4 ms·

To everyone here feeling bad about their southern accents, I'm just gonna say this: as an immigrant, I LOVE those accents. I wish I could just adopt one, but th

To everyone here feeling bad about their southern accents, I'm just gonna say this: as an immigrant, I LOVE those accents. I wish I could just adopt one, but that would sound fake as hell, unfortunately. So I'm putting my accent reduction efforts into sounding more like someone from the West Coast, which I understand to be fairly neutral. The southern accent thing is very relatable to me, as in my own country (Brazil) I have a very distinct southern accent too (I grew up in a rural area like many folks here).

anonymousDan 6y ago
Likewise. So many American accents are just awful nasally things. I actually can't stand listening to half the courses on Coursera for example. The southern accent is so much easier on the ear.
forinti 6y ago
I also like Southern accents, but what I like more is the vocabulary. I really enjoy the way some really arcane/erudite words pop up out of nowhere.
- cbozeman 6y ago
  Haha, last year I was seeing a lady who was from California, migrated out here to Texas, and I ran into the same thing. I'm actually from Mississippi, so I have an even thicker accent than all but the most rural Texans, and while we were dating, she interjected during one of our talks about politics and life, with, "I could listen to you talk for hours...". I was genuinely flattered. When I asked why, it as much the same reasoning you gave. I apparently have peculiar word choices that, when combined with an advanced education and a wide and diverse range of interests, causes a lot of cognitive bias in those who hear me speak.
yourapostasy 6y ago
> ...putting my accent reduction efforts into sounding more like someone from the West Coast, which I understand to be fairly neutral. Ever since I was a child, others have observed that I speak in a remarkably Broadcast English accent (it was usually described as "you have no accent at all", or "you sound just like the news reporters"). That "neutral American accent" you are after is called General American English, and is still an evolving area [1]. The West Coast lends some of its artifacts to this neutral accent, but General American English is an ambiguous kind of a prestige accent that stands relatively apart from its constituent regional accents. In daily work however, I determined in my use cases that careful enunciation and appropriate vocabulary for my audience (especially for public speaking) count for far more to obtain engagement and active involvement than my accent. The enunciation part required careful, conscious effort in everyday settings before it could take root as a habit in my consulting work, and led to noticeable sales engagement improvement; I wasn't well-off enough at the time to afford a speech coach. Ironically, I'm horrible at understanding thick accents myself, currently training myself to get better at that skill by listening to YouTube videos and engaging my coworkers with thick accents over audio chats instead of text chats. It takes a tremendous amount of my attention to parse thick accents, while others seem to take them in stride. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_American_English https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_American_English
- geomark 6y ago
  Adding my anecdote to this, I had an interesting experience when my kid did some voice over work for a couple of studios in Bangkok. I grew up in southern California and apparently have that West Coast or news broadcaster accent, which my kid has picked up. And that's what the studios wanted. One was for a Singapore TV kid's show where one of the main actors spoke English with what I guess you would call a Singapore accent. The producer wanted to replace that. Another was a cartoon for Indonesian TV. In both cases they wanted the "neutral American accent".
dhruvmittal 6y ago
I've had to confront my southern accent a few times in my life to get taken seriously. Moving from rural North Carolina to attend college in Chapel Hill, I had to "scrub the rural from my voice." When I went to graduate school in New York, I tried my best to coach myself to a "flat American accent," which carried me well through the midwest when I later moved to Ohio. One of the small joys of my life right now is working with folks with thick accents in positions of seniority. At my previous job, we had a chief scientist who also came from NC. At one point, he told me that he'd suppressed his accent until he was promoted past the level where anyone could judge how he said things instead of what he said.
kls 6y ago
A funny story I tell from time to time, is that I was with a company as the CTO that was acquired by a huge conglomerate with headquarters in Spain, so we had a lot of Spaniards that would come over to work for 6 month to several years. Anyways, one of them, Valentine was the CTO and my Spanyard counterpart. Soon this game began among several of the Spaniard executives to see who could learn obscure US colloquialisms and use them in conversation. That being said, the south has a master on them in spades. So me and one of my senior developers set about to teaching Valantine southern colloquialisms. Which would sometimes come out of his mouth hilariously wrong. Anyways, Valentine and myself end up late to a meeting one day and some decision were made that neither of us agreed with and Valentine says listen you carpetbagging hornswogglers, that dog is not going to hunt (translation, you untrustworthy, scheming people, that idea is stupid and it's not going to work). You could see the absolute defeat on the other Spaniard execs faces. It was a hilarious interaction, in which the other execs where trying to get me to cough up some colloquialisms they could use. I never suppressed my accent in my career and have done well for myself. That being said, there have been occasions where I could tell I was in a room full of people who assumed I was a dumb southerner. That was to their detriment not mine. As a side note, I did teach myself how to speak in a completely mid-atlantic accent which is pretty cool because it's not a real accent so nobody knows where you are from. If you want to teach yourself an accent, I would suggest learning mid-atlantic, as you will never run across a native speaker, it will throw people off and strike up a lot of conversation. It's funny but accents, at least in native language are actually fairly fungible. If someone takes the effort, they can easily fake an accent to fairly realistic abilities so long as they are familiar with the dialect. I can fake a Italian/Brooklyn accent to fairly decent accuracy as most native English speaking Americans are able to. It might not fool a Brooklyn native, but it is good enough to fool the average American. We can thank Rocky Balboa for that. I can fake most southern accents to the extent that I can fool native speakers, but unless you are intricately familiar with the region it is hard to fool natives because there are usually hyper-dialects, I can tell where a person is from if they are from the south based on the southern accent. Yet, most people out of the south cannot tell the difference. For example, a Texas draw from the Old Florida draw, I can tell because I am from Florida, I have it and I get asked if I am from Texas all the time, yet I know when someone is from Texas as it is different in it's inflections. As well Georgia and Alabama are distinct from North Carolina and Tennessee wheras Mississippi is a mix, get too far north and they sound like Tennessee, east and it sounds like Alabama, south west and it sounds like Cajun, but it blends and that is how you can tell they are from Mississippi because they will use colloquialisms from other local accents.

