We’ve talked quite a bit here about the differing accents just here in the U.S. but I don’t know that we’ve ever talked about them over the pond, so to speak. My dearest husband and I are having a bit of a disagreement on this topic. HE seems to think that WE do no have an accent at all. That only you in England, Scotland, and Ireland (just to name a few places where English is spoken primarily ) do. Wait, he just told me that we have a subdued accent, and to qualify that, he said he was speaking more of my family here. Many people are hard pressed to figured out where in the U.S. we are from, for we have no distinguishable accent. Of course this can’t be said for all people of the U.S. His examples were in classically trained singers, they tend to “lose” their accent when singing. When we speak to people from Scotland or Ireland where they might have a thick accent (according to US of course…my addition 
) we have a difficulty understanding them, but they seem to not have any difficulty understanding us (I told him that it’s because we think far too much of ourselves here, but anyway). And BTW, my husband does feel that our not having an accent is more of a detriment rather than something positive…it’s like not really having much of a culture here. We’re too darn plain. Finally, he pointed out, that when people from Austrailia, Ireland, or England, etc. come to the U.S., Americans tend to think that their accent is “way cool” (oh, the way cool was from me too…DH just doesn’t speak that way 
), but when Americans tend to go to these other places, they don’t seem to think there is anything attractive in the way WE speak.
My goal here is to prove him wrong. So anything that you all can do to help me achieve that would be great. 
But seriously, I am interested in what you all “across the Pond” think about this. Do we here in the U.S. have an accent? Is it something that people in your countries wish to emulate from time to time…like are there American “wannabes” in your countries that go around pretending to have a “way cool” American accent? Discuss 
I’m not from an English speaking country, but I know english well enough to hear accents and being able to imitate them quite well in english. I acctually speak better than I write, this is due to the fact that I’ve had lots of training outside school, travelling, meeting people all the time, being in England, being in Ireland and being fortunate enough to have lots of english speaking friends. I only really get to practice writing in school and over the net like this.
I would say that everyone has an accent, not having a particular accent is an accent as well. I’d also say that if someone is to be considered as speaking english without accent, it should clearly be the one who speaks as close to the original accent (if there is such a thing, probably not because it has probably developed all the time). British english would be far more close to the original than American english however. American english has developed out of British english, so it can never be the original, and therefor it has to be considered as a new accent. At most, you could possibly be speaking American english without an accent.
We’re too darn plain
That alone identifies you immediately 
, you can almost hear it. Ofcourse American have an accent, usually you can spot it a mile off.
Young Ireland has settled into an accent that is usually identified a ‘mid Atlantic’. Go figure. It was initially mostly associated with the suburbs around the DART (commuter train) line around Dublin, it spreads though. :roll:
Considering its size, Britain has an amazing number of accents. The Scouser (Liverpudlian) is very different from near by Manchester, which again is very different from Birmingham. Here in South Wales you can tell what Valley a person is from by their accent, some of these valley are only a couple of miles apart! My Impression is that American regional accents cover a much larger geographical area. So there is less variance within a state than you would find in Britain, which is about the size of a US state - unless you’re talking Texas, which is about thirty times bigger. If this last statement surprises you bear in mind that the most popular format of atlas was designed by a Brit and he made the British Isles appear larger than they are. It wouldn’t do for the world to know how insignificant we really are!
I had read some place that the English spoken in Ireland a hundred years ago (not so much now due to exposure to mass communication) was far closer in form to the original English that had been forced upon them centuries ago than the English that was being spoken in England. In other words, the English language in England had continued to evolve, whereas in Ireland it had not changed much at all.
Also interesting (to me) was to read that many news broadcasters in the US are actually Canadian. The reason given was that Americans liked the way Canadians speak, i.e. their lack of accent - everyone in the US can understand what they say. At the time the article was written, most of the newscasters on CNN were Canadian. I don’t know if that’s still true. If this reasoning is true, then there must be several American accents, and Americans must be able to recognize, if not always understand, their various indigenous accents.
djm
Australians rarely ape American accents unless they are doing accents, but young Australians tend to pick up and adopt American phrases, somewhat to the annoyance of their elders. It’s just due to TV exposure I think; I believe young English kids now use Australianisms because they are heavily exposed to Aussie soapies, and also annoy their elders.
TV shows made in England, Ireland, Scotland or Australia would be shown in the other countries unchanged; nobody would have a serious problem understanding the accents, although thick regional accents can present a bit of a problem. It’s remarkable though how quickly you pick them up if you just persevere.
