21 Accents

By Shamus Posted Thursday Dec 3, 2009

Filed under: Movies 120 comments

Yesterday someone asked what a “California” accent sounds like. This is a pretty interesting demonstration, but you can jump right to 1:40 to hear what I’m talking about:


Link (YouTube)

California is one of those rare places where females and males have pronounced differences in their speech patterns. (The only other that I’m aware of is Japan.)

To me, the “Seattle” accent is “natural” to me. That matches my own accent to the point where I can’t detect any differences.

 


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120 thoughts on “21 Accents

  1. Mark says:

    oh come on! a video about accents and not even one from newfoundland!? whats with that, lol

  2. Stephen says:

    I think the “Seattle” one might as well count as the “Americans raised on TV and radio” accent. That sounds natural to me as well, and I grew up in the south (in most city areas it seems way more common than the “Charleston” accent, though she didn’t really touch on the drawl that slips in on occasion).

  3. Volatar says:

    That was very interesting. Thanks for the vid Shamus.

    Interestingly enough, Seattle sounds like the basic American accent, the one I try to speak. However, I have lived in Los Angeles CA, Salt Lake City UT, and Raleigh NC, so my actual accent sounds rather… unique xD

  4. Sam says:

    I’ve always thought that English people doing American (or other) accents were much better than American people doing other countries’ accents. Though I don’t think every woman in California speaks like her California accent. Probably in Southern Cal, but not everywhere. Still, she’s quite good. Better than my accents and dialects, which sound thoroughly exaggerated thanks to my not knowing the languages at all.

  5. Awwww… she didn’t do a Michigan “U-Per” accent, eh? (Which is very similar to a Minnesota accent.)

    Even so, that was a really interesting video.

    Leslee

  6. Hipparchus says:

    According to some online quizs, I have a General American Accent and I’m for California-Seattle area….
    Only I’m from Indiana. I think Indiana doesn’t have any special regional accent, so I’m pretty “Seattle”.

  7. MuonDecay says:

    That was very cute! Probably the best answer possible to the question, too. I see what you meant, now :)

  8. Grant says:

    This sounds a bit more like caricatures of accents. I don’t think I’ve ever heard a Canadian accent anywhere in Canada as strong as her Toronto one. I assume the rest are also overdone a little.

    Very impressive talent, though.

  9. Audacity says:

    Am I the only one that thinks this is a wee bit creepy? I can’t speak for all of them, but she does the US west-coaster and Canadian accents perfectly, and the Berliner sounds dead on too.

    I spent my formative years in California, but have always spoken with a Seattle type accent. I think it’s less the TV accent, which has always sounded more mid-western to me, as it is the US military one. It’s how my father, who grew up on the base in Okinawa, and all the soldiers I know talk, no matter where they were originally from.

    @Grant: Most Canadians I know sound indistinguishable from the northern states, but I know a few older Canadians that have accents very similar to the ones she did.

    1. Shamus says:

      If you want to hear a crazy and very localized accent, check out that “Pittsburgh” accent sometimes. These people might be faking or exaggerating it, but this is very close to the real thing. Particularly once they start to get upset around the halfway point:

      http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k4jn1L-riak

      The accent / dialect is most famous for the word “yinz”, which comes from “you-ins”, meaning “you people”. It’s roughly equivalent to the southern “ya’ll”. It’s quite strong as well. “Down there” comes out sounding like “dahn nair”. Correctly or incorrectly, the Pittsburgh accent is associated with the lower class, trailer parks, and such.

      There are a small number of people with this accent around me. I don’t know where it comes from. Is it a third-generation Polish accent? A hybrid of accents? I have no idea.

      1. skeeto says:

        My wife pointed me towards this short film today: Street Light Stories by Pittsburgh Dad. It’s about a summer evening in Pittsburgh in 1987, a time and place where I myself grew up. It was through your comment here that we discovered Greg & Donny years ago, and then eventually Pittsburgh Dad, so I figured this was the right place to share this video.

  10. bbot says:

    The Seattle “accent” is typically called General American or Standard Midwestern English, whichever sounds more boring.

  11. Aergoth says:

    A little analogous to Standard or BBC English?

  12. Allerun says:

    The Texas accent was off, the southern accent sounded forced. Most of the others were well done though.

  13. radio_babylon says:

    as a native texan, born here and likely to die here, i can tell you that ive never met anyone that sounded like that texas accent. i can see how it might sound texan to someone who didnt live here… but its “off”… if you ran around down here talking like that, people would probably come to the conclusion you were making fun of them.

    this is probably the case with all the accents… the rest of them sound just fine to me, but i imagine they sound completely wrong to a native…

    (edit: @14 lol ok glad it wasnt just me)

  14. Dev Null says:

    Fascinating. I think the best bit was the way her face changed to fit the accent she was using…

  15. Hal says:

    I couldn’t really tell much difference between the “Seattle” and the “California.” Is it just the mild upward inflection at the end of the words?

  16. Grant says:

    @radio_babylon

    Exactly the impression I got! While I agree with Audacity that some older Canadians sound a little bit like that, if someone came to Canada and talked that way, we would assume they were making fun of us.

    At least some of them are caricatures. I can’t speak for all of them, of course.

  17. Fosse says:

    1 – I am now in love with this woman. Thank you, Shamus.

    2 – As someone originally from the Inland North dialect region in America (Hipparchus may be from the same, if he lives in the north part of the state), the Seattle dialect is just perceptible as being different than my own. She says “I’m twenty-five,” where most folks I meet would say “I’m Twenny-Five,” without that second “t” sound in “twenty.”

    3 – The TV and Radio dialect isn’t 100% the same as any American regional dialect, least of all Pacific Northwest (including Seattle). But it’s fair to say that it’s comparable to what’s spoken in the Midland area, which includes Hipparchus if he’s from the southern part of Indiana.

