Post in your accent!

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One thing I was surprised to discover was the Dutch accent is so close to the "standard" American accent. Same stress and rhythm in other words. One of the offices I clean had a Dutch guy working there and he used to listen to Dutch radio on his computer. American English has a strong Dutch influence though. You are so right Nan about the accents in the southeast USA. I've read you can figure out what part of England or Ireland or Scotland someone's ancestor's came from from the accent. I grew up and live in SW Virginia in the Blue Ridge Mountains, which is part of the Appalachian Chain (formed one billion years ago). My accent isn't as strong as some here,who say har for hair and thar for there but once I said "red panda" and someone mocked me, saying "raid payundah".

How's it goin', eh? Beauty.

I'm from Southern Ontario. I've always been fascinated by regional accents. The further afield you go from the hugely populated areas, the more pronounced the accent / dialect. The only English-speaking Canadians I have been unable to understand were from Newfoundland. The roots of the people there are from Scotland, but they've developed a language of their own that isn't easily recognized by anyone "from away," as they put it.

Now I live in the north of Florida, which some people say isn't actually the South, even though it's further south than the states normally associated with the title. There have been only two people I've been unable to understand since I came here, and they were both African-American. They spoke in both ebonics and with Southern accents so thick, I couldn't make out a single word they said.

I'm a radio announcer, so I have tried to quell any accent or regionalisms, so as to sound neutral. I once worked with a guy who voiced a series of spots for a grocery chain in Western New York state. They rejected his work because he was pronouncing "dollars" the way it is spelled. You know, like the rest of the people pronounce it. He had to pronounce it "dahlaz" before they would accept it.

My wife, who was born here, has no Southern accent. Her relatives on her father's side are from Minnesota, and she can do a dead-on impersonation of her grandmother and her aunt Lolita. Despite living here, there is no way that either of us will ever address a group of people as "y'all" or refer to something they have in common as "y'all's." That's just wrong!

Awright pal,howzitgaun ? Zis ra kin' o 'hing ye waant ?

(That's exaggerated Glaswegian/west central Scotland accent.Most of us modify it,especially if
we're speaking to non-locals,otherwise it would unintelligible !)

I wos witing for a fread loike this. I foght Oi'd never see a di loike dis. O'im not really much for ve Beatles. Oi prefer ve Kinks. Oi hite talkin on ve bloody phone. De bimbos on ve uver end don't understand a bloody word Oi siay. De really need to git vier ears chicked.

Can you make mine out, without looking at my username?

There's a fair bit of dialect in the North East as well, besides the accents. There's a bit of Scots and Danish in there for added confusion.

My own accent is a mishmash of Southern, Durham and Manc., but it's fairly nondescript and I can't represent it textually anyway.

Sounds like the East End, London or perhaps Manchester.

Oi understand yeu ab'slutley seuper crist'l cleeaa

WOW, bingo!

Correct!

Right. No accent.

If the question was for me, Amarillo, Lubbock, Odessa, and Fort Worth, at various times. (East Texas = Foh-at Wuth, West Texas = Forrt Wurrrth, Amarillo = Oh, you know, that place next to Dallas. )

I don't actually have an accent, although if I was really being a purist I could post phonetically.

Not in an accent but words we use in north east England that you might be able to understand in Norway.

Gan = go
Bluey = lead (the metal)
Gansey = cardigan/sweater
Force = waterfall

So yer want us t' write like wer talk in ouwer arn accents de yer.

I am a bit confused how I should write, especialy since I have lately been trying out different accents and I typicly try to speak without with an Aussie accent. But I will see if I can with how my speaking patterns differ from an english person I knew.

Oi so this is maiself trying to wrright in mai aussie accent.

I could type like Kath and Kim, but I would only speak like that if mocking. Maybe I will reflect on this a bit more and moin and other's accents a bit more.

Howzit. (That's as far as I'm going to go with phonetic representation of my accent.)

The South African accent(*) is flatter than the standard English accent, with variations on vowel sounds.

For example, the short "a" sound comes across as a short "e", so: South African = Seouth Effrican. In some regional accents, "Sexy Eyes" can sound like "Sexy Ar*e", which is mildly amusing

Then there's a similarity with the New Zealand way of pronouncing short "i". Phonetically it is represented as the upside-down "e", and is a flat sound. My English aunt couldn't understand me when I asked for milk unless I mimicked her pronunciation.

I tend to speak in a less-flat accent, mainly because I have family from the UK and it was drilled in that we should open our mouths when we speak.

I'm a good mimic with a lot of accents, local and international. German, English, Cockney, Glaswegian, Greek, Russian, French, Australian, etc.

US and Canada accents are harder, and I end up sounding like a strangled Australian.

Edit: Charlize Theron changed her accent completely to get work in Hollywood. She only sounds local when she speaks in her native Afrikaans (which is a derivation of old Dutch, but more gutteral). Arnold Vosloo (the original Mummy in the Brendan Fraser film of the same name) has not changed his accent much since he's worked in Hollywood.

(*) I must apologise for not mentioning that white people only comprise about 9% of the South African population, so I was speaking of the white South African accent. Black South Africans sound completely different, as English is often a third or fourth language to them. English may be the de facto language of the country, but it is only one of the eleven official languages. The two biggest languages for mother-tongue speakers are Xhosa and Zulu (**), with a number of our citizens able to speak as many as seven languages. White South Africans tend more to speak only two: English and Afrikaans.

(**) Nelson Mandela is a native Xhosa speaker. The current president, Jacob Zuma, is a Zulu speaker.

heh I love Glaswegian accent, it's so hilarious. every freaking sentence sounds like a question, always puzzles me lol.

I definitely sound at least a bit slavian when I speak English, and I like to roll the r's sometimes just the fun of it. I'm a very lazy speaker though so I've picked up a few influences that make speaking less bothersome, I glottalise a lot - picked that up while working in bars in London. I've been told that in extreme cases it sounds like I have hickups :p

some examples:
Waterloo = Wa’erloo
City = Ci’y
A drink of water = A drin' a wa'e
A little bit of bread with a bit of butter on it = A li'le bi' of breab wiv a bi' of bu'a on i'.

I think I listen to too much grime to lose this, although I'd much prefer to speak in some more elegant way, like the Queen or Tony Blair :p