How aware are you of your accent? (Read the whole OP before answering, yeah that's right, all of it)

[Snicks]

I hate when people over generalise "British" accents as Queen's English. England itself has a ridiculous amount of different accents and then there's Scotland, Northen Ireland and Wales to consider...

Anyway, I have a Welsh valleys accent, not as ridiculous as the "wine you say en?" or "where to she now?" of most of wales but still enough to make me sound like an idiot on xbox live and the like.

As for accents i like, I've always thought the Irish accent was pretty cool and i love Russian accents for some reason.

 

[The Iron Ninja]

And to make a stunningly intelligent and polite statement that will surely fire the intellectual...fires of all Escapistians: Am I the only one who finds American accents bearable, even - dare I say it - cool, on TV, but finds them nails-on-a-chalkboard annoying in person? I discovered this on my recent trip to the United States of Americana.

Seeing as no-one has answered you, I guess the task of firing said intelectual fires falls down to me.

I find it kind of annoying on TV as well, I cringed through alot of the news coverage of the inaguration (not so much Obama, but all the people on the street they interviewed. Maybe I just don't like seeing people being happy)

A suprising ammount of people don't seem to think (As I do) that the Australian accent is an earsore. Maybe for my part it's just a deep set hatred for my own accent which leads me to look poorly upon the accents that sound most like it. I don't know.

 

[Beffudled Sheep]

People have said that i have a strange Irish New jersey accent. I have heard it myself and it is true. It is impossible to describe it so if you want you can use your imagination. I also love Irish,British,Russian,and some other European accents. I also hate deep south accents (American deep south). I am also American.

 

[cprs_]

Well, I'm Australian and as far as we go, I have a more 'proper/Britsh' accent (it's a 'car-sle' for castle, not 'cass-le'). I'm currently spending my leave in Germany at the moment and my accent led me to a young lass who spent six months in Australia and her phone number, so I'm going to have to say that I love my accent, because it's finally paying off.

As one of the posters above mentioned, I'd have to say that the Kiwi and South African accents annoy me a bit. The European countries tend to have a more alluring accent when speaking English in my opinion.

 

[ManiacRaccoon]

I put plenty of thought towards my accent, if only how to change it. I've wanted to be a voice actor for quite some time now, since my grandmother made a 6 hour tape of a Bugs Bunny marathon for me. After a lot of practice I can change my voice really well and without much or any preparation. Occasionally I exercise this on xbox live, usually to quote things or do a better Arnold Cantspellhislastname, so um, Governator impression. On one occasion I played campaign for a few hours with a couple of people I met in matchmaking, I had already been using a British accent (dunno what region, but it sounded sort of like Wakko Warner, because I had been watching Animaniacs recently), I kept the accent up until one of them made a remark about it, I can't remember what he said, nothing bad, but something about being able to play with people who speak differently, I chose that moment to drop the accent and say that I wasn't really British, the guy who has remarked on it sort of freaked out, and said something like "Next thing we know this guy will say he's married!" referring to the other person in our party, who did sound rather young, I wouldn't say he sounded 12 or anything but it did sound younger than most, anyway other person says "Actually..." causing the first guy to freak out more, because the third guy turned out to be married and in his 20's.

It was a funny moment and really good for my confidence in my voice acting abilities, I had them convinced I was British for over 3 hours, and we talked a fair amount too, I didn't just say something every now and then.

 

[Jamanticus]

Is anyone here happy with their accent? Anyone who says, 'I have this accent from here, and everyone I know says I sound like a typical person from here, which makes me feel awesome.'?

EDIT: I'm not even happy with my accent, as evidenced in previous posts.

 

[ManiacRaccoon]

I would say I would prefer to have a different accent naturally, but I expect I would say the same if I was born with a different one. It's nice to change it every once in a while though, it's interesting, but it's usually only good because it's different from the norm, probably I only don't like it sometimes because I've talked that way all my life, so I guess I take it for granted.

 

[Saskwach]

Seeing as no-one has answered you, I guess the task of firing said intelectual fires falls down to me.

I find it kind of annoying on TV as well, I cringed through alot of the news coverage of the inaguration (not so much Obama, but all the people on the street they interviewed. Maybe I just don't like seeing people being happy)

A suprising ammount of people don't seem to think (As I do) that the Australian accent is an earsore. Maybe for my part it's just a deep set hatred for my own accent which leads me to look poorly upon the accents that sound most like it. I don't know.

