Accents - if you’ve moved away from where yours originated,

[Carrie12345]

what has happened to it? And how far did you move?

My mom and sisters moved far away, and have almost entirely lost their (northern) NJ accents. They’ve been talking super funny (to me) for years!

I haven’t completely lost mine, but it’s usually not full blast unless I’m overly excited (good or bad.) I only moved about an hour or so away.

I just noticed this afternoon that, if I watch a show/movie/whatever with thick New York Jewish Mom accents, my brain and mouth totally overshoot their birth setting and I’m a less nasal Fran Drescher for at least an hour. 

Yet I can spend days with my transplanted relatives, talking their ears off, and they don’t slide back one bit!

[1234]

I have now lived outside of Texas longer than I lived there (first 20 years of my life) and I have moments almost daily where I say something with a horrible twang. Mine definitely gets worse when talking with family still there as well or watch something with the accent. I’ve lived in several places since leaving - CA, FL, IA, IN. I thought I would have completely lost it by now but at least it gives my family a good laugh when it happens. Yesterday, I said water with a tang from like when I was itty bitty and my dc completely lost it. I don’t know why it still randomly happens.

[Laura Corin]

I've lived with my husband for 32 years. He's originally from Texas and I had a southern English BBC accent.  

Now an American would still identify me as English,  but Brits don't know where to place me. Husband's accent has shifted too.

[GoodGrief3]

I grew up in Atlanta. I don't sound at all Southern now, but pick it up easily when I return. I am one of those people though that tends to pick up accents wherever I go.

[Carrie12345]

1 minute ago, GoodGrief3 said:

I grew up in Atlanta. I don't sound at all Southern now, but pick it up easily when I return. I am one of those people though that tends to pick up accents wherever I go.

Lol. That’s where my mom and sisters have been!

[alisoncooks]

I grew up in an area with a strong regional accent. I’ve not lived there for 20+ years, but occasionally I slide back into it. (Especially after a visit home.) I’m only 3.5 hours from where I grew up, but the accent is most definitely different. 

Eta: this is my original accent (though I dare say not as strong, lol). I’ll delete this link soon - don’t quote! 

 

Edited December 13, 2021 by alisoncooks

[stephanier.1765]

I was born to Southern born parents and, for the most part, grew up in Florida. Florida doesn't really have it's own accent, imo. You can hear southern, of course, red neck, multiple foreign accents, but mostly I hear the "TV accent", meaning none at all. Growing up with southern parents, however, means that I had a bit of an accent growing up but eventually grew out of out. But boy, does it come out when I say words like "barbeque". I don't think I could say that word any other way. And the word "redneck"? Well, there is really only one way to say that one too. LOL So even though I didn't move away from my area my accent did change. I grew up and was exposed to a broader world and way of speaking. It's funny when it raises it's southern little head though.

[MEmama]

I’m from California and had a valley girl thing going on when I left for the Midwest. I picked up a few things living in Minnesota for 7 years, and a few more living in eastern Canada. For awhile I was starting to add in random r's here in a Maine way (like, warter for water) but since leaving my job in a more rural area I think I’ve lost that tendency. So basically I have a mishmash of accents and word choices.

Some years ago I took one of those online quizzes that was supposed to be able to identify your hometown, and even though I’ve lived all over the country since leaving at 19, it pinpointed it exactly right. I wonder if the same would be true now. 
 

I cannot wait to see if DS has picked up any Irish in his accent yet! Lol 

Edited December 13, 2021 by MEmama

[MEmama]

20 minutes ago, alisoncooks said:

I grew up in an area with a strong regional accent. I’ve not lived there for 20+ years, but occasionally I slide back into it. (Especially after a visit home.) I’m only 3.5 hours from where I grew up, but the accent is most definitely different. 

Eta: this is my original accent (though I dare say not as strong, lol). I’ll delete this link soon - don’t quote! 

 

Wow!! I’ve never heard anything like that! 

[happi duck]

For four years I lived 2000 miles away from where I grew up and never lost my accent.  I heard "where are you from?" all the time.

[rebcoola]

I haven't moved my DH has I don't know how long it took him to lose it.  I do know it comes back in about 5 minutes.

[Tanaqui]

Everybody speaks a dialect and has an accent. "TV accent" is not "none at all", it's a distinctive speech variety like any other.