    It’s certainly not going to stand up to Pacific Northwesterners in any sort of test. But I do agree with others here that it sounds the most “normal,” in the sense that I’d expect it if I turned on the television. I’m not sure off the top of my head if Broadcast pronunciation would say “twenty-five” like she does or like I do. But it would likely go unnoticed by most people most of the time.

    4 – I really am in love with her.

  18. BFG9000 says:

    Maaaan, I was born in Toronto and never met anyone that spoke like that. That’s Newfoundland, for sure. And a strong Newfoundland. Harumph… Canadians get upset when they are incorrectly stereotyped.

  19. Strangeite says:

    It is interesting how the advent of radio influenced the regional accents.

    Around the turn of the last century, the University of Kentucky conducted a oral history project composed of the people in appalachian eastern Kentucky. In Appalachia at the time, life was very isolated and the people had very little contact with the outside world from the time of the early Scotch-Irish settlers from the early 1700’s.

    What is interesting is a study done by linguists in the 1960’s. They found that there had been a profound change in the accent of the people from the early 1900’s to the 1960’s.

    In fact, when listening to the old recordings, the linguists discovered that the people from Eastern Kentucky were speaking an accent almost identical to “Queen’s English” from the 1700’s.

    By the time the 1960’s rolled around, the accent had changed to the current appalachian accent. The conclusion was that it was the advent of radio that contributed to the change.

    I have listened to some of those early recordings and it is very weird hearing an archaic English accent talking about moonshine, hollers and coal.

  20. I’ve lived in Texas for sixteen years now. While I have indeed heard accents similar Amy’s up there, it’s hardly common and is indeed (as Allerun and radio_babylon say) a bit off – especially the “ah” in “twenty-five” of “twenny-fahv,” as she said it.

    Still, an impressive demonstration! I was most impressed by how clean her transitions were from accent to accent – that’s where I have the most trouble when I’m affecting an accent.

    Ben

  21. Factoid says:

    Here “Charleston, SC” accent was more of a “Savanna, Georgia” accent.

    South Carolinians have a similar drawl, but a faster pace of speech.

    Not that it matters. I don’t think her objective is to have true-blue accents for each place, but rather a recognizable accent that comes across distinctly. The kind that an actor would be trained in…a little embellished, but generally fairly authentic.

    Like the movie Fargo. Nobody in Fargo talks like that unless they’re a second generation norwegian…but it’s not that far off.

  22. Nick says:

    I could barely notice a difference between the California and Seattle accents, though California sounded cheery and upwards. I did notice the “twenny” versus “twenty” once someone mentioned it though.

    I can’t really say which one I prefer / sound-like. As for the Canada one, it sounded a bit too steroetypical, but then this video was about MAKING accents where you don’t have one before. I’ve always been interested in “gaining” a russian accent, personally.

    I always heard that us Utahn’s had a slight accent. I am not sure what exactly it is, but it involves saying… or NOT saying… the word “mountain” right. I’ve heard it, and “curtain” (and similar words) heard both ways. It just depends on whether we want to really emphasize the last “t” by saying “mountain” or go quickly and say “mou-en”. Kinda strange…

  23. UtopiaV1 says:

    That was… surreal. She didn’t do any northern english accents tho, aww!!!

  24. ifriit says:

    From what I’ve gathered, the Seattle accent is considered the most neutral American English accent, which is why it’s common on television and radio across the country.

    That said, the Seattle accent is definitely localized–rural Washingtonians often have an accent that’s kind of like a light Minnesotan. The word that stands out in my mind as an example is the name of the state, which sounds more like “warshington.”

  25. Aufero says:

    The accent at 1:40 is more specifically a Los Angeles accent, (as she points out) not a California accent. You’ll hear those inflections often in the L.A. area and surrounding counties, and less often elsewhere in the state. (It’s a big state.)

    And holy cow, she’s good at that. I’ve never heard an English speaker get the difference between Czech and Russian accents right before.

  26. kikito says:

    I’ve allways had a weak spot for Scottish accent.

    If I only was able to understand it!

    I’ve also noticed that the female on the vid didn’t Indian accent. And she spoke French with an English accent, instead of English with a French one.

  27. Shamus, as soon as I saw this I was going to ask you if you had any sort of Pittsburgh accent. I grew up in Pittsburgh and I try to hide the slight one I have, since I hate hearing it. Maybe it’s just because my dad is from Florida and he would always tell us how ridiculous we all sounded.

    My wife is from Johnstown, which is close enough she has a slight Pittsburgh accent too (as her parents), and even says “yinz” and “read-up the house”. (edit: ah, I see that linked video is from Johnstown)

    If I wanted to show someone the best example of a Pittsburgh accent I know, I just have to introduce them to my uncle. He sounds *exactly* like the people in that video.

    “Correctly or incorrectly, the Pittsburgh accent is associated with the lower class, trailer parks, and such.”

    Well stated.

  28. DmL says:

    Yeah her Texas was more of a blur-up from Oklahoma into the southwestern part of Tennessee. (I currently live in Tennessee and speak mostly General/slightly NC). Compare Reba McEntire. And yeah, I know a couple folks from Newfoundland, and her Canadian was much more like that. As for the SoCal, I’ve heard it much stronger. Most of these are good caricatures and I bet she’s General/Neutral.

  29. Shinan says:

    Somehow I have a feeling that all the ones saying that a certain accent was off is because you are intimately familiar with that very accent.

    What I’m trying to say is that anyone with a native accent will see the flaws when someone tries to imitate that native accent while those of us without will just think “oh my god that is good!”

  30. Zombie Pete says:

    Yeah, her Texan sounds like a combo of Reba McEntire (Oklahoma) and Holly Hunter (Georgia). Impressive, though.

