Re: Quiz: What American accent do you have?
 

[quote][B]What American accent do you have?[/B] Your Result: [B]North Central[/B]


"North Central" is what professional linguists call the Minnesota accent. If you saw "Fargo" you probably didn't think the characters sounded very out of the ordinary. Outsiders probably mistake you for a Canadian a lot.
The West 85%

The Midland 85%

Boston 60%

The Inland North 40%

The South 35%

Philadelphia 25%

The Northeast 20%


[/quote]

Lived in Northern Virginia for 21 out of my 23 years, and that's my conclusion? I might be mistaken for a Canadien? lol.

Re: Quiz: What American accent do you have?
 

I'm from Noo Yawk, fuggedaboutit

Re: Quiz: What American accent do you have?
 

[quote=Mattyk;809215]I'm from Noo Yawk, fuggedaboutit[/quote]

It's much ado aboot nothin I tell ya.

Re: Quiz: What American accent do you have?
 

The quiz said my accent is from the SOUTH. But it did not specify which part of the SOUTH...

Re: Quiz: What American accent do you have?
 

Ive always have had a fascination with accents and dialects and everything culturally implicit about them. Ive also recently come to appreciate the english language as probably the most important, advanced and colorful in the world. I dont know how i came across this but for those interested in this type of thing, i thought it was a great read:

[url=http://www.convictcreations.com/culture/strine.htm]Strine - the world's most advanced English dialect[/url]

Re: Quiz: What American accent do you have?
 

GMU actually has an accent library where you have like 400 different people (american/indian/etc etc etc) reading the same english phrases for some kind of study... it was a few years back:
[url=http://accent.gmu.edu/]Speech Accent Archive[/url]

anyways, last time i was on a boat in aussie land they spent a lot of time talking to me about my "accent," which was really weird.

midland btw.

Re: Quiz: What American accent do you have?
 

^ Pretty neat.

I feel like "midland" American English is the most neutral English anyone can speak, regardless of country.

One thing that the Australian article points out, but i think is drastically changing, is the formality and lack of idioms and made up words and phrases in American English, which probably go hand in hand (idiom pun?) to some extent. I feel like this is in part due to the growth of the Hispanic population in our country. In my personal experience most of the idioms or “inside” meaning of words and phrases my group of friends use have come from guys that grew up speaking Spanish at home.

My guess is that as Spanish developed in Latin America people were forced to learn multiple meanings of words or learn completely different words that meant the same thing. In order to trade with or conceal things from neighboring countries and regions Spanish speakers would have to learn these multiple and different meanings or words and phrases.

Plus Spanish was an introduced language so carryovers from past tribal languages would have had their input on all the different versions of Spanish. Which is much different than how or why Strine developed the way it did, yet both seem to have a more playful lexicon. Maybe as more latin Americans settle in the US, American English will follow suit?