Which accent are we speaking about: broad, general or cultivated [http://www.convictcreations.com/research/languageidentity.html]? I sometimes dislike broad - and the foreign obsession with what is spoken by only 10% of our people - but I can't really hate it as it has a psychological link in my mind with my father, who is both a dinkum, true blue Aussie, and a very well educated man - so the best of both worlds. Cultivated is nice, but again I have a personal connection via my grandmother and great aunt whose speech could only be picked as Australian by Australians (everyone else would guess British). I'm quite sad cultivated is dying out actually. Which leaves us with general - the 80%. I like it - but then I speak it. There's something sad about having such bland pickings in our country's accents, though (Australia shows the least variance in accents of any region in the world).

 

[Bored Tomatoe]

I was born in Tennessee and raised in Georgia, but I live right outside of atlanta, so I guess that it is fairly non regional american with a kind of southern twinge.

 

[Booze Zombie]

I've got one hell of an accent. My fellow Welsh think I'm either American or English and the American's seem to think I'm "bluty Harry Pottor".

Basically, I'm half English and half Welsh with Scottish and Spanish ancestory... so people do sometimes have trouble understanding me.

 

[Hunde Des Krieg]

I sometimes do catch a twang in my speech and it unnerves me a little. It also becomes apparent when I talk with someone who uses different colloquialisms. Like my cousins, the use terms like dank and bomb, and this confuses me, Cuz I still use terms like awesome and bitchin.

 

[Saskwach]

if you are from South Australia and you go over to America they usually mistake you for an English person, its mainly the east coast of Australia that speaks like Paul hogan.

Though a common assumption, this is untrue; linguists have found that Australian accents have almost no variance according to geography. Instead they vary much more according to gender and 'ideology' or as I think it should be called 'how you'd like to portray yourself'. Accents are also not determined by class (something that I'd say is a good thing; there's a great deal of underlying class grudges inherent in other regions where accents do vary by social status). See my link above for more.

 

[Klagermeister]

The only "accent" I have is how I say mountains.
I live in Colorado, so I say it fast to save time, and it sounds like
"Moun-nns".
So, in the broad spectrum,I'm not very aware of my accent.

 

[The Iron Ninja]

A suprising ammount of people don't seem to think (As I do) that the Australian accent is an earsore. Maybe for my part it's just a deep set hatred for my own accent which leads me to look poorly upon the accents that sound most like it. I don't know.

Which accent are we speaking about: broad, general or cultivated [http://www.convictcreations.com/research/languageidentity.html]?

General.
Especially when it's from younger people.

I happen to actually like Broad in retrospect, maybe just when it's coming from older males though, I'd have to see a video of a female or a young Australian speaking in broad before I write broad off as all right by me, since I might find it annoying not being spoken by an awesome old guy.

And to me, cultivated doesn't really sound like an Australian at all, but that might have just been the actress in question.

China called they want their wall back

Hey, if you don't like it, the rest of the Off-Topic's front page is filled with one sentence OPs for you to snuggle up to. Don't let me stop you.

And you can tell China I'm not giving them their wall back. Not until they give me a Panda.

 

[BGinsanity]

Never gave too much thought to my accent, some of my out of state buddies say I have a "city" accent. Yea....not really sure what that means but i suppose its better than the people I live around. Here im Maryland people tend to say "warsh" instead of wash and "warter" instead of water. That gets on my nerves........

 

[Mookie_Magnus]

I don't have much of an accent, actually. I grew up too far south (in America) for me to have a "Deep South" accent, and if I do have one, it's never been mentioned, and I've been around the country. I do, though, have a somewhat...odd accent I put on certain words. I've never heard anything like it, and I can't really put it into text. Also, I'm an accent mimic. A day or two somewhere and I pick it up, generally.

Accents I can't stand? The aforementioned Deep South accent, y'all. It just makes me ill.

I love British accents, like Yahtzee's. And Scottish, as well. Mmm...foreign accents.

Similar situation..
I've never picked up the Texas accent even though I've lived here most of my life..maybe it's because I'm a New-Englander by birth and I deliberately not picked up the 'Texan' accent.

Off topic, I thought that Yahtzee's imitated South African accent in his most recent video (Farcry 2) was rather humorous.

 

[rekabdarb]

apparently i have a child molester's accent... whatever that means...

So apparently i sound like a child molester thats the only accent i have