English as she is Spoke

It’s one of those conjugations: I don’t have an accent, you do, and he talks funny.

Ok, I confess, I grew up in the Midwest and sincerely believed that I didn’t have an accent, until I moved away and realized that Midwesterners sound like rubes. Now I don’t have an accent.

The Midwest has a number of accents. For example, at least some people in Carbondale, Illinois sound Southern. (Whereas some people from Mississippi don’t.) Minnesotans don’t sound much like Chicagoans, etc. — and each group uses words the other doesn’t.

To me, the late Rod Serling has no accent. (Hamminess, but no accent.) We’re both from the Hudson Valley Dialect Area — one of three in New York State, all three of which cross state boundaries.

For leads to good information, see the American Dialect Society’s website: http://americandialect.org

Unfortunately, those of us who were raised around a couple of Europeans, a couple of hardcore Southerners, and a Frenchwoman don’t do well in these tests.

…I get mistaken for Canadian a lot. Cuz apparently “sounds sort of British, sort of American” equals Canadian. ;)

This is just the corollary to the “i’m not ethnic, i’m american” thingamajigie

was pretty comment among

Another charming regionalism.

The Minnesota zone seems to include most of Wisconsin and parts of Iowa and the Dakotas.

There is a noble cosmopolitan goal in affecting astonishment that many people think they have no accent, even though the group of people who think they have no accent includes people with different accents. But I think this astonishment is roughly equivalent to astonishment that almost everyone thinks he can communicate easily with other people, even when though “almost everyone” includes people who don’t even speak the same language. It is a slightly malicious way of willfully misunderstanding the uses of the word “accent”.

In dialect maps the whole American West is one big zone, and it’s pretty similiar to a few of the eastern zones (non-Southern, non-coastal). Especially Midlands.

What really ought to be addressed is the degree to which intentional affect and unintentional emotional urgency affect accents. In the US you can walk into a Starbucks in any city or town and the fresh-scrubbed young barrista is going to sound virtually the same in every one of them. But talk to a dozen rural auto mechanics or suburban stockbrokers and you’ll get at least 13 different accents. I lose it sometimes and say “orange” and “about” just like a Canadian, but that’s not the way I really talk, you see.

I heard a middle-class white guy screaming into his phone on the street in lower Manhattan a couple years ago in a New Yowak/Lon Guyland accent that would have made Penny Marshall’s hair stand on end. But I’ll bet when he goes to his college reunion he sounds pretty much like a CNN announcer.

Aussies sure speak funny.

News reporters, at least anchors, and almost every national anchor, and national reporter, have interchangeable “accents” and it is a “midwest” “accent” that best represents that.

As for the test, it isn’t a test of accent, even if thats what they say they are, they are a test of colloquial expression. “pop” and “soda” and such.

related, but distantly.

There is a fantastic sample of international and regional accents at GMU that you will have much more trouble guessing than you expect, if you have a friend press the links for you. You find yourself distressed at how inscrutable international English really is and then you hear a Brooklyn accent and it really is like butta.

Most people have a lot of diffivulty guessing where I am from (based on my accent). If I told you I’m from Wales, you might immediately bring to mind what I call the stereotypical welsh accents (there are about half a dozen, which vary in sublte and not so subtle ways), what you almost certainly wont bring to mind is my actual accent, which is very specific to a single town (and to a lesser extent could be grouped with a couple of close by towns). It is a mix of mainly a Potteries accent (Stoke-on-Trent/Stafford) plus a bit of Scouse (Liverpool and environs) and Mancunian (Manchester). It is so difficult to place if you don’t know where I am from that when I gave evidence to the police and the officer had to put down what my accent was he jusst put down “no distinguishable accent”. Added to that, if I am with a group of people with a strong accent for as little as a week I find my self using bits of their accent. Try covering all that in some program that tries to place an accent.

gotta say this quiz got me totally wrong. I have lived in several parts of the US for large periods of time. It put me in one of the few parts I have never lived.

It’s a fun conversation-starter, like ‘what’s your sign?’, but not much more scientific.