[alisoncooks]

31 minutes ago, MEmama said:

Wow!! I’ve never heard anything like that! 

Lol, to my ear it just sounds verrrrry “country”…not necessarily unique.

Also in my area of origin is a linguistically “famous” brogue. Part the same county I’m from, but this is a more isolated island community, just off the coast. 

 

[TechWife]

I’m a southerner with parents from Chicago, my mom being a Chicago native. I was born, raised & lived in Georgia until the age of 27. Growing up & into adulthood other southerners couldn’t place my accent, but to my Midwestern extended family I was clearly southern. I moved a bit over 250 miles at the age of 27 to an area with people from a wide range of backgrounds. My dh is from southern, IL, where the accents are southern, not Midwestern. He and I have both had our accents flatten over time. My family in Georgia sounds really southern to me now. I think much of our accents changing is due to the speaking we have both done, career wise, dh especially. Articulation/enunciation  & projection are very important for him as many in his audiences have a primary language other than English, and the audiences are often international in nature, with many other languages speakers present. I’ve kind of tagged along on that ride with him & my accent has changed accordingly. 

Edited December 13, 2021 by TechWife

[chiguirre]

I've lost the super flat vowels of my native Pittsburgh (check out John Kasich to hear what I mean), but the vocabulary has stuck. I still use redd up, yinz, lunch meat, and some words still have fewer syllables than they should (crayons, caramel).

[Carrie12345]

24 minutes ago, TechWife said:

 

I’m a southerner with parents from Chicago, my mom being a Chicago native. I was born, raised & lived in Georgia until the age of 27. Growing up & into adulthood other southerners couldn’t place my accent, but to my Midwestern extended family I was clearly southern

 

Oh, that’s interesting to me. My youngest four have 0 NJ accent despite 2 NJ parents. I’m constantly interrupting them with “who taught you how to talk like that?!?”

[Junie]

I remember one time when I was a child I walked into the kitchen while my mom was on the phone.  I told her, "Tell Grandma I said hi."  Later she asked me how I knew it was Grandma.  I told her that she had an accent whenever she talked to someone from "up home" and Grandma was the one she talked to most often.

[Melissa in Australia]

My dh is from Canada, he has been living in Australia for 30 years. He still has his Canadian accent. He has practiced hard to get some words like Melbourne  emu and kookaburra right as people would laugh 

I am from rural Victoria Australia, I have a very distinct accent 

 we can both understand each other mostly, BUT dh defiantly has a different dialect. We sometimes really struggle to communicate as his way of phrasing sentences and word choice is very different to how Australians speak.   Sometimes he cannot pick up  indirect questions that Australians ask. I find myself often speaking in a very concise manner, sort of stilted, not how an Aussie would speak.

 Speaking the same words doesn’t mean you are speaking the same language
 

 If I answer the phone call from a relative or friend of dh from Canada, they cannot understand me at all. 
 

edited to add

the twins came to live with us at 3 1/2. They weren’t really speaking at that time. You can tell which words they learned from dh or me. The words they learned from dh they say with a very Canadian accent. The words they learned from me they use an Aussie accent. Even now at the age of 10 they speak like this still.

Edited December 13, 2021 by Melissa in Australia

[Janeway]

I have been told I have lost my accent. I believe it because when I hear people speak back where I am from, I can really hear the accent. However, no one around here ever asks me where I am from originally. 

 

Funny thing, I met two people from , one from Columbia and the other from Finland over the weekend. Their accents were so strong that I would have thought they still spent a lot of time there or only came here recently. Yet, they both thought that they barely had an accent anymore. 

 

[Shoeless]

I'm originally from Long Island, NY (and no one from there actually pronounces it "lawnguyland", so let's just leave that be).  I had a very mild LI accent when I was growing up, (I saw a recording of a school play I was in and *I* hear the accent); my teachers always asked me where I was from because I didn't sound like I came from LI. 🤷‍♀️

I've lost the little bit of accent I had and people still can't exactly place where I'm from other than "East Coast", but that's mostly from mannerisms and the way I carry myself, I suspect. 

