The test tells me I have a "Midland accent" (the bar is over 13/14 filled by my ruler), which they point out is another way to say that I "don't have an accent." I grew up in OK, but my parents and 3 grandparents are from Nebraska/Iowa. (That includes the grandmother whose accent sounds Canadian to Tam and makes Tam crazy when she says "about." My own recent accent annoyance issue is that I've been talking at work to a woman from NY named Dawn and I am put on edge by the way she pronounces her own name. This follows on the heels of how I saw an HP ad in which the person pronounced “technology” in that same particularly grating way and have been unable to get over how much I dislike it.)
As far as I can recall, the only person to tell me that I have an accent is an Ohioan who thought I sounded vaguely southern. I’m sure I would hear this more if I actually went to the Midwest.
One weird aspect of my accent is that I, like my family and unlike anybody else I know, pronounce the state Colorado like "Caw-luh-ra-do.” I found this totally perplexing, because my parents, sister, 2 grandparents, and I all have actually lived in Colorado and it never occurred to me that you would pronounce it another way. Later, reading the regional variation pages of my dictionary, I discovered that my pronunciation of Colorado is particular to native Coloradans and is a defining element of a certain sub-regional accent. It was amusing to me that Tam doesn’t run into this pronunciation in Denver, but since it appears that 99.4% of the Denver population is from other states, particularly California and Texas, I guess that makes sense.
When we first moved to OK, when I was in first grade, on one of my first days of school, I heard a bunch of kids talking about “wrassling” and didn’t have a clue what they were talking about. When I got home and asked my parents what this was, they explained it was “wrestling.” All right, wrestling, I know. My dad wrestled for the U. of Nebraska and was a high school wrestling coach in NE and CO. I have seen the photographic evidence of myself dressed in a little outfit with the school mascot on it at games. This wrassling/wrestling issue was the second indication that I was in a totally different world. (Indication #1 being that it was the beginning of September and it was unbelievably hot.)
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ninetydegrees
Accents
on 2006-11-03 03:21 pm (UTC)The test tells me I have a "Midland accent" (the bar is over 13/14 filled by my ruler), which they point out is another way to say that I "don't have an accent." I grew up in OK, but my parents and 3 grandparents are from Nebraska/Iowa. (That includes the grandmother whose accent sounds Canadian to Tam and makes Tam crazy when she says "about." My own recent accent annoyance issue is that I've been talking at work to a woman from NY named Dawn and I am put on edge by the way she pronounces her own name. This follows on the heels of how I saw an HP ad in which the person pronounced “technology” in that same particularly grating way and have been unable to get over how much I dislike it.)
As far as I can recall, the only person to tell me that I have an accent is an Ohioan who thought I sounded vaguely southern. I’m sure I would hear this more if I actually went to the Midwest.
One weird aspect of my accent is that I, like my family and unlike anybody else I know, pronounce the state Colorado like "Caw-luh-ra-do.” I found this totally perplexing, because my parents, sister, 2 grandparents, and I all have actually lived in Colorado and it never occurred to me that you would pronounce it another way. Later, reading the regional variation pages of my dictionary, I discovered that my pronunciation of Colorado is particular to native Coloradans and is a defining element of a certain sub-regional accent. It was amusing to me that Tam doesn’t run into this pronunciation in Denver, but since it appears that 99.4% of the Denver population is from other states, particularly California and Texas, I guess that makes sense.
When we first moved to OK, when I was in first grade, on one of my first days of school, I heard a bunch of kids talking about “wrassling” and didn’t have a clue what they were talking about. When I got home and asked my parents what this was, they explained it was “wrestling.” All right, wrestling, I know. My dad wrestled for the U. of Nebraska and was a high school wrestling coach in NE and CO. I have seen the photographic evidence of myself dressed in a little outfit with the school mascot on it at games. This wrassling/wrestling issue was the second indication that I was in a totally different world. (Indication #1 being that it was the beginning of September and it was unbelievably hot.)