What's your favourite accent?

[Patricia55]

This month has been great for bookings... if a little tough on my ears 😉  [NB not complaining!!]

Out of 6 guests, all but one had English as their mother-tongue, the other was French. The accents were: California, RP English, Dublin, Belfast, Welsh. To be honest, I'm not sure it's any harder for me to decipher a foreign accent than an “English” one! Ah, it's all good, keeps me on my toes, love a good accent, me. I rather pride myself on figuring out from someone's accent, as to where they're from 🙂

Does anyone else enjoy accents?  Any favourites? 🙂

[Ann72]

@Patricia55 I love this subject, too!  I adore all American accents, though they are less distinct than they used to be, but since my listings are in Maine, I get the most enjoyment out of that one.  Here's a visual for you.

(Wrinkles are what y'all probably call whelks.)

[Sarah977]

@Ann72  When I drove through the US Deep South years ago, they had a string of gas stations called "Hep-U-Sef", which totally cracked me up.

[Patricia55]

@Sarah977 

I bl**dy love “Hep-U-Sef” - might have to put that on the biscuit tin 😉 Also like the contraction “I'ma” instead of “I'm going to”. I read somewhere that Americans have a “lazy gift for abbreviation” but I suspect that's what people all over the world do, it's a bit of laziness. Here's a good Geordie one that some kid apparently wrote in a composition: “Wadwatee.” = We had our tea.

[Sarah977]

@J-Renato0  I had a French Canadian boyfriend for awhile who spoke totally fluent English. But he used a "D" sound for the "th"-dis and dat, as most all the Quebecois do (whereas the French say zis and zat.) I asked him, since he pronounced all the rest of English correctly and had been watching English language TV since he was a kid, why he couldn't say "th". He told me he could, and then said perfectly, "this and that".

I asked why he didn't pronounce it like that, then. He was, unfortunately, quite homophobic, and his answer was "because it makes me sound gay".

[Patricia55]

@Sarah977 

Wow, so, deliberate mispronunciation as an expression of machismo?! Unbelievable... on second thoughts: SO believable 😉

[J-Renato0]

@Sarah977  @Patricia55 

I go for "Diz" and "Dat" because this way I can speak more naturally and usually I can be understood! It is the only reason... 🙂 

I do not dare to "impersonate" any kind of accent because it may sound ridiculous!
I am afraid that if I try to speak RP in the UK or anyother country, they will thing that my RP accent stands for "Redneck Pronuciation" 🙂

[Ana1136]

@Patricia55very interesting subject 🙂 I love languages, besides Macedonian I speak English, Spanish, German and Slovenian but I can only differentiate British from American English. I know when some other accent sounds different but I can't tell from where specifically in a country people are. To be honest when I hear British English I feel like someone is sticking needles in my ears, maybe because we were learning American English and I had a classmate who only spoke British and i disliked him so now I dislike the sound of it 😄 But I usually don't have a problem to understand different accents. The only problem I have had was with a person from Macedonia who spoke Macedonian (my first language) but lived in Greece and I couldn't understand a single word. I felt a bit embarrassed to be honest but it was so different, like nothing I've ever heard before and let me tell you even though we are a small country every city here has different accent and it still wasn't even similar. For a moment I was questioning if it was even Macedonian. And to be honest I feel more comfortable hosting in English than in Macedonian, I can express myself better that way. 

[Jessica-and-Henry0]

@Ana1136 

I know exactly what you mean!!! Korea also has regional dialects - a few not only sound very different but also use different words making it quite difficult to understand...... It took me a couple years before I could understand more than half what my paternal grandparents were saying 🙂 

[Patricia55]

@Ana1136 

Wow, you're a polyglot!  I have an old friend from Slovenia who's the same; she speaks fluent Italian, English and, I think, French (and of course, Slovene).  It constantly amazes me how she does it - and you too!  How did you come to learn so many languages?  Me, I have some French, Spanish, Italian... but I can't keep them up 😞  I guess it's easier to focus on English these days (btw, don't worry about the accents!).  I know we Anglophones are pretty spoilt... I always think we should make more effort with other languages.

[Ana1136]

@Patricia55 I learn by listening, it is very easy for me. I am learning Turkish at the moment. And I only took classes in English and German (we all do here) but even those I learned by watching TV and listening. I can't learn any other way. Fortunately I don't mix them up, but I don't know if I can learn anything more without starting to mix up. People who speak English may not feel the need to learn any other language because so many others already learn English and it is like the universal language. But learning a new language improves the bran function no matter at what age you start so I feel even if people might not need it for speaking, it is still helpful in so many other ways. Plus, it is so fun to listen to people who don't know you understand them 🙂 

[Patricia55]

@Ana1136 

I totally agree.  I actually feel rather ashamed by the general lack of language skills amongst British people.  Also, some of our foreign guests speak better English than we do 😕

[Jessica-and-Henry0]

Ohh~ I'm so envious of you @Ana1136  - you seem to have the "gift". Of course it requires a lot of time and effort but even so there are people who just seem to *pick up* languages better than others. 

Let me know if you ever decide you want to add Korean to the mix~ Henry and I can be your pen pal and you can practice your Korean on us 🙂 

[Ana1136]

@Jessica-and-Henry0 I would love to learn it some day, it is very different from all the other languages I've learnt. But that's what makes it very difficult 🙂 Not that I am scared of difficult but it would take more time to learn it. Also the alphabet is so different. I admire people who know such different languages, for example English and Korean, there is nothing similar ( or maybe there is I just don't know :)). 

[Sarah977]

@Ana1136  I wish I could learn by listening. I'm not an auditory learner at all, but visual- if I hear it, it goes right through one ear and out the other. If I see it written down, I retain it.

Last year I took my car to a mechanic shop I'd passed many times, but never used. But my car was having problems right near there, so I went in. I started talking to the mechanic in Spanish, but he could hear I wasn't a native speaker and right away asked, in totally unaccented American English, if it would be easier for me in English. I thanked him , and he set his employee to work on my car. I said "You must have lived in the US?" He said "No, never, why?" I said he spoke English like a native American. He told me he'd been watching English language TV since he was a kid. Then he told me he was also teaching himself Japanese and German, because he really wanted to travel and wanted to be able to converse in those countries. 

I was so impressed. This guy, who looked to be in his early 30's, just looked like your average (and quite fat) grease monkey. You can certainly never judge a book by its cover.

[Ana1136]

@Sarah977 definitely, we will always be surprised by the ones we least expect. When I started college we had a lady in her fifties start with us and we were all wondering why would she start a 6 year faculty at that age and start building a career after that, especially here where it is so difficult to establish yourself early on (because of politics and corruption unfortunately). She said that she always wanted to be a doctor but life just got in the way and she finished in time while being one of the best students of the generation and she now works at the clinic. She is a true inspiration, usually the everyday people we meet can inspire us the most 🙂