What is it about accents?

I regret losing my mostly Texan, slightly Midwestern, accent. I speak like a boring fucker now.

 

My wife's South African accent - it's much more British than some of the harsher S.A. accents her family has - helped us sustain a long-distance relationship for two years. The six-hour phone calls were quite easy on the ears. It's not as noticeable to me these days, but without fail when we're back in Minnesota - and often in NYC too - if someone hears her talk they'll get all chatty and friendly and wanna know where she's from, what she's doing in America, etc. She usually says she's from Cape Town, but sometimes people start lecturing her on apartheid, so at times she'll just say England.

Even when she's chewing out our landlord, he'll occasionally say, "it's hard to get upset with you because of that accent."

I don't think I have a Fargo accent anymore, but I definitely notice it in my family, and I do get laughed at by my wife when I talk on the phone with them because of the amount of "ya's" I say, which I never use otherwise.

 

You faked a Scottish accent for two months??

Did you drink like a Scots for two months as well?

 

I know this will get me in trouble I will admit to turning up the sound if Wendy Nix is doing a report on ESPN.

She has a little bit of that down home southern accent left that makes for a very pleasing sound.

 

On one hand, I tried consciously during five-and-a-half years in Texas (north of Dallas, then west) to stave off the twang. I just didn't want to sound like "those people." Then, when I went back there for a brief visit a year-and-a-half after leaving I couldn't get enough of the waitress from Petersburg who served me "pahnts of Shah-ner."

When I applied for a job in Hong Kong two years ago, a small part of the reason I hoped I'd get it was Asian women speaking the Queen's English.

 

More likely, she tells her friends about this guy she once dated who faked a William Wallace accent for two months. "And then he must have figured out I knew the truth, so he panicked and broke it off."

 

When I first arrived here, almost nine years ago now, I would have friends of my fiancee's parents continually ask me to 'say something'.

Thankfully, that faded after a while.

 

Until you came to Seattle.

 

Yeah, but that was a lot funnier.

 

You didn't get me drunk enough to hear it.

This is definitely a man's world. But while they're laughing and grab-assing, I'm chasing down leads and practicing my nonregional diction.

 

I had quite a Kentucky accent when I first moved to Atlanta, but I think I've lost quite a bit of it. After 13 years of living here, I guess some if it just slipped away. I know I still have at least some of it though, because people still comment on my accent. When I go back to my hometown for visits, I do temporarily seem to pick up some of it again. Oh and when I drink it always gets worse.

It's nice to see at least some favoritism for southern accents. I always just felt like it made me sound ignorant, like the typical hillbilly stereotype.

 

My dad, a lifelong Detroiter, has always used rut beer and crick...

I drive my brother nuts when I say "chi-kaw-go" instead "Chi-KAH-go"