[Kalmia]

1 minute ago, Melissa in Australia said:

My dh is from Canada, he has been living in Australia for 30 years. He still has his Canadian accent. He has practiced hard to get some words like Melbourne  emu and kookaburra right as people would laugh 

I am from rural Victoria Australia, I have a very distinct accent 

 we can both understand each other mostly, BUT dh defiantly has a different dialect. We sometimes really struggle to communicate as his way of phrasing sentences and word choice is very different to how Australians speak.   Sometimes he cannot pick up  indirect questions that Australians ask. I find myself often speaking in a very concise manner, sort of stilted, not how an Aussie would speak.

 Speaking the same words doesn’t mean you are speaking the same language
 

 If I answer the phone call from a relative or friend of dh from Canada, they cannot understand me at all. 

I am from Maine, which is very close to eastern Canada. When I spent my semester abroad in Australia in college (especially at the farm stay in Yerong Creek, but also in Melbourne, and at school at Monash Uni), I could only understand about 20% of what people were saying for the first few weeks. It was kind of worrisome. We were speaking the same language! I'd understood Australian people in the movies! After several weeks, I slowly assimilated the different pronunciations of vowels and learned some of the specific terms that were unfamiliar, but it took me the whole semester (and a helpful & cute Australian boyfriend who had been raised in Bangladesh so had a watered-down accent) to get fluent. I now believe I probably do have some language processing deficit, because the same thing happened in India. Despite the people at my husband's work in Bangalore being fluent in English, I couldn't figure out what they were saying for a loooong time. Since they were used to working people from all parts of the world, I think they assumed I wasn't American like my husband and one even asked me if English was my first language! And to further confirm the problem definitely lies with me, I still ask my very southern US cousin to repeat himself at least four times each phone call, because despite him (supposedly) speaking English, some of his sentences are untranslatable in my brain.

[Elizabeth86]

I haven’t moved away from my accent, but my dh is pretty funny. His parents are from NY state and they have pretty strong accent, but he was raised here in the Appalachian area of the world. So, everyone here hears his NY influence and everyone there thinks he sounds like a hick. It’s kind of a funny thing.

[TexasProud]

Well, my accent is nondescript. I grew up in Houston, but most of my friends were transplants from northern states. No one I knew growing up had a southern accent. I have had countless people tell me I don’t sound like I am from Texas. 

[KidsHappen]

I was born and bred a military brat and then went on to become a military wife as well. I had never lived in any one place more than two or three years at a time until we moved here 18 years ago. I don’t have an accent at all. I have even taken tests showing no accent. 
 

I have picked a few idiosyncrasies from a few places although they don’t come out too often. I have lived in both Boston and Texas so I sometimes have ‘r’s  where they don’t belong and other times no ‘r’s where they do belong. My vowels sometimes have a very slight WI/MN sound to them and I do tend to use southern expressions.

 

My children have spent most of their life in the south but only occasionally sound southern. We all laugh when one them sounds really southern. I did spend several years telling that them was pronounced with an ‘e’ not a ‘u’ as in thum. Not exactly sure where that came from.

 

My hubby was born and spent the first ten years of his life in Chicago and he still sounds somewhat midwestern even though he hasn’t been back in 50 years.

 

We both have brothers that are so southern that we can barely understand what they are saying.

 

When we first moved here a lot of people sounded really southern but in the last 18 years we have had quite the influx of people from other areas that it is now pretty rare to hear a really southern accent. It seems that most people here now don’t have a recognizable accent.

[KungFuPanda]

I was born in Ohio and lived there until first grade.  I mostly grew up in southern WV.  My accent was never as thick as my parents who were born there or my siblings who were younger when we moved back to WV.  I also tend to assimilate wherever I go and I've lived all over the country as an adult.  I'm in MD now, but in a transplant heavy area.  I only know a handful of people who actually grew up here.  

If I travel back home, my accent returns for a few days once I get back.  If I talk to my mom on the phone it returns for an hour or so.  My children find this hysterical.  The one glitch in assimilating is that some expressions don't get used everywhere.  Anything regionally unique usually keeps the original accent with me.  That, and the word "lawyer" outs me every time because I pronounce the "law" part LIKE YOU'RE SUPPOSED TO.

All three of my siblings have lived all around the country and none of them lost their accents.

