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What kind of accent do you speak with?

Mine is a bit odd. It's definitely a Midwestern accent, but some people also hear Great Lakes in there. I would blame the fact that growing up, I lived in Detroit when I was learning to talk so that might have had something to do with it. I'd say a mixture of Midwestern and northern cities.
 
Despite being Swedish I generally speak with a bit of an Essex accent, or when I spend too much time with Americans my accent changes, I'm told I sound like I'm from Chicago or sometimes Canada, I wouldn't really know though. Hehe.
No Swedish accent here though >8]
 
So this week, I've been told I have an accent after 15 years of being bilingual. Apparently some words I pronounce still have a Hispanic accent.
 
It gave me Illinois-ian accent, Missourian accent, and Floridian accent.

So normal.

Sent from my VS840 4G using Tapatalk
 
Apparently I have a California accent, even though I've never ventured farther west than Tennessee.

I always thought I had a general American accent with a dash of southern.
 
Sorry to bump a nearly 6 year old thread, but I was thinking about this randomly earlier today, and I came across this thread while I was idly browsing the forums.

Interestingly given that I come from a region with quite a strong regional accent (the Forest of Dean, in the South West of the UK), I’ve determined that I simply have an incredibly generic English accent. I thought I was developing a Forest-y twang with age, but my mum shot that theory down when I asked her, saying that I sounded nothing like a Forester whatsoever (my mum has a fair Forester accent), yet I also didn’t inherit my dad’s Kent accent either (my dad grew up in Kent, in the South East of the UK; not too far from London). She described both me and my sister as “accentless”.

As it turns out, what I thought was a “Forest-y twang” was simply my generic English accent growing less posh with age. When I was a child, I honestly sounded like one of those stereotypical British people from foreign films, with properly posh pronunciation (for instance, bath pronounced as “bar-th” and castle pronounced as “car-stle”) and enunciation of every sound without fail! These days, though, I seem to revert to more informal pronunciation, and my enunciation is far less frequent (although I occasionally do still enunciate).
 
Matt N said:
Sorry to bump a nearly 6 year old thread, but I was thinking about this randomly earlier today, and I came across this thread while I was idly browsing the forums.

Interestingly given that I come from a region with quite a strong regional accent (the Forest of Dean, in the South West of the UK), I’ve determined that I simply have an incredibly generic English accent. I thought I was developing a Forest-y twang with age, but my mum shot that theory down when I asked her, saying that I sounded nothing like a Forester whatsoever (my mum has a fair Forester accent), yet I also didn’t inherit my dad’s Kent accent either (my dad grew up in Kent, in the South East of the UK; not too far from London). She described both me and my sister as “accentless”.

As it turns out, what I thought was a “Forest-y twang” was simply my generic English accent growing less posh with age. When I was a child, I honestly sounded like one of those stereotypical British people from foreign films, with properly posh pronunciation (for instance, bath pronounced as “bar-th” and castle pronounced as “car-stle”) and enunciation of every sound without fail! These days, though, I seem to revert to more informal pronunciation, and my enunciation is far less frequent (although I occasionally do still enunciate).
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This is quite an interesting topic tbf. Whenever i have been to the west (near the welsh border) i have generally heard people with both very strong accents that somewhat sound a little welsh, and then other people (like my friend from Hereford) has an incredibly generic posh english accent.

I'd say my accent is a fairly standard english accent but at points hints of an South London accent in at points. But mostly standard with proper prounciation and i have been called "posh" by my ex-classmates.
I was born and bred in the town of Crawley, (next to Gatwick Airport in West Sussex) where most have a south london accent and are wannabe roadmen.

The wealthier areas who have a more posh south-east accent. I think the accent comes from the way my parents used to speak.
Honestly i wish had a cooler accent.
 
I speak Swedish, Romanian and English on a native level.

Swedish: In Swedish I have an incredibly weird accent, which nobody can ever pinpoint. I was born in the north, at 9 years old moved to the south and now I live in the west. My accent is a mess.

Romanian: My grandma was a Romanian teacher and taught me the formal Romanian. I speak a pretty standard Wallachian accent.

