Funny accents

[Travis B.]

Has anyone else here gotten where even in the urban area they grew up some people comment on them having a funny or slightly off accent?

I get this every once in a while, like a day ago, where someone in the Milwaukee area asks where I am from or otherwise comments on me having a slightly off accent. (Yes, I know there are those here who accuse me of speaking a con-dialect.) But I am not sure if this is me, or just the exact accent I grew up with, as I have on at least one occasion had someone I did not know pick out which exact suburb I grew up in, correctly, just by my accent (something that would be unlikely if my speech where merely idiosyncratically strange).

But at a personal level, I often get this with other people as well. My sister's accent sounds funny to my ears at times (and is not infrequently surprisingly different from mine for someone who grew up in the same place and almost the same time period), while my mother's commonly has a very-familiar-but-just-slightly-off character to it (but that should not be surprising as she grew up in Kenosha, closer to Chicago). I even would get this at times with some people I went to both high school and college with, where things would stick out like how they pronounced their /oʊ̯/ (such as a fronted diphthongal pronunciation, which my sister also uses at times) or they would have a significantly audibly fronter /uː/.

[Melteor]

How did everyone else in the suburb speak?

[din]

People in Limburg, NL (where I grew up) for whatever reason have guessed that I was either Belgian (people think this all the time) or German (which surprised me--it probably just meant she thought it was 'off', as you call it). I guess having friends from all over the place and living in Belgium has had a little more influence on my accent than I had expected.

My family (in Limburg) doesn't seem to notice, though. Or maybe they just haven't noticed because it's been shifting gradually.

[Travis B.]

How did everyone else in the suburb speak?

In practice it varies, which also makes me wonder how someone could easily pick out where I am from. There are some people who speak closer to how I speak, but then there are other people who speak both more General American-ish and/or with other innovations - or conservatisms - not present in speech more like mine. There must have been some shared features, probably innovations, present enabling one to pick me out despite a good bit of variation in other features (e.g. leniting unstressed intervocalic /p tʃ k/ seems to be common there, whereas a lot if not most Milwaukeeans seem to lack this).

[Astraios]

People say I sound non-native in English, and I guess it's because I speak quite idiosyncratically, but in Hebrew I have a native accent, so the thing people usually tell me about my accent is just "Oh, you sound Israeli". I don't know why idiosyncrasy happens in English but not so much in Hebrew.

[finlay]

People constantly tell me I don't have a Scottish accent – frequently (although less frequently than a few years ago, suggesting that I actually have lost the accent a bit since then) they will then listen more intently for a few minutes and declare that I actually do have a "twang". Part of this is because people expect a strong Glaswegian accent, and when they're faced with a mild posh Edinburgh accent they don't recognise it as Scottish. Part of it is because my speech has been heavily influenced by living in England.

[Nortaneous]

I've been told that I sound older / like a redneck, but I'm not sure what I have other than ai-monophthongization and /i/ instead of /e/ in the days of the week that make people think that.

[clawgrip]

My grandmother does that with the days of the week.

[ol bofosh]

I was asked once "Are you from London?" to which I replied "No." I come from London-by-Sea = Brighton (well, Hove, actually).

Other times it's been commented that "You don't have an accent from anywhere, really". Anywhere within SE England, that is. It's so generally SE (so it seems), that it really doesn't come from "anywhere".

I wouldn't know if Brighton (well, Hove, actually) has a distinctive accent or not.

[Nortaneous]

My grandmother does that with the days of the week.

My father does it, which I think is where I got it. But it's apparently associated with old people.

[finlay]

They do it in Scotland and a few other places in the UK a lot. However in Scotland the happY vowel is pronounced as [e] by many, meaning that phonemically it "sounds like" you're saying Sundy and Mondy, even though you're actually saying [sʌnde] and [mʌnde], if that makes sense. (didn't think so, tbh)

[Radius Solis]

I have had remarks on two separate occasions in my life - by two people - that I sounded like I might be from England. Having a bog standard Seattle accent as far as I know, this was rather a WTF for me. I've never been within three thousand miles of England, don't watch the Britcoms on public television, and don't know any people with an English accent.

But there could be something they picked up on that I just don't know about; individual variation is certainly non-zero. Once in a blue moon I ask my mother what planet she's from, as she has a sound change that I don't hear in anyone else (loss of [j] from unstressed C_Vr, such as in "mercury" or "aneurysm"... merkery, annerism).

[GrinningManiac]

I was asked once "Are you from London?" to which I replied "No." I come from London-by-Sea = Brighton (well, Hove, actually).

Other times it's been commented that "You don't have an accent from anywhere, really". Anywhere within SE England, that is. It's so generally SE (so it seems), that it really doesn't come from "anywhere".