  31. Vegedus says:

    There isn’t much difference between Cal and Seattle accent in my hears, according to that video. Californian accent sounds pretty neutral to my ears, but english isn’t my native language, so, well.

    I’m gonna check out her site and see if there’s some decent lessons in irish and scottish. I love those accents.

  32. Feb says:

    I studied dialects when I was getting my BA in theatre arts, and worked out a pretty good Oxford British dialect with the help of a classmate who came from Surrey.

    The above is true: unless it’s the accent you hear every day, it can be tough to spot the ways in which the dialect isn’t quite ‘right.’ And if it IS your own dialect, you may still feel as though a good imitation is an exaggeration.

    I’m from Minnesota, and studied in Vermont for a year. When people asked where I was from, I asked them to guess first. I got Seattle, Kansas, Ohio, Florida, and Canada. Nobody said Minnesota. So it is all very much relative, and the sheer volume of Amy’s dialect bag o’ tricks is the impressive thing, more than the accuracy (although I’m sure at least a few of them are dead-on).

  33. RustyBadger says:

    I’m wondering why she didn’t do a Newfoundland (Newfie) or Quebecois accent. From a Canadian perspective, those are our best- although the Tronna one is fun to mock as well. Albertans all have a Texan accent, so she did that already. And in BC we sound just like Seattleites. And seriously, I wanted to hear the Chinese and Indian accents too!

    I want to marry that lady. I wonder if she can do a Utah accent?

  34. RTBones says:

    Got to give the lady props. A most impressive demonstration. German was great. And the nuances between Czech and Russian were fantastic and incredibly difficult to do as an English speaker. Having said that — its already been said that her Texas was “off”. To me, it sounds more TN than anything else. I’ve never heard anyone from Toronto talk the way she did. Her Charleston was a little slow to my ear.

    She ran through a series of english accents. Pity there wasnt a Yorkshire or Liverpool thrown in. This side of the atlantic, Maine, Boston, and DelMarVa (Delaware-Maryland-Virginia) would have been interesting to hear her do.

  35. Goliath says:

    @Shinian: Sure, maybe some of them are just off enough to be distinguishable from native speakers, but I can tell you that I’ve never heard anyone with the accents she calls Irish and Northern Irish.

    The Irish one is the kind of steriotype you just don’t hear (Unless we’re all so innoculated to it that we can’t perceive it), and her Northern one was deep nor broad enough. In fact, her Northern one was closer to a Dublin accent, albeit one that’s been watered down by living out in the country for too long. Her London one is a bit too clipped, too. Sure, I’ve heard it, but it’s not a living London accent.

    Not that I’m complaining. I know these are charicatures. I just thought it bore mentioning (Seriously, none of us know how you hear that accent when we talk.)

  36. Kdansky says:

    That was awesome. And Californian is one of the least pleasant to listen to. Texas and Brooklyn are also bad.
    All the London ones are great though :P

  37. Neil says:

    That German accent sounded nothing like any actual German person I’ve ever met, and everything like every German from a English language WW2 film I’ve ever seen. The Czech accent sounded like Russian was trying to force its way through as well.
    A lot of these accents sound like the movie version of the accents rather than the real thing, in fact, like the Southern accents as others pointed out above.

  38. Telas says:

    Add my (accented) voice to the chorus of “that Texas accent ain’t quite right.” Texas actually has multiple accents (west Texas, Dallas, east Texas, Houston, south Texas, border, etc), which isn’t that remarkable since it’s actually larger than France.

  39. Telas says:

    I should probably also add that a theatrical accent isn’t supposed to be ‘realistic’, but it should be evocative.

    I’d say her performance is successful on that basis.

  40. Nathan says:

    I’m surprised to hear that so many people think that the California accent and the Seattle accent are the same… As someone who grew up in California (in the Central Valley/Sacramento area), the California accent is the one I am definitely familiar with, and the Seattle accent sounded very unfamiliar.

    I think some people are underestimating exactly how important the cheerful mood of her presentation of the California accent was. It was more than just her playing a character who was happy, it is actually a pretty vital part to how girls talk in California. It is amazing how often you can hear girls sound happy and cheerful when they are angry or upset around here.

    Now if only I could convince people that my own particular accent (which is almost certainly influenced by my German heritage and a youth growing up in Nevada and Oklahoma) wasn’t a “British” accent… It is just weird how often I am told that I sound British, when I absolutely do not. People can have odd perceptions of accents sometimes.

  41. ephant says:

    I thought that the irish & scottish accents to me sounded like an english person putting on a fake irish/scottish accent.

    The sydney australian accent hit the ‘neutral’ spot for me but the broad aussie sounded annoying and fake – the New Zealand accent was subtle but well done – maybe a nzer who had been living over here for a few years haha.

  42. onosson says:

    I couldn’t even recognize her “Canadian” accent until she said “Toronto”… and not “Tranna”!

    FWIW, I’m Canadian, and currently writing a linguistics M.A. thesis on Canadian English.

  43. mark says:

    The belfast one was shit.

  44. SolkaTruesilver says:

    I find so funny when people say one has a “French” accent. Which do you mean? Parisian, Marseillais, Nicois, Belgian, Swiss, Montreal, Quebec City, New Orlean, Abitibi, St John Lake, Gaspesie, Fredericton?

    Not to forget the lebanese, Congolese, maghrebian French accents, which is a double-accentuented speech.

  45. Cuthalion says:

    @ifriit 26: From what I've gathered, the Seattle accent is considered the most neutral American English accent, which is why it's common on television and radio across the country.

    Seattle is actually a bit different. While accents vary like you said, the two big differences I’ve noticed (I was raised in suburbs about an hour from Seattle) between typical Seattle and typical newscaster are:

    1) Cot and caught are pronounced the same in Seattle.
    2) Several words (can’t remember any specifics off the top of my head) are pronounced with a short “a” (as in “cat”) rather than a wide “a” (as in “father”).

