I Do NOT Have A Frickin' Accent!

[filkertom]

Or maybe I do.

(Thanks to janet_coburn.)

Comments

[drzarron.livejournal.com]

Damn, he's good. That's a pretty dead on list. I have a couple of quibles, but over all, good. I sent him a couple of additions.

[bald-ruminant.livejournal.com]

If you've only got one, be glad. I speak in a hash of about 6 accents, and one of those is from a place where I never lived. Sometimes, even I have a hard time understanding what I'm saying.

[johno.livejournal.com]

Same here.

30+ years watching Brit tv.
5 years in the military (lots of southern, with 8 months in Mississippi).
2 years in Colorado
2 years in Australia
17 years in California

And I still pronounce many words with a Michigander accent.

[ericthemage.livejournal.com]

I was born and raised in Wyandotte, and heard a lot of these, but always made an effort to pronounce things correctly. Some things such as "Where at?" have stuck though. And it is Secretary of State, the rest of the country is just wrong. :)

[dubheach.livejournal.com]

Just great. As a Michigander now living in Kentucky does this mean my Great Lakes accent is going to get thicker...y'all?

[dadandgirl.livejournal.com]

Depends on what part of Michigan, and what part of Kentucky. You may never notice the difference.

Accent on Michigan

[dubheach.livejournal.com]

A2 Brute? (Ypsi to be accurate) and Louisville. Louisville has almost as much variety in local dialect as Ann Arbor does.

Took a "do you speak Yankee or Dixie" tests not that long ago and found 9/10th of my coloquialisms (sp?) were from the Great Lakes area. Good to know I haven't completely abandoned my youth.

Re: Accent on Michigan

[dadandgirl.livejournal.com]

I'm in A^2 now, but originally from Monroe. Just about everybody in Monroe County can claim a grandparent who lives around Middlesboro, KY. Our grandparents all came up to work at the auto plants, raised their families here, and then retired back to the hills.

That Cumberland Gap area hillbilly twang just doesn't go away. It's contageous! It's hardly been diluted at all by generations of living in Michigan, and it seems to get thicker as the speaker gets older.

Now it's started to infect the 'Michigan accent' in general - many of the references on that site, like the dropped 't's and the run together words, are things I picked up from the way my grandfather speaks.

[ericcoleman]

Born in West Virginia
Lived in Pennsylvania, upstate New York, Iowa, London, Chicago and now Iowa again.

It takes me about 12 hours for my southern accent to come back when I am in West Virginia, where I have not lived in 40 years. Go figger

Hey Tom!

[wormquartet.livejournal.com]

Guess who I met!

Clicky clicky

-=ShoEboX=-

[trdsf.livejournal.com]

Speaking as a former Toledoan (The City That Neither State Wants), I had a box seat for listening to Michiganders (pronounced meeeeeee-chiganders, of course), so I can say there's a Michigan accent... since I don't have it.

'Course, I was flattened to learn that I had an accent at all. English prof at college pegged me as a northwest Ohioan by my speech patterns ... apparently it's in the long e's and the r's. Weird (pronounced wee-urrd). My speech patterns got further damaged by going to college with a lot of New Englanders in the middle of Ohio Amish country--and we can blame ataniell93 for appending "y'all" to my personal lexicon.

[bardicwench.livejournal.com]

dammit... I don't have an accent.... it's the REST of the world that speaks funny...