That Americans redo our TV shows for the American market is simply incredible to us. I heard recently that the British show The Office had been reworked for the American market. I simply can’t grasp why anybody would feel the need to do that, but Aussie actors going to America report that they have to acquire American accents to get work. To be honest I just don’t get it. What is the problem? The world is much richer if you present it with regional aspects unmodified and undiluted. We all speak English. Do most Americans just refuse to watch shows set in other English speaking countries and which present unmodified accents?
Of course I agree, with both of your statements. I think, in a way, it’s easy to slip into the thinking that just because we speak a certain way, that OUR way is the ONLY way, if that makes sense. My lack of an accent (the accentless accent, so to speak ) makes it easy for me to feel that everyone else has one, except for me…although I’m not quite that full of myself to truly feel that way .
But djm made a really interesting point as well…when you listen to Peter Jennings of ABC news speak on the air, people who aren’t aware of his Canadian roots don’t usually even know that he’s from Canada. In fact, his “lack of an accent” makes him VERY hard to place. Now, I grew up right on the border, on the St. Lawrence Seaway, about an hour south of Ottawa. And while there were quite a few people who used “aboat” and “eh” in their everyday speech, I wonder if growing up where I did also makes it hard for others in the U.S. to place ME (as well as my husband since we are from the same town). I don’t know…it just seems like an interesting concept to me, and one that I hadn’t thought of before.
Henke, I have to say that if you speak English better than you type it, you must be even more fluent than many who speak it as their first language Your posts are exceptionally well written despite it not being your first language.
For some reason, we Americans have “problems” with accents. There are some of us that are very good with them, but more often than not we are unable to understand a person who does not speak the same way we do. I’m not sure why this is the case…maybe it’s because we don’t have all that much exposure with people of other countries for the most part, and we are solely used to hearing ourselves speak (which also could be why we Americans tend to like to hear ourselves talk on a frequent basis ). I know that many foreign actors that come here have to “alter” their accents to be in American movies so we Americans can actually understand them. I find this to be irritating to be honest. But that’s the way it is.
But I wonder, if you get some American in another country that speaks English as well, and they are speaking with their American accent rapidly (as we Americans tend to do as well) do those of you in these other countries have a difficult time understanding? Or is this just something that we, as Americans, have a problem with?
WE do no have an accent…sounds Scottish to me!
Actually, most of the BBC shows I watch are on American PBS channels. It is only when a series has a marketable premise that it gets rewritten for the US audience. The jokes usually don’t get transferred, just the premise.
Personally, I do not find the accents difficult, but it is the jargon/colloquialisms that I don’t get. English shows are worst for this for me.
djm
It’s the whole thing of being plain and accentless…I have to acquire one where ever I can because I’m feeling like I don’t fit in
Oh pish posh! Everyone has an accent, depending on one’s point of view. Italians may think that American English is the oddest language in the world. Who knows? Now, while we’re talking about accents…lets move onto…dialects!!! 
Izz, you do have an accent - and a strong one, for somebody who speaks with a different one.
EVERYBODY thinks that they speak in a plain, undistinctive manner. And that anything that differs from that in a noticable way is an “accent”.
I used to know a fellow from York, who had moved to my part of California about 10 years before I first met him. Most of the time, he had a barely noticable (to us) accent - but every time he visited his family in England, he came back with a fully-refurbished Yorkshire accent and we could barely understand him for a couple of weeks. He said it was self-defense - when he spoke with his California accent they could barely understand him back home.
My tuppence worth -
Dana
I do understand what you are saying here, and I do agree. I tend to think that if I were to travel down to visit my relatives in Texas, that they would be very amused at my “northern accent”. But I’m more thinking of what I have been told…what accent I DO have is not distinguishable in that cannot seem to be placed in a certain area of the US by it (well, of course unless I’m back in the Philadelphia area, and then I start drinking “wooder” again ). I’m not southern, I’m not midwestern, I’m not New England. That’s more what I meant I do know that there are areas of the US that are like this…I don’t remember much of an accent in the Seattle area, and it’s my understanding that California is “accentless” as well (although I don’t know if that refers to the whole state). In fact, I’ve been assumed to be from California on many occasions, and I’ve never even been there. Go fig.
He said it was self-defense - when he spoke with his California accent they could barely understand him back home.
And this is what I am finding very interesting, and seems to be how the discussion here at Casa Izz got started to begin with. “He who knows nothing about accents” (otherwise knows as Mr. Izz ) seems to think that we are easily understandable…if we were to go to any English speaking country, people wouldn’t have a problem with our accent. I adamantly disagree with him on this, and I think that you have proven I am right (I can’t wait to let him know 
)
Mark was talking about accents differing from valley to valley in England. I think this holds true in the Boroughs in New York City. I’ve been told that there is a big difference between a Manhattan accent and a Brooklyn accent, for example. Although someone who knows better would be able to verify that.