    Basically, if you gave a Seattle guy and a Midwest guy the same script, you would only be able to tell the difference on maybe one sentence per paragraph.

    Also, Seattle actually sounds more neutral to me than newscaster, since I grew up an hour from there and my mom and dad grew up in a small city about 1 1/2 hours from Seattle and a suburb of Seattle, respectively.

    That said, the Seattle accent is definitely localized”“rural Washingtonians often have an accent that's kind of like a light Minnesotan. The word that stands out in my mind as an example is the name of the state, which sounds more like “warshington.”Âť

    This is true. Though in a lot of cases it’s because those people grew up in other states. I know a Washingtonian woman originally from Minnesota that talks like you describe, and my grandparents on my dad’s side grew up in other states and pronounce it “Warshington.” (But everybody I know my age (20ish) who grew up there has no “r” in “Washington”.)

    I can’t tell you how much that random “r” bugs me. If you pronounce it “Warshington”, a native will immediately assume you’ve never been there and probably don’t realize the state is different from the city. Or at least, I would. :P

    On another topic, would it be possible to have a bunch of us each record ourselves reading the same script, and then post it somewhere to listen to the accent differences? Maybe I’m weird, but that sounds fun to me. :P

    EDIT: Regarding California accents, I find nothing more annoying than a strong female Cali accent, and nothing more dumb sounding than a strong male Cali accent. I haven’t actually been to a comp with sound to watch the video yet though, so I can’t say if hers was thick enough for me to hate it or not. I know, I know, I’m a bigot…

  46. DmL says:

    Yeah Solka, there is alot of gloss on the whole thing. : ) My wife and I argued all the time over French pronunciation until we realized that her teacher had learned Parisian French and mine Southern (not even mentioning that my teachers learned in Moscow and Minnesota). When I was in France one summer a nice lady in Paris asked if I was from Toulouse. It was quite a shock for her to learn I had studied in Florida (she’d never heard of it : ) This is my favorite post on this site and I love the comments! (Wannabe linguist!)

  47. Macil says:

    But how does she NORMALLY talk? And would you believe her if she told you what her normal voice was?!

  48. PAK says:

    That. Was. Incredible. As a theater actor, I am in awe of this woman. As someone above said, those being nitpicky are obviously intimately familiar with the accents involved. It is VERY difficult for a non-local to hit these things on the nose, and just understanding the basic differences between, say, Los Angeles and Seattle inflections is impressive.

    As a lifelong LA area SoCal native I will confess that, yes, what she is doing is a caricature of the caucasian surfer-chick accent, and very few people who speak with it naturally have it quite so pronounced. But I certainly don’t feel like she was making fun of it. It was very, very close.

  49. mookers says:

    #49: awesome comment.

    I wish she had done a Greek-Australian or Lebanese-Australian accent. Fooly sik, mate!

  50. Davie says:

    That was amazing. For the most part very impressive, although the German accent consistently reminded me of the Medic–that is, incredibly fake-sounding. I AM ZE UBAMENSCH!

    The closest thing to my native accent would also be the Seattle accent, and I have to say she did a pretty good job.
    We Portlanders speak in a weird mix of Cali and Seattle accents. I was surprised that she could discern between the two of them so noticeably. All very impressive.

  51. I’m a native Scot, and the Scottish accent sounded a bit off to me. It started out OK, but it seemed to drift into Irish towards the end. Then again, there are so many different Scottish accents (just as there are in any part of the world) that, for all I know, she could easily have been using one I’m not familiar with. Even so, that’s a seriously impressive talent she’s got there and, as someone else pointed out, perhaps the most impressive part of it is how effortlessly she drifts from one to the other.

    On a side note, it’s always a source of personal amusement to me whenever someone says they don’t have an accent or describes someone’s speech as accentless. As someone who studied linguistics at university, and one of the very first things that was drummed into us was that EVERYONE has an accent of some sort and that there’s no such thing as neutrality.

    PS. I’ve never spent any time in the US but I could hear a clear difference between the California and Seattle accents.

  52. VorpalHerring says:

    The Australia and New Zealand ones were perfect

  53. Tuck says:

    On a side note, it's always a source of personal amusement to me whenever someone says they don't have an accent or describes someone's speech as accentless. As someone who studied linguistics at university, and one of the very first things that was drummed into us was that EVERYONE has an accent of some sort and that there's no such thing as neutrality.

    I’m a first-generation Australian of English-Belgian background who grew up in Southeast Asia among people of all nationalities (Aussie, US, Canadian, Lao, Thai, Vietnamese, Chinese, Russian, German, French, and more!).

    I may have an accent, but I defy you to match it with any one place. :P

    (although now I’ve been back in Australia for years and I notice myself picking up the Aussie accent)

    +1 to another comment somewhere up above that said her accents sounded a bit too “stereotype”.

  54. I’m from New Zealand and both the Welling (NZ) and Seattle accents seemed “normal” to me. Probably because the American tv shows I watch as noted by Stephen.

  55. Tuck says:

    The Australia and New Zealand ones were perfect

    No they weren’t!

    [/opinion]

  56. @Tuck 55:

    Oh, accents can be unique. Yours may not sound like anyone else’s, but I assure you you have one. :p

    Mine’s a bit all over the place myself. A student from China once asked me if I was really from Scotland. She couldn’t believe I was, because — and I quote — “I can understand what you’re saying.” :D

  57. Ysabel says:

    And here I thought her Texas accent sounded just like the Texas side of my family.

    But there are multiple Texas accents. It’s a big place.

  58. Nalano says:

    Amy Walker’s “Brooklynite” accent sounded exaggerated and hokey to me, a native New Yorker.