Edited December 13, 2021 by KungFuPanda

[LinRTX]

Both my husband and I traveled  all over the world as children for our Dad's jobs. All 4 of my children have lived in Texas their entire childhood, in the same city. I remember going on vacation when the oldest was in college. No one believed they were native Texans. No one could place the accent. I have always found that amusing.

Edited December 13, 2021 by LinRTX
typo

[thewellerman]

2 hours ago, alisoncooks said:

I grew up in an area with a strong regional accent. I’ve not lived there for 20+ years, but occasionally I slide back into it. (Especially after a visit home.) I’m only 3.5 hours from where I grew up, but the accent is most definitely different.

I'm not from your area, but I knew exactly where it was from the video.  I had to google to check, but sure enough.  I lived a little south of there for a while, and it is very distinctive.  It is amazing how quickly it shifts just a short drive away, but it just evaporates.  

Personally, my hometown doesn't really have an accent, but does have common  mannerisms and phrases.  I am surprised how familiar complete strangers feel to me when I travel back, and it is mostly body language. 

Edited December 13, 2021 by thewellerman

[Pawz4me]

1 hour ago, alisoncooks said:

Lol, to my ear it just sounds verrrrry “country”…not necessarily unique.

Also in my area of origin is a linguistically “famous” brogue. Part the same county I’m from, but this is a more isolated island community, just off the coast. 

 

I saw an interview of a professor of linguistics from NCSU a year or so ago, and he said NC is a fascinating place for linguists due to the number of regional dialects.

[Clarita]

I have a Californian accent. I immigrated here before first grade so I did not retain my previous accent - I don't know if my imitation of it is any good. However if I meet someone with an accent and interact with them for more than 2 hours I start to sound like them. I went to a conference where a British man was my lab partner, the next day he says to me "Are you making fun of me?!" I looked back confused and he tells me I started using a British accent and saying things like "Cheers". I had to apologize and tell him I didn't mean to. My husband has told me he can tell exactly who I hang out with at my girls events because of what I sound like when I get home.   

Edit: I moved across the Pacific Ocean from China.

Edited December 14, 2021 by Clarita
Add information

[Loowit]

I can't hear my accent, even though I know that everyone has one.  I have lived in the same area my whole life, and only lived a few hours away for college.  Most of the time when we travel people can place that we aren't from around there because of words or phrases that we use, rather than a distinct accent.

My maternal grandparents grew up in rural Arkansas and moved out to the PNW during the depression.  My grandpa moved earlier and was younger and lost his accent pretty young.  My grandmother moved closer to the end of the depression when she was a teenager.  She got teased a lot for her accent and tried very hard to lose it, but she still had a mild accent all her life.  I picked up some of her accent when I would spend time with her.

[MooCow]

Deleted for privacy

Edited December 14, 2021 by MooCow

[Shoeless]

I did a "where are you from?" quiz from the NY Times, and it pinged every single place I have lived around the US, lol. I guess I have picked up a little something from every place I've lived. 

[klmama]

 

15 minutes ago, MissLemon said:

I did a "where are you from?" quiz from the NY Times, and it pinged every single place I have lived around the US, lol. I guess I have picked up a little something from every place I've lived. 

I once met a linguist who perfectly pegged everywhere I'd lived.  It was kind of weird, yet reassuring.  

[Hannah]

I used to share an office with a colleague who's parents were from Scotland.  I knew every time one of them phoned as he immediately switched to a Scottish accent. For the rest of us it was 100% South African.

[MEmama]

DH's parents are from Oklahoma. Even though they moved away when he was very young and normally he has zero OK in his accent, he unconsciously uses a twang whenever he speaks with them—and even uses words he never, ever uses “in real life”. 

[73349]

Accents are fairly contagious to me, and I do pick them up a bit after talking with others with different accents; I think it goes along with learning new languages readily. I sound like an East Coast mix most of the time, though--close to "US TV" except for certain giveaway words and phrases. DS speaks like I do despite having lived in (urban) NC all his life, with the exception of one phrase I know he picked up from neighbors.

I have an aunt who was born & raised in Massachusetts, but if you listened to her, you'd think she'd never set foot out of Texas.

[Farrar]

Grew up in Georgia and NC. College in New England. Now in the mid-Atlantic. I'm told my accent is pretty neutral and vaguely southern, but not full on. If I'm in Georgia it picks up. Dh used to laugh when I was on the phone with my grandmother before she died, because it would shift pretty quickly.