I’d take their complaint with a large grain of salt - in my experience, no matter where I’ve gone in GB or Ireland nobody seems to have any problem understanding my accent (after all, they get it on TV). I’d guess that they were giving him a bit of stick for shifting away from his native accent.
Of course, it’s my understanding it isn’t too uncommon in the UK for college educated people to abandon their native accent for the “Received” pronunciation (what most Americans would think of as the “BBC” accent). I was working with a British engineering team for a while. We had one team member who made a point of his Yorkshire roots (very strong Yorkshire accent, dressed like a countryman, etc). The rest of the team had a mix of less distinctive accents that fell closer to the BBC ideal, including one team member whose diction, dress, and accent were so perfect that he wouldn’t have been out of place doing news for BBC - except when he was under extreme stress, when his speech reverted to pure Yorkshire. The first time I heard him under stress I wasn’t looking his way and couldn’t identify him by his voice because he sounded so different!
I don’t have the best ear for accents (odd, because if I’m in an area with a different accent I seem to pick it up almost effortlessly - put me in an area for a couple of weeks and people assume I’ve been there for years) but I’ve heard a LOT more variation between Cork and Dublin or York and London than between, say, Seattle and Los Angeles or San Francisco and Chicago.
But accents are bred out of isolation and travel time - and most of the major western US cities were settled by people from all over, after travel was relatively fast and inexpensive. Back when I was a kid, both the area I grew up in Nortern Californa (Shasta County, near Redding) and Bakersfield, several hundred miles south, had a “ghost” accent - a lot of the older generation were Dust Bowl refugees from north Texas or Oklahoma. (To this day, if I’m in that part of the US I revert to their accent without conscious thought). But it’s pretty well gone now - TV, radio, and immigration from Southern California have swamped it out.
The “West Coast” US accent is a blend, really - not too foreign to any other American dialect. It’d need decades to centuries in isolation to develop into anything too different from its roots.
The notion that Americans have no accent is baloney. Many Americans do. I haven’t got an accent, and most people from around here don’t, but I’ve met people from different parts of the USA, and note that they invariably have accents. The entire west coast has an accent, seems to me like. It reminds me of a Nebraska accent crossed with heaven knows what. Much of the East Coast, whether northern or southern, has that R-dropping thing common to modern England. The midwestern or ever what you call those states around Minnesota and Wisconsin sound more foreign to me than some non-Americans.
The Cajuns and Creoles, of course, have an accent, because they speak French. The same goes for other groups who have native languages besides English (with the exception of some American Indians).
The main places without an accent are Oklahoma, Arkansas, and part of Tennessee and Texas.
Hi Walden
Come to this side of the pond and your accent would definately be identified as American .
David
Thanks very much Izz, now couldn’t you have said this like two or three months ago so I could have showed it to my english teacher?
Seriously though, that made my day.
But people often say that, I’ve heard, that people from Sweden tend to speak very good english, don’t know why. Maybe because our own language fits it or something, and the fact that we have lots of English classes in school, and the fact that Sweden is apperantly the “most americanized country in the world” :roll: Plus, we probably don’t get to pick up as many bad habbits as native speakers. I myself am beginning to pick up a few bad habbits, part of it is your fault, people of C&F
Odd note - the first time I visited Sweden I noticed that a half-overheard conversation in Swedish had much the same rhythm and stresses as a half-overheard conversation in American English - more so than conversations in British English!
I mentioned this to my travelling companions (another American and a German), and they agreed with me, so it wasn’t just my deranged imagination. We also met more than a few Swedes who could have passed for US natives.
I suspect that the first observation (similar rhythm and stresses in Swedish and American English) helps the with the second - even if you don’t have a huge vocabulary, it may be easier to sound OK. As opposed to the many Indians I work with who speak excellent English (much better than the bulk of American HS graduates, in my opinion) but almost always have a noticably different accent.
Oh, that’s probably just because so many swedes went to inhabit the US. Maybe if English weren’t so popular, you’d all be speaking Swedish
But there might be something to this anyway. Kids around here often sound more american than british when they learn english in school, despite all the efforts of most teachers who prefer the british english. I’ve always assumed that it was because we are so influensed by US on the telly and everything, but when I think of it the american english might acctually be closer to swedish than british. I haven’t thought about it that much, and I have always been able to put on a british or irish accent just as easily as an american accent when I speak myself (probably because of the exposure to british and irish speakers), but when I don’t think about it, my accent would probably be a mix of british and american. Others around here are different though.