    While there is a ‘fuhgeddaboudit’ thing, it’s not nearly as pronounced, it’s relegated largely to New Jersey, Long Island and Staten Island (where all the eye-talians moved when they left Bensonhoist), and anybody who would walk the streets of Brooklyn sounding like her would prompt passersby to wonder where the MTV cameras are hiding.

  59. Aaron says:

    Yeah, I have to agree that the Canadian accent is a little off. If it was correct I shouldn’t have noticed an accent at all. The accent was more of a prairie accent if anything. Similar to the Minnesota area accent.

    Oddly enough, the Seattle accent sounded normal to me.

  60. MisteR says:

    I’ve been in Belfast for a couple of weeks last year, and it did seem comparable to my memory. The German one was not so great, as was the French. The Czech and the Russian ones were awesome though.

    I was disappointed that she didn’t do the Dutch accent, which I’ve never heard any non-native speaker try successfully.

  61. Scott says:

    The Californian accent (as pointed out above) is actually a Los Angeles accent; more specificly, a San Fernando Valley accent (The one that puts the ‘valley’ in ‘valley-girl’). Being born and raised in the San Fernando area, I have developed that exact accent even though I am not female.

  62. RodeoClown says:

    The Australian accents weren’t quite right – the Sydney one sounded a bit forced. Close, but definitely not native :)

    I thought the “Ocker-Aussie” one was very forced.

    But impressive nonetheless :)

  63. Majikkani_Hand says:

    Ugh, as someone who grew up in the south, I have to admit her southern accent was…just wrong. Of course, as has been repeatedly stated, I’m intimately familiar with that dialect, but even to my untrained ears her Texan one also sounded off. Still, the fact that she can adopt so many accents so clearly distinguished with such a small transitory period, regardless of their accuracy, is extremely impressive.

  64. German sounded fake, French didn’t sound like English, and Texas sounded off. Otherwise it seemed very good. Impressive range. And here was I with my American/Norwegian/Indian/Jamaican/French/Russian ones thinking I was good… and of those, only the American and Norwegian ones are accurate…

  65. Unconvention says:

    Did anyone catch her name?

  66. Jason says:

    The Toronto accent was completely wrong.

  67. Kai says:

    As a native (Austrian) German speaker and future teacher of English, I admit that her German accent wasn’t perfect. But it came close, and after five years of studying I can distinguish between English with a German accent and other varieties.
    It is really tough to notice your own accent when you’re learning English as a non-native speaker – everybody at school talked like me, so I thought I couldn’t be wrong. ;o)

    By the way, during my studies I have settled for a more or less British RP accent. :)

  68. Robyrt says:

    The Seattle accent is called “neutral” for two reasons:

    1. The vowels are generally flat, neither dark nor bright, and the primary syllable is less emphasized than in most other accents. (This is generally where the American accent comes from – flat vowels and too many Rs.)

    2. Because of this even weight, it’s easier to understand in low bit rate environments like radio. And because it was standard on the radio / TV, it quickly became adopted by urban areas throughout America. (The Transatlantic accent is a result of Seattle accent people and schoolteachers overcompensating for flattened vowels and dropped consonants like “twenny”.)

    My family is Appalachian, so the accent isn’t covered in the video – it uses Southern words and shares the tendency to emphasize the first half of a vowel, but without the long, Scarlett O’Hara drawl the “Charleston” accent displays. So for instance we would say “greeyits” instead of “greeyuts” for “grits”.

  69. Joshua says:

    Yep, I’m another poster from Texas and her accent sounds like a caricature. I’ve been living here over three years and am originally from Ohio, but most accents I’ve seen are much subtler. Then again, I live in the city with a more diverse crowd, and you tend to have a more homogenized, tv/radio sound. Texas is a big place, and you’ll tend to hear a variety of different accents, even for someone who wasn’t born here.

    Sounds more like an actor’s impression of those different accents to give the impression of a character rather than realistic portrayals of them.

  70. mixmastermind says:

    That was not a very good Texan or South Carolinan accent. Of course I’m southern, so maybe I could recognize it better than the others.
    The SC part sounded like she was trying to be Scarlett O’Hara and the Texan one sounded like Reba McEntire. What’s weird is that the former is Georgian and the latter is Oklahoman.

  71. Tausney says:

    She’s awright. Her scottish wiz the pure snobby type o’ scottish though. If ye wan’tae hear how it should sound, wrap yer peeps roon’ these videos ya mad rockets. Haaaawww!

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KXGu68R2NKA
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=scNLfr1EP08

    Glesga. Pure in’ernational or whit man naw?

  72. Ell Jay says:

    Funny, I was a fan of hers until I heard her “Canadian” accent, which sounds like no person I’ve ever heard speak in my life (I am a lifelong Canadian resident). If she can’t get my country right, how should I trust any of her other impressions?

    1. Shamus says:

      OMG! She did my accent wrong! I will hate her forever!

      I think perhaps some people take this too personally.

  73. Audacity says:

    I’m sure wars have been fought over less serious matters, Shamus. :)

  74. Teera says:

    I am from Northern California (SF Bay Area, now living in Sacramento), and I sound exactly like that. When I lived in Oregon, people would occasionally ask what my accent was (because of the pauses where I try not to say “like” and the occasional elongated vowels). I had no idea it was so pronounced until I took a speech class and had to watch a tape of myself.

  75. Mistwraithe says:

    Oh come on!!!

    What was up with the New Zealander not being able to remember her own age? Heh? Totally not fair… :-)

    Funny stuff tho, thanks for posting Shamus.

  76. Wil K. says:

    Seattle sounds perfectly normal to me as well. Makes sense, as I used to live there as a kid.
    Then again, my dad’s Scottish and my mum’s got an Alabaman Southern accent, so my standards are all wonked up.

  77. Jericho says:

    Her “Toronto” accent is Newfie.