[klmama]

Yes, going back to my hometown brings out that accent.  My kids think it's hilarious.  I know I still have some of it, though, as I recently watched a video of myself teaching a class and heard several words pronounced in that accent, which is very distinct from the way people speak here.  I had no idea it was still so strong.  

[SKL]

I've observed that this varies a lot from person to person.

I can pick up an accent just by hanging out with someone from another place for a while.  (Not intentionally - it's just what happens.)

When I was tutoring a young car accident victim, I caught myself actually breathing the way she breathed (very labored as she'd been literally run over).  I forced myself to stop lest she think I was making fun of her.

In contrast, a person I live with has been in midwest US for over 30 years and still has a strong accent from her hometown.

I assume most people fall somewhere in between.

ETA:  I've been told I sound Canadian.  I have never lived in Canada.  But I guess that may be the net result of various other things I have going on.  😛

Edited December 14, 2021 by SKL

[MistyMountain]

I grew up in NJ and lived thousands of miles away for 18 years. Somewhere along the way pretty early on I lost the accent. When I first moved people would ask where I was from and guess New York. I never have anyone do that anymore. I do have a handful of words though that a comment may be made about how I pronounce it. I know I do have a few terms or ways of pronouncing things from there but I no longer have a strong accent people can hear and identify. Whenever I visit I can hear the accent right away and it is strange to me that it used to be my accent. I don’t start slipping into it or using it around people that have the accent like family members. The where are you from quiz does peg me where I grew up. 

Edited December 14, 2021 by MistyMountain

[Lady Florida.]

We moved from New Jersey where I was born to Florida when I was 13 and about to enter 9th grade. I don't remember actually losing my Jersey accent but I know that four years later when I graduated from high school it was gone. We moved to Flah-rida but by the time I was out of high school I lived in Floor-duh.

My brother was 8 and I'm pretty sure he lost his accent faster than I did. My mom eventually lost hers but it took longer. I could always tell when she was talking to one of her sisters back in Jersey because for about an hour or two her accent would return. It wasn't strong but there were some words here and there that told me she had been on the phone with Aunt S or H. One of them also moved to Florida but 20 years after we did and she was in her 50s then. She still has a NJ accent but it's toned down some in the time she's lived here. 

There isn't much of an accent in Central Florida but there is a way of speaking. When I was reading this Reddit thread I said the phrases aloud that he wrote and was surprised to find I do speak that way. I believe he's from Tampa (those are street names in Tampa)  but it's still Central Florida. 

 

"Obviously we have southern accents in many parts of the state and pockets of other accents throughout, but I recently became aware of an overall " Central Florida Accent".

A student from Russia put me onto this and I've been noticing it ever since.

The biggest standout of our accent is running words together when they have sounds that flow well with each other. For instance, Say: "I saw him on the corner of Van Dyke and Dale Mabry"

A person with a standard accent would say "I saw'hm on the corner ov Van Dyke AND Dale May-bah-ree" with noticeable pausing between each word (sometimes syllable), where as a Central Floridian would say: "I saw'm-on'thuh-corner've-an-Dyke-nd-ale Mabry." This is not to say we speak quickly, just that we let our words flow with no hard stops or hard sounds to break up the sentence. Again this is not all of Florida as we have pockets that differ greatly.

If you don't hear anyone doing this, ask your nearest Florida acquaintance to read the words "Pizza Hut" aloud. Go ahead.

If they grew up in Florida (and didn't think about it too much), there's a good chance they just said "Pete's-uht". We leave off the "H" on "Hut", but unlike the British, we don't often leave off the "H" sound. We would pronounce the "H" if it were "Kebab Hut". We leave it off because "Pizza" sounds like "Pete-zah" so you can leave off the "H" in "Hut". In addition to that the "uh" sound in pizza matches the "uh" sound in hut, so you can pretty much combine the "ah" with the "hu" in "hut": Pete-suht.

We're basically lazy speakers, but that's okay with me. It just kinda blew my mind that Florida had its own accent and if it weren't for an outsider pointing it out, I never would've noticed.