anonymousDan 6y ago

Likewise. So many American accents are just awful nasally things. I actually can't stand listening to half the courses on Coursera for example. The southern accent is so much easier on the ear.

forinti 6y ago

I also like Southern accents, but what I like more is the vocabulary. I really enjoy the way some really arcane/erudite words pop up out of nowhere.

cbozeman 6y ago
Haha, last year I was seeing a lady who was from California, migrated out here to Texas, and I ran into the same thing. I'm actually from Mississippi, so I have an even thicker accent than all but the most rural Texans, and while we were dating, she interjected during one of our talks about politics and life, with, "I could listen to you talk for hours...". I was genuinely flattered. When I asked why, it as much the same reasoning you gave. I apparently have peculiar word choices that, when combined with an advanced education and a wide and diverse range of interests, causes a lot of cognitive bias in those who hear me speak.

yourapostasy 6y ago

> ...putting my accent reduction efforts into sounding more like someone from the West Coast, which I understand to be fairly neutral. Ever since I was a child, others have observed that I speak in a remarkably Broadcast English accent (it was usually described as "you have no accent at all", or "you sound just like the news reporters"). That "neutral American accent" you are after is called General American English, and is still an evolving area [1]. The West Coast lends some of its artifacts to this neutral accent, but General American English is an ambiguous kind of a prestige accent that stands relatively apart from its constituent regional accents. In daily work however, I determined in my use cases that careful enunciation and appropriate vocabulary for my audience (especially for public speaking) count for far more to obtain engagement and active involvement than my accent. The enunciation part required careful, conscious effort in everyday settings before it could take root as a habit in my consulting work, and led to noticeable sales engagement improvement; I wasn't well-off enough at the time to afford a speech coach. Ironically, I'm horrible at understanding thick accents myself, currently training myself to get better at that skill by listening to YouTube videos and engaging my coworkers with thick accents over audio chats instead of text chats. It takes a tremendous amount of my attention to parse thick accents, while others seem to take them in stride. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_American_English https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_American_English