  78. A Gould says:

    Her “Toronto” accent *definately* isn’t Newfoundlander or Prairie (I’m in Alberta, which has a very large Newfie contingent – the parsing isn’t right). My best guess is another Atlantic province, or maybe Anglo-Quebec?

    Of course, that’s picking nits – it is recognizably Canadian, which is the desired effect.

  79. ccesarano says:

    I couldn’t hear an actual accent in the SoCal one.

    I think some of America is just different pronunciations, not so much accents. Here in South Jersey a lot of people pronounce it wooder instead of water (though when I went to College in Rochester, NY I got so used to hearing it pronounced “properly” that I stopped saying wooder), Crick instead of Creek, and my brother randomly started saying “youse guys” at some point.

    I’ve always wondered what caused something like the American accent. It sounds so much more clean than most British accents and such, yet when you take into account the original spelling it technically makes more sense with an English accent.

  80. Lanthanide says:

    “I think some of America is just different pronunciations, not so much accents.”

    Um, that’s what accents are.

  81. Ressi says:

    It’s funny, her SoCal/LA accent sounds exactly like me, and I did grow up in LA. (Her Seattle accent definitely sounds different from her LA accent to my ears, although they do both sound generic American.) But because I talk like that, everyone assumes I’m either trying to hide a NYC accent or I’m from the NYC suburbs. I once had a complete stranger accuse me of lying when I said I was from LA, because my accent was all wrong. Once people know I’m from LA, I’ve occasionally had people tell me my accent is clearly one of someone trying to hide/suppress an LA accent and so doing the exact opposite of what someone from LA would do. Until I saw this video I always assumed that was probably the best guess.

    Also, her LA accent sounds nothing like my sisters, who everyone agrees have “real” LA accents.

    Her Toronto accent sounds nothing like anyone I’ve ever met from Toronto. The people I know from Toronto have accents that are like a cross between a UP/Minnesota accent (in pronunciation) and a generic American East Coast city accent (in inflection and cadence). Her Toronto accent sounds vaguely like a guy I knew from Newfoundland, but not that much like him.

  82. Talby says:

    Accents are funny. I’ve been accused of being American, Canadian, English and Irish, all in Australia, which is where I am from.

  83. Teldurn says:

    @63 Scott: I think there is actually a difference between “regular Los Angeles” and “Valley” accents – mostly being a Valley Girl is over the top exaggerated, so much so that a song was made celebrating it. Behold:
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PnVE3UTIgEM

    If you compare her LA accent, and the one done in the song, you’ll notice the difference.
    Normal people from LA don’t talk like that. Maybe it starts to sound like it a bit on the Westside, but I’m not sure.

  84. Zaxares says:

    Interesting… As somebody who’s lived in Brisbane, Australia for more than 20 years, however, I can tell that she’s not truly a native Australian speaker. She does a pretty good job of faking it, and I’m sure that she would fool anybody who wasn’t familiar with real Australians, but it was quite obvious to me that it was a fake accent.

    However, and this is the strange thing, I found the Californian and Seattle accents the most pleasing to my ears. A side-effect of watching too much Hollywood, perhaps? XD

  85. Mark says:

    I’m not sure what canadian accent that actually is, if not toronto but its definantly not newfoundland. For reference, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3m-y-qAbpL0

  86. Torsten says:

    To me the Seattle accent also sounded the most neutral of them all. It is quite an interesting find because I have always thought that the most neutral English would be spoken somewhere in England. It is probably because us non-native English speakers hear more American English than British English.

    Her Czech accent sounded spot on but the Italian, German, French and Russian accents were exaggerated. Add to that the mixing of words from the said languages and the result is just unrealistic mix of speech. Introducing yourself is one of the first things you learn to do when you’re studying a new language.

  87. Simplex says:

    Anyone here watching CSI:NY and/or Flashforward TV series? Is the accent of Don Flack from CSI and Aaron Stark from Flashforward (played by Eddie Cahill and Brian O’Byrne, respectively) the same? And if yes, then what accent is it? New York/Brooklyn, or something else?

  88. Talorc says:

    Yeah, the Australian accents did sound a little forced – particularly the second ocker one. You could probably find someone (probably from rural Australia) with such a broad accent, but it would sound a lot more natural – and slower, the broad aussie drawl is usually spoken slower.

    (I am from Perth, Western Australia) Surprisingly, despite being such a large country, Australia does not exhibit much regional variation on accents.

  89. Segev says:

    Yeah. As a Midwesterner, my own accent is often considered a lack thereof. I couldn’t tell any real difference between the Seattle and LA ones, except for mannerism and facial expression (I think she had a couple extra words in the LA one at the end). Both sounded pretty much like how everybody I know (who isn’t a foreign national or an inner-city kid) speaks around here, in Missouri/Illinois.

    That said, I’ve been to Atlanta, GA, a couple of times recently, and I was somewhat surprised to not hear any sort of drawl from anybody I talked to, there.

  90. Eric(Ninjews) says:

    Wow, that’s western pa.

    1. Shamus says:

      Eric: Yeah. That’s REALLY western PA. Those guys have a whole series of shorts. And they’re growing on me.

  91. SolkaTruesilver says:

    To be honest, we have the “Standard French” in French. It is meant to be the “neutral accentuated” point of view. From Quebecois, it sounds like you are from france. From the French, it sounds like you are from the Maghrebe. If you want to talk in a way to be sure to be understood everywhere in the Francophonia, you speak Standard French.

    However, never forget that the French (especially the Parisians) have the tendency to assume that what they speak is Standard French, even if they mangle it with their slang or angliscism (ex: “email” instead of “courriel”). Standard French is usually the language of the more educated (save Paris) and “proper” media.

  92. Zack says:

    I find it interesting that California was the most attractive sounding to me. Guess I have dated too many Californians.

