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Accents

This is a very interesting thread. Now as for myself, from time to time people have asked me where am


I from for I speak with some unusual accent it seems. But which I guess does not sound European. I


personally do not know how I my speech sounds but just what people have said. One person told me that


I have a very unusual and unique speech pattern and voice. Have lived here in the US all my life and here


in Wyoming for years so possibly this is PL related.
 
I've never had anyone comment on the way I talk (at least not to my face), but I definately have an ear for accents. I can get a good idea where someone is from by listening to them speak. I can also mimic the way just about anyone speaks. Where I live, the way people talk is pretty generic. I basically speak with the traditional American accent you hear on TV.
 
I have a young relative with an accent, and was just thinking about that when I saw the thread. Her "O's" are always drawn out - "CoOld" instead of "cold", for instance. Her "b" also sounds almost more like a "p."


What interests me is that I believe there's been cases where, for whatever reason, someone will start speaking with an accent or perhaps in another language altogether. Wasn't there a case a few years ago where some guy from Romania was in an accident and woke up speaking perfect English - a language he hadn't previously known a word of? Or is that one of those exaggerated stories/urban legends? :confused:


ETA: I do want to stress that of course with the latter example, there are cognitive reasons. I just wonder if there are others as well.
 
This is an interesting thread.


I myself have been asked multiple times if I am English >.> I truly don't think I sound English at all, though I've noticed that when I'm really mad, I start speaking in an English accent. If it's not English, I sound like I'm yelling in Spanish, which is a hilarious spectacle :laugh: Even I can't stay mad for long when I sound like that.


And I don't know a word of Spanish other than what I pick up from Spanish songs i.e, "La Bamba", Gipsy Kings version of "Volare", "Guantanamera", "Hasta Siempre", etc.


And even then...


It's still hilarious and one day I intend to get it on video :cool


I also have a bad, bad habit of talking really fast, and find it suprisingly easy to speak Japanese. Although I -haha- can't read it. I have on occasion come off sounding Japanese, German, and every great once in a while, Russian or French.


In regards to the English thing, a LOT of my spelling is British English, i.e. "colour" instead of "color". I once yelled at the computer because it marked "honour" wrong and was all "stupid Americans changing the spelling of words in their OWN language", only to remember that haha, I'm American too : angel
 
Just yesterday a family friend was teaching me how to say a few things in German and said that I spoke it very well. It feels so wonderful to speak it; I really want to learn it. Maybe it would help some memories to come through...?
 
I've been told the same thing by someone who was natively German, so that's pretty cool :thumbsup:


As for the memories deal, I bet it would. My favorite thing to say is "Das ist wünderbar", although I get the feeling that it's something either I or someone else said in regards to gas chambers, concentration camps, etc; and is probably not something I should take amusement in saying >.>


I've often insisted that the proper way to say "Thank you" in Japanese is "Arigato gozaimasu" instead of just "Arigato".


Come to find out, the former is more polite than the latter. I've also been told that I would speak Japanese really well if I learned it. Which is something I have recently taken up trying to do, along with Chinese and Vietnamese.
 
Accent. Well, everyone teases me on that. Instead of the usual Manglish (Malaysian English) everybody's speaking.. I speak what sounds to others with a British accent, but I found out later it was a Berliner's accent. (As I've heard that Berliners speak like English, that's what a lot of people said.. And from movies that stars Thomas Kretschmann.) But when I get mad, strings of German swear words shall appear in my sentence, and sometimes at random. Nowadays I usually go 'Himmel!' when something goes wrong.


Gahaha! I too go mad when I see the spelling error when I spell my British spelling. Once I typed my real life name and then the spelling error appeared and I was all "Himmel! I spelled my name correctly, dammit!" :grr:


But my sister, make her angry, she'll talk so fast and in a very thick Russian accent which makes me forget why she was made in the first place and ask her to repeat what she was saying. (With disastrous results)
 
Good luck on the Chinese! I'm Chinese and I've been trying to learn that -bleep- language for years! Its soo hard for me!


And the strokes you have to make.. And wrong pronunciation can turn the word "Crazy" into "Medicated Oil" if not pronounced properly. (No, I'm not kidding on that. I got it from a Malaysian movie about New Year's. It was hilarious..)
 
Lol :laugh:


My brother's accents fail : angel I always get mad at him when he tries to do a German, British or Russian accent. ESPECIALLY the British ones.


Subsequently, I always end up sounding Hispanic when I get mad at him for it, which doesn't help the matter at hand >.>
 
Ahh.. I can do a horrible French, Italian, Russian accent.. :D And I too failed at my proper British accent.


I don't know how Hispanic sounds like.. As I've never heard it 'fore... : angel
 
My husband learned German at the knee of his great-grandmother when he was very little, but he fell out of using it. He is taking it up again, and I'm tailing along. However, he keeps insisting I'm pronouncing things wrong. His great-grandmother was from West Prussia, I believe, and that's the accent he had. I'm not sure about the pronunciation differences, but we went to a native German speaker to settle a silly argument over who was wrong, and he told us we were both right, but that I was speaking with a southern Bavarian accent. I tried to copy the accent my husband was using, but it just didn't sound right.
 
There was a German girl in my fifth grade band who was from Munich area, and I have always secretly had a cow about her accent because it just didn't "sound right". And here she was a NATIVE German :freak:


When I speak German, I have a very thick east German accent, and I've been told I sound like a Nazi. If I yell in German accented English, it gets even worse and is real obvious. I did that in Wal*Mart once, and everyone was looking at me nervously >.<


My normal English is very standard American, although we Ohioans don't think we have an accent :cool


I also tend to have a cow at people who say that the Scottish and Irish accents are "the same" (I'm biased to Scotland). That's like the difference between English and American, and lord knows that if you were to say that the English and American accents were the same, you'd be considered to be off your rocker.
 
Yes, people do tend to say "You sound like a Nazi.." to me too... *sigh


But I'm quite okay with Bavarian accents as I moved there from Berlin later in life, in my PL and I found it very soothing. And I even speak a little like it. Only a little. I still speak like a Berliner.. :D
 
Once a British woman said to me "you have a terrible American accent" which I took as a compliment, being German... anyway, I do not think I have any other accent than a German one in this life. I do not give too much into single signs anyway. If I did, I would have "claimed" a lot of things by now... (some number and name coincidences and stuff) Like looks, in my personal opinion an accent does not mean much on its own. When combined with memories and other signs, it is a different matter entirely of course, then it can be seen as additional confirmation.
Learning English came easy to me, and I have had some flashes/memories which seem to suggest that I was U.S. American in my last one or two lives... so it would make sense. If those memories are real and not something I have gotten from a book or movie, that is.
(Just that time seems to loose its meaning when I think of the past, events from centuries ago don't feel "further away" than events from only decades ago... or from my childhood or teenage time from this life.)
(I have this tendency to be a bit overly careful when it comes to my own memories... not to be confused with denial, there probably are very few acts of "evil" I did not commit)
 
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