geomark 6y ago
Adding my anecdote to this, I had an interesting experience when my kid did some voice over work for a couple of studios in Bangkok. I grew up in southern California and apparently have that West Coast or news broadcaster accent, which my kid has picked up. And that's what the studios wanted. One was for a Singapore TV kid's show where one of the main actors spoke English with what I guess you would call a Singapore accent. The producer wanted to replace that. Another was a cartoon for Indonesian TV. In both cases they wanted the "neutral American accent".

dhruvmittal 6y ago

I've had to confront my southern accent a few times in my life to get taken seriously. Moving from rural North Carolina to attend college in Chapel Hill, I had to "scrub the rural from my voice." When I went to graduate school in New York, I tried my best to coach myself to a "flat American accent," which carried me well through the midwest when I later moved to Ohio. One of the small joys of my life right now is working with folks with thick accents in positions of seniority. At my previous job, we had a chief scientist who also came from NC. At one point, he told me that he'd suppressed his accent until he was promoted past the level where anyone could judge how he said things instead of what he said.

kls 6y ago

A funny story I tell from time to time, is that I was with a company as the CTO that was acquired by a huge conglomerate with headquarters in Spain, so we had a lot of Spaniards that would come over to work for 6 month to several years. Anyways, one of them, Valentine was the CTO and my Spanyard counterpart. Soon this game began among several of the Spaniard executives to see who could learn obscure US colloquialisms and use them in conversation. That being said, the south has a master on them in spades. So me and one of my senior developers set about to teaching Valantine southern colloquialisms. Which would sometimes come out of his mouth hilariously wrong. Anyways, Valentine and myself end up late to a meeting one day and some decision were made that neither of us agreed with and Valentine says listen you carpetbagging hornswogglers, that dog is not going to hunt (translation, you untrustworthy, scheming people, that idea is stupid and it's not going to work). You could see the absolute defeat on the other Spaniard execs faces. It was a hilarious interaction, in which the other execs where trying to get me to cough up some colloquialisms they could use. I never suppressed my accent in my career and have done well for myself. That being said, there have been occasions where I could tell I was in a room full of people who assumed I was a dumb southerner. That was to their detriment not mine. As a side note, I did teach myself how to speak in a completely mid-atlantic accent which is pretty cool because it's not a real accent so nobody knows where you are from. If you want to teach yourself an accent, I would suggest learning mid-atlantic, as you will never run across a native speaker, it will throw people off and strike up a lot of conversation. It's funny but accents, at least in native language are actually fairly fungible. If someone takes the effort, they can easily fake an accent to fairly realistic abilities so long as they are familiar with the dialect. I can fake a Italian/Brooklyn accent to fairly decent accuracy as most native English speaking Americans are able to. It might not fool a Brooklyn native, but it is good enough to fool the average American. We can thank Rocky Balboa for that. I can fake most southern accents to the extent that I can fool native speakers, but unless you are intricately familiar with the region it is hard to fool natives because there are usually hyper-dialects, I can tell where a person is from if they are from the south based on the southern accent. Yet, most people out of the south cannot tell the difference. For example, a Texas draw from the Old Florida draw, I can tell because I am from Florida, I have it and I get asked if I am from Texas all the time, yet I know when someone is from Texas as it is different in it's inflections. As well Georgia and Alabama are distinct from North Carolina and Tennessee wheras Mississippi is a mix, get too far north and they sound like Tennessee, east and it sounds like Alabama, south west and it sounds like Cajun, but it blends and that is how you can tell they are from Mississippi because they will use colloquialisms from other local accents.