    I have traveled extensively and the accents sound quite close if you account for two things. She is selecting strong variants so she is often using low class or rural variants of what you woudl expect living in the region. I would not be surprised if you don’t think it sounds like town-X as regional accents have become very suppressed due to TV accents taking over. But I have heard close variants of most of these in the respective regions. Typically from people who have not watch much TV.

    Texas was off though, but there are some tricks to a southern drawl that are not apparent to non native drawlers. But it could also have been that she was imitating a specific lady as most of her accents had to come from somewhere.

  93. Chris says:

    @75 Nice Shamus

    Interesting that you should post this Shamus. I’m a good friend of Amy’s (seriously, I’ve seen her in her PJ’s) and it’s been fun watching her rise in the showbiz arena from the local shows she’s been in to this youtube vid which really got her noticed to her movie she’s trying to launch – http://connectedfilm.com/

    The accents are going to sound off since she didn’t grow up in Texas or Belfast or wherever, but she’s a great student of acting and language so she puts effort into it and as a result, well, you saw the result.

    Seattle area is her home town but she did go to school in Wollongong, NSW and she did some time in NZ as well.

    Sweetest person you’ll ever meet.

    http://amywalkeronline.com

  94. Cuthalion says:

    Finally listened to it, now that I’m on a computer with sound.

    The LA and Seattle ones are kinda close to each other, but I can definitely tell the difference. Her Seattle is very, very close to mine, though it almost sounded like she had a slight old-school New England accent. (Not sure what the right name is, but it’s the accent you would hear in old, black & white American movies/shows.) But since that’s where she’s from, I can’t exactly call it “off”. :P

    I like.

    Oh, and the Cali one is not the one I said I hated. Yay.

  95. lynn says:

    @67 Unconvention: Did anyone catch her name?

    Thank you for that! (belly laugh!)

  96. nilus says:

    What no Chicago accent!

    Its kinda amazing how people speaking the same language can sound so different.

  97. Stark says:

    Heh… the California one is definitely localized to the greater LA area. The accents across California vary greatly… which makes sense since the place is 1200km (770mi) in length. For comparison for your European readers – thats the distance from Amsterdam to Milan. How many languages, let alone accents, exist between those 2 points!

  98. Mari says:

    Yes, her Texas accent was off. I know there are many different Texas accents but having been exposed to the vast majority of them I still can’t really “place” Amy Walker’s Texas. It’s kind of sort of northern Panhandle but lazier while lacking the actual drawl. Funny but true Texas accent story: a friend who teaches in the San Antonio area recently met with their superintendent. After exchanging no more than three sentences the superintendent asks my friend, “Where in west Texas are you from?” It seems they both come from small towns about 30 minutes apart, both of which are half-way across the state from where they live now. They recognized this in each other solely by accent.

    I think her New Zealand was also off but that’s based on knowing only a handful of native Kiwis so I can’t swear to it. The main marker for Kiwi that I recognize is the shortened e and the “eh” sound in place of a short a (as in “cat” sounding more like “ket”). But perhaps that’s not as broad a marker as I think.

  99. neminem says:

    Wow, that’s kind of awesome.

    And great proof that “Californian” really is an accent, even if, being from California, it feels totally accentless to us (and, yes, that really did sound like a native Californian to me (i.e. totally without any accent ;))).

    EDIT: For what it’s worth, I’m from the greater Bay Area, but have now lived a number of years in LA (but with frequent visits back there). Unlike Stark, I totally don’t see a distinction between the speech patterns of the two areas, other than of course in a handful of well-publicized distinctions in slang. But that’s just semantics, and nothing to do with phonology.

    Also, I have to agree, if I heard someone speaking that “Seattle” English, and was asked whether I thought they were from LA, I would have no qualms answering yes.

  100. Kaeltik says:

    @ Nick:
    Yeah, Utahans do exhibit subtle differences from General American. I’m from Idaho and we do the same thing: replace some internal [t]s with glottal stops, kinda like some Brits do in ‘bottle.’ Drives my Pennsylvanian wife crazy. What she hates more is the pin/pen merger (near-close near-front unrounded vowel indistinguishable from the open-mid front unrounded vowel before nasal consonants, i.e. [n] or [m]). There are also pace and cadence differences that are more difficult to quantify.

    @ Chris Wellons:
    Since most of the folks I knew lacked the strong Pittsburgh accent, the thing that jumped out at me most when I lived in there was the tendency for Pennsylvanians and Ohioans to drop infinitives (e.g. “my car needs washed” rather than “my car needs to be washed,” or, and this is a quote from a friend in college, “I need laid”).

  101. Broggly says:

    I’m an Adelaidian and I think some Eastern Australians do some wierd stuff with pitc. Then again I went to a private school and sometimes people pick that up in my accent, or think I’m English.

  102. I’m from Toronto. Here’s a good video by a Western Canadian who highlights some key characteristics of most Canadian speakers’ accents:

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uS60w2vgAkM

    The different ways we say “pasta” and “sorry” and “out” are key. There’s also a funny Russell Peters video explaining how some Canadians swear.

    Amy does two difference Toronto accents, the first an attempt at the urban (or white collar) Toronto accent, the second the rural (or blue collar). It does not sound like Newfie accent, which does not sound like a (classic) Nova Scotia accent. Urban maritimers sound a lot like urban Ontarians, but Newfies, although they can suppress it at will, sound like nobody else (though you can hear their Scottish/Irish descendants). If you want to hear the Newfie accent in all its variety, watch old episodes of “This Hour has 22 Minutes”, or just search for Rick Mercer–when he’s ranting, his original accent becomes stronger. it is quite distinctive and very interesting.

