I have maintained for years that I have always had no accent, but come close to the generic American standard. My mother had a bit of a NH accent, and my grandfather on the other side had a strong Canadian southern Maritimes accent (Yarmouth County, NS) that is very similar to a Maine/Mass north shore accent. But I have none.
Well, I have none now. But I just watched a video of myself on 12/14/69, when I was a junior in highschool, and can hear a slight NH accent on the broadened "a's." I must not have lost that until I went to college out of New England.
The things we know we don't always know.
6 comments:
Even though I was born in NE my family left for the Mid Atantic states when I was 2 (and we didn't return to NE until I was starting HS). When I was about 11 and living in Philly I'd vist my cousins back up in SE Mass in the summers. All their friends wanted to hear me talk because of my accent. "Accent," I'd say. "You're the ones with accents. I don't have any."
My sister moved from Missouri to Dallas, lived there 25 years or so. Said the locals could tell she wasn't from there, but she picked up a bit of it.
I didn't know how much of an accent that people from Lowell had until I left. Living in NH for the last year of high school and going to UNH removed it from my speech. My brother, OTOH, stayed in Lowell until he was over 30 and he still carries the worst of the Lowell accent, despite 30 years in NH. My kids have always had great fun with my mother in law when she drops her Rs or adds them to words ending in A. Every now and then I slip and do one of those and self-correct immediately. AVI, I would say your 4 years at W & M did the trick!
Of course you have an accent, you Yankee. I thought y'all knew you talk funny.
We all talk "funny". I do, on purppose, jest lak mah spellin'.
Sam, spelling like that is called "eye-dialect"
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