What's your accent (in your native language)?

[gangleri2001]

Central Catalan. My father still says some words in the near-extinct vallesanian subdialect, such as mart instead of mar, tiost instead of quiosc and tidores instead of estisores but I don't.

 

[Cheezy the Wiz]

Link to video.

It's my girlfriend's mom's side of the family! I spent last summer in Floyd County Virginia, full of people just like these folks. Really wonderful people, as kind and warm and helpful as you can imagine. The perception is that they're ultra-conservative because they're "backwards," but apart from religion (which is rather apolitical for them) there's a big "live and let live" philosophy among them, and a hint of that old political progressiveness that was once so popular among the organized coal and mine labor communities.

It takes about ten minutes around an accent like this to bring it out of me (Southern Maryland has a lot of people who talk like this, because we're descended from watermen and used to be very backwater in an Appalachian kind of way). It's become kind of suppressed (a word I can't spell now after listening to that video, lol!) after years of university education in more "northern" cities like Baltimore and Washington, but it only takes minimal coaxing to show its head.

 

[Eniotna]

I've got a "general Belgian accent" when I'm speaking French. Heavier Flemish accent when speaking to my mother's family.

I have a French accent when speaking Dutch with hints of Limburgs.

I don't speak nor really understand the dialect of my village/region. It's a shame really because it's very close to the dialect spoken in the Oscar-nominated film Bullhead :


Link to video.

 

[madviking]

Link to video.


Link to video.

 

[Pangur Bán]

Pretty good videos, madviking, cheers.

 

[Pangur Bán]

You guys should check this guy out:


Link to video.

He's American I gather, but for some strange reason the four Scottish accents he does are very accurate, creepily accurate almost. Not often you hear an American doing a decent Scottish accent either, far from ones that good!

 

[Camikaze]

Gosh I see why Bill got so annoyed in that peninsula thread. This thread is essentially meaningless without IPA.

For me, and I guess for probably a lot of other people too, this thread would be entirely meaningless with IPA.

What if you're caught stealing a cot? Do you get sent into court? .

Then there is no confusion at all, because 'cot' is pronounced quite differently. And I'm struggling to imagine how someone would pronounce them the same.

 

[Quintillus]

I'm from the Great Lakes region of the U.S., but don't have that accent. Most commonly, I've heard people classify it (fairly vaguely) as British. I have no idea what sort of British, and it's possible the British would disagree. Most of the people who have said this have been Americans, although a few have been other non-British.

My vocabulary is fairly standard for where I'm from, however. There's a few words, phrases, and spellings that I routinely use that aren't native to where I'm from (such as y'all, knackered, and favourite), but they're the minority, and generally things I picked up over the years from friends or places where I lived.

According to my Russian teacher, I spoke Russian with a Russian hillybilly accent, which apparently can be dangerous in Moscow and some other large cities. I didn't continue taking Russian long enough to improve my accent.

For me, and I guess for probably a lot of other people too, this thread would be entirely meaningless with IPA.

It certainly would be for me!

 

[Winner]

It is strange for a Czech how much stereotyping the English speakers do based on accents. Yes, we something like that too (try being a Moravian newcomer in Prague, you'll hear all kinds of crap from the gay-accented natives), but not nearly that much. What we almost completely lack are class-based accents. English speakers are always surprised when we tell them that people's social class isn't really reflected in their language that much here.

 

[GinandTonic]

You guys should check this guy out:

He's American I gather, but for some strange reason the four Scottish accents he does are very accurate, creepily accurate almost. Not often you hear an American doing a decent Scottish accent either, far from ones that good!

Outstanding.

 

[emzie]

It is strange for a Czech how much stereotyping the English speakers do based on accents. Yes, we something like that too (try being a Moravian newcomer in Prague, you'll hear all kinds of crap from the gay-accented natives), but not nearly that much. What we almost completely lack are class-based accents. English speakers are always surprised when we tell them that people's social class isn't really reflected in their language that much here.

I don't know a lot about Czechia, so this might be way off base! If you expand it to a larger west Slavic-speaking population, do you get into stereotypes? How homogeneous is your country, compared to say Poland?

 

[ParkCungHee]

I'd post a video of my accent, but everyone thinks the Long Island Accent is the New York Jewish accent, and it's not.

 

[Winner]

I don't know a lot about Czechia, so this might be way off base! If you expand it to a larger west Slavic-speaking population, do you get into stereotypes? How homogeneous is your country, compared to say Poland?

