i've never had an accent, even after living in the south for over half of my life.

i do use "y'all" quite a bit though, since it is a useful word and rolls off the toungue quite easily

rolls off the tongue, too

wait, why am i concerned about spelling on a thread called "loosing your accent"?

I think watching some guy from Pittsburgh talking to a trolley and multi-colored Muppets with semi-NYC accents helped shape my accent.

I started to try to lose it when I was 10, after I decided I would be a radio DJ as an adult.

In Minnesota, I was told twice by employers they thought I was black on the phone. That says probably more about those people than it does my faint Southern accent.

As I've gotten older and since I'm not in radio anymore, I think it's coming back.

It really shows up when I'm talking with other drivers in other cars who can't hear me.

I get asked if I'm English all the time. I'm happier if they guess NZ, since that's at least the right hemisphere, lol.

Got asked once if I was German. (?!) The man was genuinely annoyed when I said I was Australian

I work with a lovely woman from Manchester who got asked if she was from New Orleans. Lol!

ignorance + inability to effectively use the flaps on either side of their head = amusing results

I have encountered a frightening number of people who do not know that NZ is not "part" of Australia. :(

Weirdest one I ever got was in Sydney when a waitress heard me order and then asked, "Tornoto?"

Maybe my "speaking to be understood" voice sounds like Dave Foley.

PP I remember hearing you on one of the vids either you or SS posted on FB of the kids and being surprised at how strong your accent was. I thought it was awesome, btw.

man, that nytimes article is a bummer. the terry gross "i am trying very hard not to sound like i'm from new york and therefore don't know how i'm supposed to say anything" voice is the worst.

i always thought NZers who came back to NZ with american accents after a year or two were total dickfaces, but now i realise that you kinda of have to develop a bit of an american edge - mostly just pronouncing your Rs, which NZers don't do at all - in order to be understood.

Ha well thanks Erica. Three years of living in the Midwest + 11 years of pronouncing words correctly for a living down the drain.

Justin3, yep exactly. I used to have to call & give order totals to customers:
"your total is Ait hundred and fawteen dollars"
"what?"
"ait hundred and fawteen dollars"
"what is 'ait'?"
"um. ( puts on American drawl) Eight hundrd and fourteen dollars"
"thank you!"
-actual conversation.
It gets tiring, lol

Me every time I order "water" =(

Honestly I think as far as the States go, unless you live in rural parts, if you're a city-dweller you sound just like everybody else in the nation. Moving from California to Colorado as a kid, the only noticable difference I ever experienced between dialects is that old women referred to soda as "pop".

OMG, I do not agree, as far as the Northeast and Great Lakes/Midwest go.

The differences just between cities in NY state are pretty impressive imo.

i have more or less that non-descript middle American newscaster accent, and when I did radio in Providence, I was very self-conscious about not sounding like a native.

yeah, veggrrrrl i had one lady tell me i sounded like i was "barely speaking english". i almost punched her.

one of my coworkers is pretty damn cockney and part of his job is speaking on the telephone to people whose first language is spanish. this = lols

I've always been amazed at how many regional accents britain has. the country seems pretty small

Until I was 11 I had a typical Worcester (England) accent, then I got an assisted place at a public school and found it easier to avoid being bullied for being "common" by adopting a sort of RP accent, in doing so I basically lost my real accent. When I left school I made an extremely embarrassing-to-me-now attempt to get back my "real voice" but I just ended up sounding like I was doing a bad impression of a Brummy so I gave up on that. So now I guess I have a sort of hybrid Worcester/RP accent.

"So where in the Netherlands are you from?"
"I'm Irish, actually"

This happened in Dublin.

Ha.

After three years, I was so used to hearing the Western NY twang that when I moved back to Canada, someone in my department mentioned something about "active tones" and I thought he meant "octave tones". "Stacking" sounded momentarily like "stocking", "black" like "block", etc.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northern_cities_vowel_shift

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9UoJ1-ZGb1w