    Toronto is a very cosmopolitan city, and if you spend any time with people in the city at parties, or outside of movie theatres, you will hear hundreds of different accents, some marked by regional cultures both inside and outside of Canada, and others just the crazy mismash that happens when you grow up in a place with such linguistic variety (aside from the white xenophobes who only hang out with other white, xenophobic Canadians). You quickly learn that everybody sounds funny if you pay close attention. Talking is funny.

    Damn, this girl does a magnificent Quebecois accent, although her classic Canadian accent is a bit messy (it’s not easy to do if it’s not natural for you, which is probably true of all rural accents around the world):

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sldBLLPRDCI&NR=1

  103. justaguy says:

    It amuses me when the whole yinzer/pittsburghese/western PA accent gets mentioned so I feel compelled to comment. you kinda ask if the video is being exaggerated and… yeah maybe, but it’s not inaccurate. The region is varied enough that it’s not always that strong, but their accents wouldn’t give people pause if over heard in a bar or dahntawn at the Stiller’s game. The area both celebrates and mocks the accent… often at the same time.

  104. KathleenB says:

    Accents and dialects are fun. My dad was raised by an American southerner (georgia) and a Michiganian. He normally spoke with a flat Midwestern accent, but would say ‘you-all’ and wh-words like his mother.

    My mom was from a Yorkshirewoman (who spent many years in Cambridge) and another Michiganian. However, she says ‘mum’ instead of ‘mom’ and tried not to swear in American in front of my sister and I. That rather backfired, because I now swear in British and sometimes scandalize my grandma. (fyi: ‘bugger’ and ‘bloody’ aren’t anything much over here, but man… A few days ago I dropped something and shouted ‘bugger!’ and I thought grandma was going to cook me with her stare alone!)

    I speak pretty Midwestern, with a strong set of ‘Michigan Lakeshore’ idioms, for lack of a better word – I tell people to take a ‘long walk off a short pier’ when they piss me off, frex.

  105. Adam Szazs says:

    Wow. She did each of them with such finesse that I couldn’t tell which one is her natural one. That is, if she even touched on her real accent.

    Strangely, the Seattle accent sounds the most like the way I talk. I’m from Long Island, home of possibly the dumbest-sounding accent in America, of which the Brooklyn accent is just a subset. (I’ve been told that a bit of LI slips into my inflection from time to time, however. Grr.)

  106. RL says:

    Very impressive! That Toronto accent is probably more accurately a south-eastern ontario / southern maritmes accents, imo…

    I’m from Alberta, and while I don’t hear the difference, I’ve been told we sound a little like MidWesterners with a slight drawl.

  107. Riksa says:

    I don’t think it’s very useful to criticise these “foreign language speaker speaking English”-accents, since there’s really no gold standard to them. The performer just chooses how many different tendencies they include in their accent and that’s it. It’s meaningless to say that such an accent is “wrong” or “overdone” or whatever else, unless referring to a very specific foreign community within a defined area, in which case they probably have something that can be considered a standard accent. Such as “native Swedish speakers in Southwestern Finland speaking Finnish”.

    The same thing applies to actual native language accents. What I mean is that for example Texas is FAR too varied a speech community to be reduced to a single accent that most Texans would agree was “correct”.

    Here in Finland we divide accents mainly between cities, and my hometown Turku (which is the third largest in Finland if metropolitan Helsinki is considered one city, as it is by many not living there) has about 200 000 people. One only needs to travel about 50 miles inland from here to get the next clearly distinguishable dialect.

    And as many already pointed out, for actors, complete linguistics thesis-grade accuracy and authenticity isn’t the primary goal. Therefore, an awesome performance. =)

  108. Joe Cool says:

    Her California accent sounds almost exactly like my wife’s cousin, but not my wife. I would add that California (specifically LA area… what other part matters) is one of those places where not everyone talks with the regional accent. My wife’s accent is more like the Seattle than the CA, despite that both she and her cousin grew up in the same area.

    I used to think that I had a neutral “American” accent, until I recently started doing voice work for my company’s training videos. This involves me recording and listening to my own voice a lot, and I’ve noticed two speech quirks that come through frequently. Firstly, I say “buh-n” instead of “button” and “frinstance” instead of “for instance”. It takes a lot of mental concentration to speak without the accent, and I end up re-recording a lot.

  109. 1d30 says:

    In Tacoma we heve ewer ouen aksent. Eet is refoined and dellikate.

    ;)

    Well, even if we don’t have our own regional accent, at least we’re recognized as a hard-drinking town by our neighbors. That counts for something, right?

  110. Gandaug says:

    As of December 7th update notes:

    “Certain battles were not scaling properly, resulting in excessively difficult fights. They now scale as intended.”

  111. Arquinsiel says:

    The Irish accents are… yeah. The German accent actually sounds similar to a Koln accent, or maybe that girl was just *really* angry at me….

  112. Neil Polenske says:

    Being a native NorCal, I gotta say the SoCal’s spot on, the northern states…I dunno, maybe they do it different past Shasta, but it sounds like someone TRYING to sound American. Just comes off as uncomfortable with the dialect. Needless to say neither sounds like any of the locals.

  113. Decently passable for a bunch of stuff, except for ones that I’m actually familiar with. Didn’t have one that sounded like near my (upstate NY), Seattle sounded a bit too clipped and careful. And Toronto didn’t sound like any Torontonians I know.

    Still. Amazing flexibility to switch like that O.O

  114. Lee says:

    I’m from Seattle, born and raised, and my family lives throughout Washington. I’ve always thought our accent was the most typical, neutral American accent out there. I guess this confirms it. I’d also argue that even rural washingtonians have this neutral accent, with maybe just a more casual sense to it, the only people who have non-neutral accents are either non-natives to Washington or were raised by non-natives.

    And I think that the only real difference between newscaster neutral and Seattleite neutral is that newscasters are more proper. We use a lot of slang and colloquialisms but the accent itself is the same.

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