Do you have an accent?

LOL - thanks for reminding - yes we pronounce 'about' like 'aboot'. The Saturday night live skit where the two budds are drinking beer, has it about right. Of course there's other regions of Canada that has their own flair.....we also have the French Canadians too.

I have an east London accent which is co ckney.

My hubby is posh English.

My kids have been brought up in Scotland so can do all three lol they float in and out depending on who they are talking to.

Extract from my five year old a week or so ago he was speaking in a posh voice.

'mum, I know how to take teeth out ! Punch someone in the gob'. Gob being very common so it sounded funny at the time....

I live in Pennsylvania, but I speak italian a lot so i have a bit of an accent. people always call me out on it.

I expect the computer techs think I have a rather brusque accent.

No accent heeya. I speak like a nawmal Bostonian.

God my accent I hate....

I am from the east coast of Scotland and its typically known for us East coasters to have a very broad accent/twang.

My dialect is Dundonian and its the most horrible axxent ever. My parents are not broad Dundonians so I do not speak in my native twang. A lot of people can not place my accent. Dundonians say "eh" a lot start/middle/end of a conversation. Then there is our reknown phrase "eh, eh want eh peh" TRANSLATION "yes, I want a pie"

Anyways I hate my dialect but cant really do anything about that I guess

Hey Laura its a great accent ! My daughter does a Caithnesian accent its more Irish than Scottish and I really have trouble understanding her so have to ask her to speak English lol.

I'm a born and bread Canadian, but I've moved around a lot so I've picked up a few regionalisms, for example, I have to force myself to say remember instead of 'member (Ottawa valley thing), but everyone tells me I sound American. I get that all the time when I travel, but I get it at home too, when people ask me how long I've been in Canada - they're always surprised when I say I was born here. I blame it on a speach therapist I had when I was 5 - 8 who was American, that and watching too much American TV when I was a child.

About the funniest thing I ever experienced was about a decade ago now, when I made a road trip through the Atlantic provinces as a summer vacation. I stopped at the miner's museum in Cape Bretton, and took the tour that takes you under the ocean into an old mine. The tour was led by an old miner who had to be in his 70's and he had the thickest Cape Bretton accent you've ever heard. I could barely understand him, but I wound up translating what he said into "english" for a bunch of Japanese tourists who were hopelessly lost.

And for the record, it's not a couch, or a sofa, it's a chesterfield.

Splitimage

I sense a bit of regionalism couched in that comment

I always think I sound pretty anglo-Canadian when I speak English, but people outside of Québec tell me my English 'sounds French', and people in Québec tell me that indeed my English does 'sound English'. I still consider myself pretty accent-less when it comes to speaking English- any remnants of my old accent kind of faded when I moved to Canada, and I moved here young enough that I hardly had an accent to begin with.

When I speak French I sound Québécois. I've grown accustomed to far too much local slang/manner of speaking that my French is nearly undecipherable at times to someone who have their French from elsewhere. I try to tone it down because people really do get confused, lol. Words get very smashed and slurred together.

French really influences vocabulary when speaking English.

For example, a general store or a corner store is called a dep, a newspaper is called a journal, a notebook is called a cahier, a combo meal (burger with fries or something) is a trio, 'fries with gravy and cheese' is poutine, a winter hat is a tuque (I think that's common throughout Canada?), the subway/underground is called the métro, etc. Of course, an English-speaker here is 'an anglo'. Some sentence structure also gets a little muddled up with people who switch between French and English a lot.

Because of langauge laws, store names are also different here- KFC is PFK, Shopper's Drug Mart is Pharmaprix (learnt that on a recent trip to Ottawa!), Staples is Bureau en Gros. Those are the most well-known examples.

So, even if you're an anglo in Québec, French still changes how you speak English. Even my most anglo friends here find themselves occasionally switching into moments of French.

I went to college with a guy that was a linguist. We'd sit with our little group, talking in between classes, and after 4 weeks into the semester, he had to ask me where I was from, because he couldn't figure my accent out.

I grew up in New Jersey until I was 5. Then we moved to North Carolina. Then in 5th grade we moved to the 'country' part of North Carolina.

Then I went to an HBCU (Historically Black College/University) and picked up some 'Ebonics.'

Depending on my mood, most of the time my accent is a mix of Jersey/Hillbilly, but if I get excited, everything gets mixed. When I get into a heated discussion, I have more of a Jersey accent. It's when I start yelling, that the hillbilly really comes out (maybe b/c hillbillies are always yelling at each other?).

The one southern word I could not live without would be, y'all. I use that word waaaay too much. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Y%27all

OMG, I have never even heard of that word!!!! I thought couch and sofa were the only options. Guess I live in a small world, lol.

Oh good one Queen. Y'all is a staple for sentences. I couldn't live without it.

Even though I don't use the word 'chesterfield' my mother used to call it that. I wonder where the word came from?

I have part midwest part southern. I say some words with a Nebraskan accent which there isn't much of but since I moved to Arkansas I have developed a small accent much to the delight of my Nebraska friends. They love to hear me talk and tell me say certain words.

Jan

Here in Arkansas when you are going to go somewhere you are fixin to go somewhere, shopping carts are buggies, oil is owl, if someone is taking you by car somewhere they are carrying you there and that is just a few things that took me awhile to get used to when I moved here.

Jan

yes i hav a canadian accent lol

Main Entry: sofa Part of Speech: noun Definition: couch

Synonyms: chaise longue, chesterfield, convertible couch, davenport, daybed, divan, futon, love seat, ottoman, settee, sofa bed, window seat

I have a bit of a Texan accent, which is definitely Southern, but I'm one of those people who unconsciously pick up the accent of whomever I am speaking with....so I have a lot of accents...lol

That sounds pretty common, by that I mean I meet a lot of folks like that. I tend to pick up intonations more, but then, maybe its just that I grew up with so much music around. Hmmmmm. Any other "sentence melody" people out there?

I pick up regional vocabulary more than I do other accents.

Wow, this thread grew!

I just came back from the northernmost coast of Michigan, straight across the way from Canada. They say that "Yoopers" speak with a Canadian accent i.e. "Ya to da UP, eh!", but I didn't hear any of the locals speak like this - they sound just like I do

I have a southern Ontario accent... I have no idea what defines it, but I know my cousins out west sound completely whack compared to everyone here, to I bet they think the same of us Ontarians.

I had lunch at a steakhouse in Tennessee once. I ordered skim milk, because I'd never tried it before, and the waitress looked at my parents with these huge eyes and said, "Sheh wahnts skiiem?" I burst out laughing, she was the first person I'd ever heard with a southern accent in real life.