Do you speak with an accent?

[Mr. DS]

I'm originally from the Western, MA area and moved out to RI several years ago.  The accents out here amuse me. 

arm=ahm
car=ca

Sometimes I catch myself using their dialect.  Do you speak with an accent?  If so what type?

[AndyC]

Accents are relative. Everybody has one, but people with the same accent don't notice it. I imagine I have some degree of the stereotypical hoser accent ("about the house" = "aboat the hoas"). My dad's is more pronounced, so I notice it.

[Ed, Ego and Superego]

Mine shifts to an embarassing degree.  My Mother is English, my father is from Virginia (but speaks a starnge hybrid accet), I have lived in Germany, Holland, Wyoming, and Oregon.  I spent significant time in England growing up, and talk to people from all over the world on the phone every day, many with limite dmanguage skills.  So I tend to slip all over the place, if I'm at my parents too long I start talking their accent. In Ireland started doing that.  With Americans I default to a "Good ol boy with a big vocabulary", and with foreigners I default to my carefully enunciated work voice without using any slang or idiom.  I can't help being a chameleon.
-Ed

[Derf]

It depends on the situation; I slip in and out of many different accents. My natural speech is pretty much TV announcer, middle-American. Many people I've met don't believe I'm from Texas because I don't have a drawl. I can have one when I want to, but I don't normally (except that I do use "y'all"; it's an incredibly useful, non-gender-specific pronoun). I also frequently slip into a New York Jewish accent. I love Yiddish and will use it despite not being Jewish. I also use most American dialects, several British dialects, Indian (the subcontinent, not Native American), the occasional Irish brogue (that one needs work), and a generic, totally unconvincing "Russian" accent. I also was a big fan of Bob & Doug Mackenzie, so I can do the hoser stuff passably well, too. Basically, I love words, and with that, dialects, so I listen closely and tend to have a pretty good ear for them. This is probably one reason my natural speech patterns have leveled out.

Our church was having a new photo directory done, and the photographer was from Brooklyn, with the typical accent. I had to stop myself several times from slipping into it while we were talking.

[Scott]

The answer is "yes". Because I have a cold at the moment.

Actually I grew up in Western New York State and in my later teens we moved into countryside in North-Central Pennsylvania were I may have picked up what many consider an accent. Some think I'm Canadian. I get the accent question often because I'm living in Southern New Jersey.

[AndyC]

Funny how you can pick up an accent. I remember going on vacation with my sister-in-law's French-Canadian family many years ago. After a week, I noticed I was speaking some of dat ac-CENT-ed EnGLISH myself. OK, I tried to spell it phonetically, but if you can't figure it out, think of the goalie from Slap Shot.

A similar example was the Mennonite accent I used to develop when camping with friends. I grew up in Ontario Mennonite country, and most of my friends were from the more mainstream branch of the church. Their parents and grandparents had a more conservative background, and the accents to match. We could all do good impressions of a thick Mennonite accent, but under normal circumstances, these guys looked and talked like anybody else, with maybe a hint of an accent. That is, until you got them together in the woods with a snootfull of booze and nobody to talk to but each other. It was like the Pennsylvania Deutsch accent resonated between them, building on itself as the weekend proceeded. Being outnumbered, I started slipping into it myself.

[asimpson2006]

My accent is General American which is AKA American Broadcast English.  Though at times I am close to having a Southern American English accent, since I used to talk to lots of people with that type of accent when I still did help desk.  I was proficient at rolling my r's at the drop of  hat.

 

[HappyGilmore]

I kinda speak with a "Philly" accent. 

The word "on" rhymes with "dawn" instead of "don."
Tomorrow is pronounced Tomorrah

and, most notably,

Water becomes "Wooder."

It's fun.

[Torgo]

I was born and raised in southwest VA and I don't realize how southern my accent is at times until I travel up north.

Of course my southern accent can't even come close to some friends of mine that are from Arkansas.

[CheezeFlixz]

No, but everybody else does.

[Killer Bees]

I don't believe so, but every time I leave my country, people tell me I  have an accent 

But, seriously, I've been told I have a very cultured Aussie/English accent, with none of the broadness that others have been accused of.  I guess since I talk a lot on the phone for work, I've had to sound professional, so I've just adopted a clearer way of speaking.

[Shadow]

I was once told that I had a slight Spanish accent, which is really weird, since Spanish is a second language to me and I don't even speak it all that well.

[Trevor]

Definitely so. 

When people hear me speak, they automatically assume that I am British, while I am actually of Rhodesian (now Zimbabwe) birth. My dad's father came from Cornwall, his mom from Holland and my mom's folks both came from South Africa, their folks from SA too and their folks from Holland. So I am of British descent: in my case, I came down without a parachute. 

All in all, a very mixed bag and I was adopted into that family so my lineage is very murky: I do know that I have some pioneer ancestors who invaded the country north of the Limpopo River in 1890 and called it Rhodesia after Cecil John Rhodes: some of these guys got their asses blown off in many battles up there, including the infamous one shown in the film Shangani Patrol. 

[ToyMan]

i'm from new hampshire, and i manage to mute my accent pretty well. however, if i get "social" at a party, or if i get really frustrated, my accent slips out. "THIS IS WIKKID FRIKKIN RETAHDID!", for example. also, sometimes when i say "hot", as in "hot water", it sounds like "hut".

it's a really weird accent, too. somewhere between a massachusetts and a maine accent. you might call someone named tina "tener", but you'll call martha "mahtha". makes no sense whatsoever.

[Mofo Rising]

For the most part I speak "American Broadcast Standard." However, I am from the West Coast, so when I pronounce the name Dawn it sounds exactly like Don. I do not have "aw" vowel in my lexicon, like many West Coasters. I can do it if I really concentrate, but it sounds forced. I also have a hard time trilling R's.

I did have one person tell me I sounded like I was Canadian. Not too surprising since I'm from Southeast Alaska, but it surprised me that he was able to place me so easily.