I am talking more about non-regional accents here, i.e. accents that depend more on general social circumstances than on geography. It's sometimes blurred in English, because some regions used to be so dominated by industry that the local working class accent became the regional accent.

In Czech, you can't really tell from people's language whether they belong to the upper, middle, or lower class. The class distinctions themselves aren't that pronounced here and the language reflects them little or not at all (now, it was different pre-WW2). In England, on the other hand, it is (or used to be) possible to guess people's class the moment they opened their mouth. Some regional accents too were historically heavily stigmatised.

 

[Mechanicalsalvation]

It is strange for a Czech how much stereotyping the English speakers do based on accents. Yes, we something like that too (try being a Moravian newcomer in Prague, you'll hear all kinds of crap from the gay-accented natives), but not nearly that much. What we almost completely lack are class-based accents. English speakers are always surprised when we tell them that people's social class isn't really reflected in their language that much here.

I guess thats due to the fact that Czech aristocracy was killed out, exiled and germanized plus imposition of communist style of equality(everyone is working class).

 

[Mise]

You guys should check this guy out:


Link to video.

He's American I gather, but for some strange reason the four Scottish accents he does are very accurate, creepily accurate almost. Not often you hear an American doing a decent Scottish accent either, far from ones that good!

This is brilliant! He has to be British or at least not American though, judging by the # of US accents he did vs # of UK accents.

I think his name is George Agdgdgwngo.

EDIT: His Twitter says he's from Edinburgh.

 

[Camikaze]

To be critical, the second half of his South African sounds too Australian ('I fight everyday' and onwards) and, although his Australian was decent, there were errors (particularly the pronunciation of 'so good', and calling them 'swimming trunks').

 

[kochman]

This is brilliant! He has to be British or at least not American though, judging by the # of US accents he did vs # of UK accents.

I think his name is George Agdgdgwngo.

EDIT: His Twitter says he's from Edinburgh.

To be fair, there are far more accents in the UK than in the USA...

His "redneck" and "mexican" were poor... and there is no "Italian American" accent, it's a Brooklyn accent.

 

[Hygro]

Link to video.

Link to video.

The guy at 4:15 looks like a very stylish hipster from 2010.

 

[sophie]

Yeah, we could all do with a drink.

That would be nice as well!

The local pronunciation of "New Orleans" isn't actually "Nawlins" or "Norlins", and it definitely isn't "New Or-leenz". The emphasis is on the "or", with the vowels in "leans" either being shortened (e.g. "New OR-linz") or separated (e.g. "New OR-lee-ans").

I cannot IPA, though, so it's hard to describe.

Let's see if I can do this:

a.) neu (nɛu?) 'oɹ.lɪnz (the z is either that or an s, depending on if it's voiced or not, and the ɪ would vary depending on how you pronounce it)
b.) neu 'oɹ.li.ænz (again, z or s, depending, and I assumed by "ans" you meant a as in apple, however if it's a as in, for example call, it would be different.

For me, and I guess for probably a lot of other people too, this thread would be entirely meaningless with IPA.

It's actually not particularly hard to understand, especially the consonants (well, the odder ones like epiglottals and non-pulmonics are, but that's a different matter entirely). The vowels take some practice, but it's still fairly easy to figure out.

http://paulmeier.com/ipa/consonants.html

With consonants the important point is identifying place (where the sound occurs), and manner (how the sound is produced), and voicing (whether your vocal chords vibrate when the sound is produced). For example, a plosive is a full stop (as in the sound has a definite start and stop to it), and bilabial represents your lips coming together to make the sound, so a bilabial plosive would be either a p (unvoiced) or a b (voiced).

http://paulmeier.com/ipa/vowels.html

The chart in vowels shows tongue position. Close-Open indicates whether the tongue is towards the top or bottom of the mouth, and Front-Back indicates whether it is in the front or back of your mouth. The final distinction is rounded or open, literally whether or not you round your lips when you make the sound) Letters on the left are unrounded, like i as in Lee (Li), whereas letters on the right are rounded, like u as in boot (but) or y as in the French vu (vy)

http://teflworldwiki.com/images/7/70/Ipa_vowels.gif

 

[Veles]

You guys should check this guy out...

Whoa, not bad at all. I couldn't get a single damn word when he did the British ones, though

With Russian he wasn't very succesfull. For some strange reason, it is assumed that when doing Russian accent, the consonants should sound especially strong. Which is very far from true. In fact, the biggest feature of Russian language are palalalized (i.e. softened) consonants.

Hollywood Russian accent isn't accurate at all. Here's a dude faking an American perception of Russian language:


Link to video.