I lived in Kent, UK, for one year. Which is the Standard. I am driven to believe that “Standard” accounts for “pardon, say it again?”. But they do not have identity card, so how do you expect to be able to separate real British from, say, republican rebels?

Isn’t it obvious? “You don’t have an accent” means “You have the same accent as people on TV.”

I think there is a notion of “standard” that applies to both British and American English speech. The Brits have “Received Pronunciation” or “RP,” which is (as I understand it) upper-middle-class London speech. American Standard (no, not the toilets) is Mountain States speech – the sort of speech that doesn’t immediately identify you as being from anywhere. As others have noted, the speech of many Northeasterners and Southerners immediately identifies them, as does the speech of Chicagoans and other Great Lakes Midwesterners. TV announcers usually speak Standard.

From what I have seen, Canada doesn’t have regional speech variation. Australia has some class variation, I believe.

Oh, FWIW, I took that quiz twice. There was one question that I dind’t quite know how to answer, because my speech is somewhat idiosyncratic. So I answered that one question differently each time I took the test, and every other question the same way. The first time I learned my accent is that of the West and the second time I learned my accent is that of Boston.

Go figure.

Stuart (32) says: From what I have seen, Canada doesn’t have regional speech variation.

Doesn’t sound right to me. I live in NH and there’s this region just north of here where the speech sounds quite different from just about anything in either Ontario or New Brunswick. That suggests regional speech variation to me.

“From what I have seen, Canada doesn’t have regional speech variation.”
There is some truth to this from Ontario west (although Northern/Eastern Ontario is a bit different from south/west). Newfoundland is not only distinct, with its Irish-sounding overtones, but distinct within its own regions (small fishing villages with – historically – not much communication) and other Atlantic provinces don’t sound very Ontario-like either.

And then there’s Quebec, of course. They speak just a bit different to the rest of us.

– marcel beat me to it.

FWIW, I and my wife took that test and it pegged us both exactly (me New Hampshire, and her Philadelphia). I thought for a little internet quiz the test was actually pretty good at identifying subtle vowel markings that most people don’t notice – neither of us talks with a stereotypical accent (I don’t rhyme “can’t” with “haunt”, or drop my “r”s. She doesn’t front her vowel sounds as much as a typical Philly resident would do).

And Michael Sullivan if you’re from California and people think you sound English you may want to consider speech therapy, you may have a speech defect. People think my Boston born son has an “English” accent when he speaks – he actually has Aspergers and simply doesn’t follow normal intonation patterns.

I thought that the Newfies had their own language called “screech”.

The test is Americocentric and pretty much useless for Brits and Aussies, I think. The ten questions are fine-tuned to pick out specific groups, and don’t work if you aren’t in one of those groups. Canadians who don’t speak Minnesotan (i.e. Newfies) will be missed too.

it would be much more useful if it would quiz us on how we pronounce “banana facile”.

I told them everything sounds the same to me (indeed it does) and they told me I’m from midwest. That’s the place where people with bad hearing get exiled, apparently.

I was told whichever one means you have a good radio accent.

Do Unfogged commenters roam the Internet in packs, now?

Axes of Unfogged! The Unfoggedtariat are upon you!

In fact, the only people in the world without an accent are people who’ve moved to Toronto from elsewhere in Canada, normally Edmonton, Nova Scotia or Hamilton.

Western Canada near Edmonton has an identifiable accent. You have to sort of scrunch up your mouth while you do the Eastern lilt with your voice, so it doesn’t lilt as much.

I never noticed the Pittsburgh accent growing up, but now when I visit my parents all the neighbors and the people interviewed and my relatives talk funny.

I think “no accent” is a clumsy way of saying “Standard American Dialect” (AKA Northeastern Ohio dialect). It’s still a dialect, of course.

Bag / vague is very rare and its also new. As I understand, “Bag” is pronounced “bayg”, “vague” is not pronounced “vagg”. I may have heard it around here but it’s the only Minnesotaism I don’t have.