4 ms·
What do you mean by "thick American accent"?
by viewer5 12y ago
What do you mean by "thick American accent"?
- EC1 12y agoProbably means a Southern accent.
- atwebb 12y agoOdd, I'm Southern and thought he meant Northern...
- duaneb 12y agoWhat exactly is a northern accent? Is that a midwest accent crossed with a new england accent crossed with a new jersey accent?
- nervousvarun 12y agoSoutherner here: A "northern accent" classically means any accent from the larger northeastern cities. Boston, Jersey, they're all subsets of "northern" to the Southern brain. What's funny is I live in Nola and the traditional New Orleans "Yatty" accent sounds "northern" to me (somewhere in Brooklyn to be specific).
- atwebb 12y agoI think similar to the Southern mentioned above, I almost said New York (meaning city) but then realized I probably don't know the exact specification for a NYC accent and was just generalizing really so put Northern and called it a day.
- pessimizer 12y agoIs there something confusing about the idea of an American accent? Americans certainly have no problem talking about an English accent as if Cockneys sound anything like Scousers. To American ears, of course, they actually do, because those accents share some characteristics that are nearly absent from all American accents (and vice-versa.)
- viewer5 12y ago> Americans certainly have no problem talking about an English accent as if Cockneys sound anything like Scousers. To American ears, of course, they actually do As an American, I wouldn't say that; while I would say "English accent" in conversation, to me that means something more specific than just "anything from England", but less specific than one specific accent; in my head it's "James Bond but not Sean Connery" (I'm not very familiar with those movies, so I don't know the different actors). They probably have different specific accents, but they're similar-ish to me (in my limited exposure), but not something I'd ever confuse with like, Cockney (that being the only specific English accent I know by name). So yeah, I'm not sure what he means by American accent. Being more familiar with the different regional accents, I'm curious which one he's referring to, since they're so diverse. I casually expected that since the US is so big, geographically, people might have more specific ideas of regional American accents. You're probably right about the "because those accents share some characteristics", though. American accents sound so distinct to me, I never really thought about them being all sharing something distinctively American-identifying about them; I wonder what it is about them.
- pessimizer 12y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_English_regional_phonology#General_American https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_English_regiona... It's not mysterious, it's well studied and documented:)
- viewer5 12y agoDidn't cross my mind to check there. Thanks for the link.