EDIT: To add to this: Imagine someone with any other accent saying "I saw him on the corner of Van Dyke and Dale Mabry." There's almost no accent where they wouldn't hit the "V" in "Van Dyke" hard, except some Burroughs of New York, but Floridians definitely differ from NY."
 

 

 

23 hours ago, MissLemon said:

I'm originally from Long Island, NY (and no one from there actually pronounces it "lawnguyland", so let's just leave that be)

That's like no one from New Jersey says Joisey but you get that all the time if you tell people you're from there.

 

[Amethyst]

I grew up in Philadelphia. I don’t think I ever had a really strong Philly accent, but there definitely were words that I pronounced the  classic Philly way (think “wooder” for water). I haven’t lived there in over 30 years. I think I only have a trace of it left. There are some words I don’t think will ever change (AR-inge for OR-inge, for instance). I don’t get asked about where I’m from nearly as often as I used to. 

[Shoeless]

3 hours ago, Amethyst said:

I grew up in Philadelphia. I don’t think I ever had a really strong Philly accent, but there definitely were words that I pronounced the  classic Philly way (think “wooder” for water). I haven’t lived there in over 30 years. I think I only have a trace of it left. There are some words I don’t think will ever change (AR-inge for OR-inge, for instance). I don’t get asked about where I’m from nearly as often as I used to. 

Is the bolded a Philly thing? I've always pronounced orange "ar-inge", but I've never lived in Philly.

I pronounced "radiator" to rhyme with "gladiator", which is apparently a Queens, NYC thing. According to this website, it's also a Philly thing. https://www.grammarphobia.com/blog/2012/06/radiator.html

[Amethyst]

2 hours ago, MissLemon said:

Is the bolded a Philly thing? I've always pronounced orange "ar-inge", but I've never lived in Philly.

I pronounced "radiator" to rhyme with "gladiator", which is apparently a Queens, NYC thing. According to this website, it's also a Philly thing. https://www.grammarphobia.com/blog/2012/06/radiator.html

Good question. I’ve always said ar-inge and dh does not. Most people I know say Or-inge, so maybe I just assumed it was a Philly thing. I know that radiator rhyming with gladiator is a Philly thing, although I’ve never said it that way. Like I said, I never had a really strong Philly accent.  
 

Looking back, I think my dad tried to have us speak “proper” English, either snobbishness on his part, an attempt to lift us out of working class Philadelphia, or just feeling it was part of his job as a dad. 

[Janeway]

On 12/13/2021 at 5:17 PM, Janeway said:

I have been told I have lost my accent. I believe it because when I hear people speak back where I am from, I can really hear the accent. However, no one around here ever asks me where I am from originally. 

 

Funny thing, I met two people from , one from Columbia and the other from Finland over the weekend. Their accents were so strong that I would have thought they still spent a lot of time there or only came here recently. Yet, they both thought that they barely had an accent anymore. 

 

Okay..so..this is funny. It has never happened, not in all these years. Then this thread of posts happens and then on Tuesday, after making this post, I go to the dentist and the new hygenist comments on my accent! Apparently, she knew my dad (but did not know he had passes away) and wondered if we were related (same last name) because my accent sounds just like his!

[Lady Florida.]

AR-inge is also North Jersey (not near Philly). I said it before I lost my accent and my relatives up there pronounce it that way. After losing my accent I now say OR-inge.

FLAH-rida AR-inges became FLOORduh OR-inges once I lost my accent.

We also said radiator to rhyme with gladiator. That's another one that changed with the lost accent. I say it like most people now, with the first a as a long a. 

Edited December 16, 2021 by Lady Florida.

[Shoeless]

5 hours ago, Lady Florida. said:

AR-inge is also North Jersey (not near Philly). I said it before I lost my accent and my relatives up there pronounce it that way. After losing my accent I now say OR-inge.

FLAH-rida AR-inges became FLOORduh OR-inges once I lost my accent.

We also said radiator to rhyme with gladiator. That's another one that changed with the lost accent. I say it like most people now, with the first a as a long a. 

I have to remind myself to say radiator the "right" way, but it always feels like a lie when I do! 😁 

[Terabith]

I grew up in Tennessee.  A few years ago, I heard a recording my mom had made of me as a child, and I had a striking Southern accent.  I remember being about seven and realizing that I wanted to talk like the people on the news and consciously working to get rid of my accent, apparently pretty successfully.