I wouldn't know if Brighton (well, Hove, actually) has a distinctive accent or not.

Oh you're from Brighton (well, Hove)? My family's from Rottingdean just up the downs along the way. Yeah, I don't think there's that strong an accent. My mum tells me when they were younger my aunt spoke like a "proper brightonian" and gave an example of ' "blah blah blah," 'ee saes and then "blah" shee saes...' so I guess people in 1970s Brighton had a habit of quoting after the fact and pronounced "he" as "ee"

beyond that I got nothing.

I notice my own accent fluctuates wildly moreso than most. Not in a way that people notice, though, since I seem to be one of those shiftless, cowardly chameleon types that adopt the register and twang of 'ooevah 'ee's tawkin' to, yeah man, right? cool.

[Thry]

Not for English definitely, I think I speak some imitation of GA.

As for Spanish, not really. What is funny is that I speak (and write) very ideosyncratically. But on the phonetic level I have most of the quirks my dialect and town's speech has, and also the general fluctuations between standard and non-standard when speaking (spontaneous miraculous realizations of [s], restoration of word-final [4]'s, ...). My accent throws out my origins immediately unless I deliberately feign standard.

[brandrinn]

My family's from Rottingdean just up the downs along the way.

What fucking moon language is this?

[ol bofosh]

My family's from Rottingdean just up the downs along the way.

What fucking moon language is this?

Look up "Sussex" and "geography", you might understand. XD

[Gulliver]

My family's from Rottingdean just up the downs along the way.

What fucking moon language is this?

It's correct language.

I'm from Lewes (Loo-wiss) and I can tell when someone is Brightonian if I hear them on TV or something (which does happen very occasionally). Lewes is in the downs, not up the downs. It's an important thing to know.

The nearest I've had is people saying I sound posh, despite going to a middling state school and occasionally getting my TH's and my F/V's befuzzled. Some of my family are post though, so it comes and goes.

[Salmoneus]

My family's from Rottingdean just up the downs along the way.

What fucking moon language is this?

It's correct language.

I'm from Lewes (Loo-wiss) and I can tell when someone is Brightonian if I hear them on TV or something (which does happen very occasionally). Lewes is in the downs, not up the downs. It's an important thing to know.

The nearest I've had is people saying I sound posh, despite going to a middling state school and occasionally getting my TH's and my F/V's befuzzled. Some of my family are post though, so it comes and goes.

Technically, I think Lewes is, re Brighton, over the downs. [Sidenote: for years, I've always been puzzled silly by the geography down there, because you clearly had downs at Lewes, which seemed impossible. Then I looked at a map and realised that actually Lewes is north of the downs proper (ie north of the scarp), but that for some unknowable reason there's a great heap of unconnected down-like rock plunked down next to (and presumably under, if that's what castle hill is) the place. Very odd. And not just ordinary downs, actual white cliffs! On land! WHY!?] I'd say, eg, Lullington was in the downs... and Friston was on the downs.


But yes, the fucking moon language makes perfect sense to me. [Also from Sussex, although northern rather than southern]. I can't tell a Brightonian by accent. I can tell the accent of my home town... but I've only heard it from probably fewer than five people in my life (it's very distinctive). I imagine old Brightonian is similar - it's all Kentish, really. Kind of a cockneyesque west country.

My own accent is now very boring. It's just upper-SSBE. I used to perplex people by having an upper-SSBE acent, with strange anomalies, like an erratic treatment of the trap-bath split - some words were southern, some northern, some were either, and some were hypercorrections. So I used to have gr{s for 'grass', k{sl for 'donjon, keep, hill fort, or tower', kAsl for 'fortified stone dwelling-place with curtain walls, moats, etc', and plastIk for... well, plastic. Plus some random semi-Irishism, like pronouncing 'R' as /O:/, and 'modern' as 'mQdr@n' (don't think I was ever so far gone as to say 'fIl@m', though). But those features were pretty much mocked out of me in secondary school.

I also have some unusual production methods (I was a late talker, at one point was sent to speech therapist people to improve my speech, and quite a few of my consonants seem to be ad hoc attempts to match sounds later in childhood, rather than the 'proper' phones). Most notably, I have labiodental R, which some have commented on, though it's pretty common these days, and mine doesn't, I don't think, sound COMPLETELY like /w/, and I've got interdental-bilabiolateral /s/, which when I was young got me accused of lisping a bit. Oddly, that one suddenly became an issue in secondary school - i'm not sure whether that's because my production changed as I grew (or teeth changed?), or people suddenly started picking up on it, or if it was a 'stutter' thing that became worse when I started worrying about it. Anyway, either I've made it less lispy or else people are too polite to mention it now - I think it's a bit of both.