English: This is the weirdest of them all. I started 4th grade in an international school. Since then, English has been the language I mostly use. I had teachers from all continents and corners of the world. When I started at that school I got assigned a teacher from Manchester to teach me English. This teacher would spend multiple hours everyday to work with me and she got me fluent in 3 months. She had a pretty strong Mancunian accent. Some of her accent wore off on me. Some words I picked up from other teachers. For example, I pronounce "tongue" like an Indian and "water" like and Australian, etc. Non British people always say I am English. I even got into a bar fight with a Canadian and the lad started throwing all sorts of racist insults targeted at the English, as if I cared. No English person has ever called me English, nobody has been able to say where I am from but certainly not English.

I have a theory that you will pick up the accent of the person that teaches you the language. For example, a classmate started at that school at the same time and got assigned an Argentinian English teacher. He now speaks like her, totally different from my accent.
 
I have a Midwestern accent that used to be more along the lines of the Hoosier Apex before I moved south and got relentlessly heckled about the way that I spoke. I eventually learned to adjust the way that I say certainly words and syllables, so it's more normalized now.

On a side note, I'm always amazed by the variation in accents within the UK. They change so incredibly quickly as you move throughout the country. I will never forget my first Stoke City match. It was an early match at home and we grabbed breakfast in a nearby pub (Harvester Trentham Lakes for all the Stoke supporters on here). They were playing Man City and there were a few visiting supporters also getting breakfast. I was in line to get some toast and a Man City fan behind me said something to me. I've been to Manchester and I don't think it was a Mancunian accent. It sounded more Scouse, oddly. Regardless, I didn't catch a word he said, so I asked him to repeat. He repeated. Still nothing. To this day, I have zero clue what that man said to me. Not even one word. He was a hulking lad and I really didn't want to make him repeat himself again nor reveal myself to be an American, so I paused for a second and, in a panic, said, "... yeah!" with a little head nod and carried on. No clue. But the fact that the Stoke accent is different from the Mancunian accent which are both incredibly different from the Scouse accent is just wild to me.
 
Indy said:
On a side note, I'm always amazed by the variation in accents within the UK. They change so incredibly quickly as you move throughout the country.
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I think accents are a pretty European (or old world) thing overall. Arabic also has some pretty different accents as well as many other older languages. In the languages I am comfortable with (Swedish, Romanian, Norwegian, Danish and French) they all have drastically different accents. Even absolutely tiny countries such as Denmark has two completely different accents depending on which island you are on.

Though, I think most of these extreme accents are slowly dying. My mates speak different than my grandma does. Slowly with more television, social media and greater higher education the "formal" accent gets adopted. It's pretty sad.

The US doesn't have so great accent diversity. Probably AAVE is the most different one, I struggle with this one. The other ones are pretty easily understandable. Within the US the most interesting state accent wise is in my opinion Missouri. Half of it speak a pretty hard southern accent and half a Midwestern plains accent. Basically split in half by the I-44. This always fascinated me.
 
Being a military child and spending my formative years in multiple places, I have a pretty nondescript accent. I'd say that the places that I've picked up the most from have been Washington state, and by coincidence, Washington, D.C. which I currently live right next to.
 
I don't think i have an accent, but the NYT accent quiz said I have a Californian accent even though I have never visited California
 
Matt N said:
Sorry to bump a nearly 6 year old thread, but I was thinking about this randomly earlier today, and I came across this thread while I was idly browsing the forums.

Interestingly given that I come from a region with quite a strong regional accent (the Forest of Dean, in the South West of the UK), I’ve determined that I simply have an incredibly generic English accent. I thought I was developing a Forest-y twang with age, but my mum shot that theory down when I asked her, saying that I sounded nothing like a Forester whatsoever (my mum has a fair Forester accent), yet I also didn’t inherit my dad’s Kent accent either (my dad grew up in Kent, in the South East of the UK; not too far from London). She described both me and my sister as “accentless”.

As it turns out, what I thought was a “Forest-y twang” was simply my generic English accent growing less posh with age. When I was a child, I honestly sounded like one of those stereotypical British people from foreign films, with properly posh pronunciation (for instance, bath pronounced as “bar-th” and castle pronounced as “car-stle”) and enunciation of every sound without fail! These days, though, I seem to revert to more informal pronunciation, and my enunciation is far less frequent (although I occasionally do still enunciate).
Click to expand...
A Foresty accent? The imagination soars as that sounds quite mythical.

Having pinpointed Forest of Dean on the map, I am going to assume with full confidence that you sound like Long John Silver … probably saying, “Arr, Jim lad” a lot. 😏
 
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