Accents

you are also from Hawaii too? cool

just reading it's funny!

Wow, looks like I've learned something else about me is apparently autism related.

Honestly this has been one of my favourite things about reading posts here is just ticking boxes in my life lol.

I've always felt my accent is so distant from family and region. I used to kinda convince myself and others who arent local or haven't lived here long that it's just because this area isn't typical to the region (which is true to some extent, it's got a lot of that old money/upper class and retired folk) but that's not really reflected in the everyman in this area and my parents certainly weren't from that background of wealth or high class so... It's not from my local living area.

I've been forcing my accent a little lately to how it *should* be, more as just a joke in the instances I talk to friends online because they like to joke about the stereotypical accent for my region so I play into it. But naturally it's not quite like that, disappointingly. No one I've met online has guessed my accent (Then I also meet people who aren't from the UK and just say my accent is 'English' as if we all sound the same lol).

I guess I have had a different environment though to my fellow locals because I haven't spent a lot of time communicating with my peers growing up so I've probably picked up much of my language from television or online chat and the like. Heck, I met a guy online who I recognise a twinge of a Welsh accent but he sounds VERY American. He's never been to America but he played games online for years and years almost exclusively with a small group of American friends. Just like how people who move to another country even in late life still pick up an accent, maybe those of us who don't interact with the public in our area much I guess instead pick up our accents from elsewhere.

My accent is Irish, but I'm a natural mimic and can change my accent if I need to. This skill is something I use everyday at work, for the kids, which keeps them entertained.

I was a child in Newcastle aged 3 to 12 so had a Geordie accent when we then moved to Lancashire. A phrase I remember from my time there that tickled me particularly is: 'if patter woz watter you'd o' drooned!'. Patter means lying/embellishing the truth, as far as I know 

Paper said:

I don't really have a definable accent, it's kind of a neutral mismatch of acquired mimicry.

Yes, I'm a neutral mismatch of accents too. People have often guessed I'm Welsh (even some Welsh people) even though I've only ever been there a few times

Hi. I think it's kind of funny that when I first saw your name I thought it seemed Hawaiian, but then I thought, nah, probably not likely, I just see it that way because I'm from Hawaii :) lol. 

I find some things more easily understood or expressed in certain languages than in others. for example:

talking about money - English

sharing feelings - castillian

sharing enthusiasms -Japanese

getting an intellectual point across- french

sarcastic humor - Italian

Also, for me,  languages are part of a peoples cultural heritage and they express something deep in the collective psyche that just cant be expressed using another language.

Singing Fado, for example, in, say German.. wont work on some deep pre-languange level.  it's spawned of Portuguese, its in the gestalt of it.

I can feel the various synaptic byways I use in my brain for different languages, as they flare into action when I speak them or hear them.

I would miss languages if they became obsolete, like loosing colors on the rainbow.

Here Hawaiian is coming back after it was almost lost for good when the missionaries came and forbade its use. It is such a lovely language!

I guess you can tell I really love languages.

I’ve met some hotties who are Geordies too - the men from Newcastle I’ve met are seriously hot 

My fav British isles accent is Gordie. Maybe it's more a dialect. I love the way it falls out and tumbles forward.

I cant understand it, yet it sounds as if I should and that tickles my brain to a state of glee! I could listen all day long!

I think this was because she played Mrs Thatcher in The Crown - yet Irish actress Anne Marie Duff, who played in the Magdalene Sisters, still retained her Irish Accent when she played Queen Elizabeth I 

I love that accent, it sounds so classy - even though I’ve lived in Manchester 21 years, I’ve still retained my Irish accent (it’s a very polite mix of Dublin and “Culchie” (from outside of Dublin) accent) but at least it’s not that horrible put-on South Dublin/Dublin 4 accent that is so pretentious - I love the real working class Dublin accent (like the dealers in Moore St) as my Granny on my Dad’s side was from ‘The Liberties” area of Dublin (the real “Dubs” are great people) and having lived in the country (my home County is Meath), almost every County in Ireland has its own distinct accent, for example, Meath, Louth, Cavan, Westmeath, Offaly, Laois, Cork, Limerick, Kerry, Mayo, Tipperary, Waterford, Wexford and Donegal 

Gillian Anderson has adopted that too

Joan Collins has this mid-Atlantic accent too - but I love the really SE England “posh” accent, it’s so classy - even though she’s from Melbourne in Australia and has lived in Paris, Kylie Minogue (worship) has this really classy English accent 

this was/is the case for me, surely.

I'm not from Notts but I am from the East Midlands. I use the word Duck a lot.

eg:  Now then duck. (Hello. How are you?)

My Great Uncle lives in Mansfield.

People in Nottinghamshire call each other 'Duck' - apparently. (an ex-Support Worker I had - originally from Mansfield - called everyone that)

I have the same accent as my family.  A working class regional accent. I do not sound posh at all.

Amerantin (former member) said:

A language, accent or dialect that can’t be used to communicate just seems pointless to me.

This is a really interesting thought - particularly as the non-textual aspects of language communicate important aspects that I frequently don't pick up until much, much later.

People said I sounded posh as well, because I always deliberately pronounced words and consonants and vowels. I also learned more from things like BBC radio/TV in the 80s/90s than I did from interaction with people where I live and back then it was all received pronunciation.

I don't really have a definable accent, it's kind of a neutral mismatch of acquired mimicry.