[Gulliver]

Very odd. And not just ordinary downs, actual white cliffs! On land! WHY!?] I'd say, eg, Lullington was in the downs... and Friston was on the downs.

I grew up in Cliffe (on the road up the cliff beneath the downs) and I remember being told at school that the whole area was underwater once, which makes sense. The whole area is still a flood plain, and we had quite bad flooding about 12 years ago. Friends of mine lost all their stuff and I got ill from all the poopy water everywhere. I was sick out the window. Ah, memories.

I understand it there was an avalanche/rockslide that brought down half a hill and killed down a load of people. The Snowdrop Inn is named after the avalanche, not the flower. It's still the deadliest avalanche in British history and the pub is a good pub. Apparently we had an earthquake in the nineteenth century and floods about 12 years ago. Funsies.

[Nortaneous]

i've just started to notice that i do the stereotypical southerner-trying-too-hard-not-to-have-an-accent thing: underusing contractions. that's only when i'm hiding the accent, but that's pretty much always, except if i'm talking to my father or one of my exes or i'm very, very drunk. (and not so much even in that last case.)

[vampireshark]

I keep getting that I sound... well, a bit odd and that my accent in English is strange. I have been confused for a German or a Dutchman a few times. Thing is that I spent a lot of my childhood in Germany watching British TV and not really being exposed to "General American" English all the time, so I picked up a lot of things that aren't General American pronunciation-wise. For example, <butter> is, to me, something like [ˈbʌ.tʰɚ], without the [ɾ] that's said to be there.

In French, I don't know what accent I have. People didn't think I was an American when I lived over there until I said I was, and I was able to survive in Paris and Lyon (especially the latter!) on my French alone without people switching to English whenever I talked. (When the switching happened, though, seemed like it was rather random...)

My German accent is somewhat Bavarian, with /r/ for <r> and a few other things... problem was that people said I had a good accent in German, which led them to think that I should speak it better than I do.

[ol bofosh]

I'm from Lewes (Loo-wiss) and I can tell when someone is Brightonian if I hear them on TV or something (which does happen very occasionally)..

http://vocaroo.com/i/s1C2e7bpuTxc

[Salmoneus]

Very odd. And not just ordinary downs, actual white cliffs! On land! WHY!?] I'd say, eg, Lullington was in the downs... and Friston was on the downs.

I grew up in Cliffe (on the road up the cliff beneath the downs) and I remember being told at school that the whole area was underwater once, which makes sense. The whole area is still a flood plain, and we had quite bad flooding about 12 years ago. Friends of mine lost all their stuff and I got ill from all the poopy water everywhere. I was sick out the window. Ah, memories.

I understand it there was an avalanche/rockslide that brought down half a hill and killed down a load of people. The Snowdrop Inn is named after the avalanche, not the flower. It's still the deadliest avalanche in British history and the pub is a good pub. Apparently we had an earthquake in the nineteenth century and floods about 12 years ago. Funsies.

Well yeah, the whole of the south east was underwater once. Hence the chalk, clay, and sandstone. But presumably the cliffs at Cliffe were never actuall coastline - because they're north of the downs. Unless the downs were a peninsular, and Cliffe/Glynde was the main coast? But the cliffs face west, when you'd think any sea intrusion would be east, where the lower land is. And that chalk mound doesn't run as a ridge, as the downs do, so it doesn't make much sense as a coatline - it's just a mound. It looks like a granite tor or a limestone mogote, but it's neither granite nor limestone, it's chalk. And the whole area was once covered in chalk, so why did it all erode away but leave this one particular hill?


I remember the floods, although more because they flooded EVERYWHERE. I was affected in a rather nicer way than you, though - I was let off school because they had to use the school as an emergency shelter (or had to prepare for that eventuality? Not sure whether they ended up actually being used or not).

[Gulliver]

I'm from Lewes (Loo-wiss) and I can tell when someone is Brightonian if I hear them on TV or something (which does happen very occasionally)..

http://vocaroo.com/i/s1C2e7bpuTxc

I think (and this is purely me thinking) that Brightonian and pseudo-Brightonians speak at a slightly irregular pace, speeding up and slowing down differently than, say, Londonders, which I think you do do. Obviously, the Lord's Prayer is made up of lots of short stanzas with set pauses, so it's hard to tell. This may be me making things up, though.

[ol bofosh]

I remember being taught that the whole North Downs-Weald-South Downs was once one one big chalk area, bit that the bit in the middle got worn down, splitting the Downs. I think the two Downs do connect, or at least get close, in Hampshire, somewhere.

Gulliver, irregular speech, I think I get what you mean. Didn't realise that was specific to Brighton.