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Agent80s
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30 Oct 2007, 3:00 am

I have always wondered about this.

I know that AS and a high vocabulary usually go hand in hand (quite chuffed about that one :D ) and I know that we generally tend to speak in a fairly formal style. Yet I wonder if our accents can be influenced by AS as well.

I've lived in Western Australia since I was 3 years old and I don’t have an Aussie accent. Like my folks, I have a British accent, but my accent doesn’t match theirs and is far removed from the local accent of Manchester (where my folks grew up and where my family immigrated from).
For reasons unknown, I have an accent similar to Rowan Atkinson, and I haven’t been watching THAT much Black Adder. Lol :lol:

Fortunately, I wouldn’t change my accent for the world, but it is unusual that I should talk like that despite years of being exposed to Aussie accents.

Does anyone else here have an accent that seems out of place for their locality & background?



ProwlingParadox
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30 Oct 2007, 3:07 am

i am lacking the typical aussy accent to
and i sometimes get people asking where i am from
i think it comes down to the fact that
i pronaunts words proply, (even if i cant spell them)
i dont slurr or mumble,
or shorten words past all recognition

have u herd most of our country men speek its not an accent is murder of the English langage


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Agent80s
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30 Oct 2007, 3:38 am

Well you definitely do get a lot more of the stereotypical Aussie accents in the rural areas, but even then, I have yet to hear anyone say “struth” or even drink a tin of Fosters for that matter. :lol:

My accent is mostly British, but on certain words, I tend to go the American way (or at least I think it’s American).
I pronounced the word “Glass” as [Glaass] rather then [Glarrse], in which the latter is supposedly the British & Australian way.

Anyway, I had this posh accent even when I was in High school so I did get some ridicule over it from time to time. Nothing malicious though.
Usually just a silly impersonation where they would put on a kind of exaggerated 19th century safari adventurer theme with all the “Jolly good show old bean!” type stuff.
I found it far too funny to be offended. haha :lol:



2ukenkerl
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30 Oct 2007, 5:31 am

It really depends on YOU, when you learned, and your personality.

Just recently, don't ask me WHY my mother didn't bring it up before, my mother spoke of how I pronounce aunt. MOST people here now pronounce it like the insect ant. I pronounce it like ahnt. That was actually a cogent decision I made LONG ago(Like when I was 4 or 5)! I thought that giving a person a title that sounded like an insect made less sense, so I used the then almost equally used aunt.

Over all, though, the cadence of my speech, etc... is usually "midwestern". At the time, that was normal for california.

BTW My mother thought it was because I was copying her accent, but I know better. I actually remember thinking about it. Besides, there are some things she now says differently than I do, and I NEVER adopted her bostonian accent.



girl7000
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30 Oct 2007, 5:58 am

I have issues with accent too.

At school I was bullied for (among other things) speaking with an allegedly 'posh' accent - despite the fact that this was not intentional and my family were not remotely posh!

And in adulthood, I have had people come up to me and say "Where are you from?" I reply "I was born here" (England) they reply "But where are you from originally? Where is your accent from?"

And I wasn't aware that I had an accent...



CockneyRebel
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30 Oct 2007, 6:26 am

I have a very interesting accent for a Canadian. I've been called a Cockney by some person or another, from the time that I was in Kindergarten, until I was at the Halloween Dance at my clubhouse, just last Friday. I was getting sick of the Top 40 that the Dee Jay was playing, so I've blurted out, "I want to hear Satisfaction, by The Rolling Stones!" That really got people talking about where they thought I was born. That's for sure. That magic C-word spread through the clubhouse, like wildfire. :lol:


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Brittany2907
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30 Oct 2007, 6:27 am

I am a New Zealander, I grew up in NZ and have lived here for my whole life...

But for some reason...a lot of people ask me if I am from the USA :? .
Thay say that I have a slight american accent. I don't even notice.


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Simmyymmis
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30 Oct 2007, 6:37 am

Like several of you, I've been accused of sounding 'posh' ever since I can remember. I don't know how or why I picked this up. Perhaps it has more to do with accurate enunciation, which I'm a stickler for. I certainly don't feel that I intentionally adopted the accent.



KingdomOfRats
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30 Oct 2007, 6:45 am

same as girl7000,wasn't aware of own accent.
it does tend to get mainly associated with aspergers but this is also something that affects the other part of the spectrum [eg,severe aspergers,hfa,mfa,lfa..],when am able to speak and no matter what it is,people say am sound like a southerner,have been asked to repeat words before to people who think it's been learnt,don't try to speak in any different way at all.
an LFAer am used to live with spoke with a 'southern accent' to.
there are two lf aspies who live here,one of them talks with a baby accent [on purpose] and the other has the 'southern accent'.



Rich_P
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30 Oct 2007, 8:06 am

girl7000 wrote:
I have issues with accent too.

At school I was bullied for (among other things) speaking with an allegedly 'posh' accent - despite the fact that this was not intentional and my family were not remotely posh!

And in adulthood, I have had people come up to me and say "Where are you from?" I reply "I was born here" (England) they reply "But where are you from originally? Where is your accent from?"

I have had the exact same thing happen to me. In fact, it still happens to me now (including my place of work) I get asked where am I from. At College they reckon I come from down London way because of how I talk, even though I've been a Northerner all of my life. 8O



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30 Oct 2007, 9:20 am

My son has this problem as well. Constantly people tell us that he has a weird accent. Let's see....his mother is an ex pat Brit, his father is a German raised American, my son was born in Korea and lived there most of his life when he was little, he's been in speech therapy since he was 18 months old....those could have tributed....but I think it's just that he has that kind of stilted speech common to AS and others are noticing that. I tell him to tell people that he's been in speech therapy all his life and that's the way he was taught to talk. I think he sounds more like he's from Indiana than real Hoosiers, but I'm hearing his adaptiveness.



mmaestro
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30 Oct 2007, 9:29 am

Strangely, I tend to pick up accents very quickly, like in a matter of days quickly. Not the whole way, but if I move to a new environment, the way I speak can change noticeably very, very fast. When I was younger, I had problems with other kids thinking I was mocking them by impersonating their accents. I couldn't help it. It's less of an issue now, and it really only happened with accents that weren't my "home" accent, if that makes any sense. When I was back home my accent tended to be a lot more formal. Now, it's such an amalgam of everything that I don't know what you'd call it.


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30 Oct 2007, 9:31 am

thats really funny agent, 90% of all the people I meet think I am from down under, and I was born and bread in London, I think there is something in this


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sonny1471
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30 Oct 2007, 10:11 am

I'm from the midwest (Illinois) and I've been told over and over again that certain words I say sound like I'm from the south. The biggest one people notice is is the word brown. I have no idea why, but I have the worst southern accent when I say words that end in "own".

I'm also really good at picking up accents which is especially helpful when learning a foreign language. When I lived in Germany I had to do a month long course to pick up the language. The teacher commented that I must have had German before because I sounded like a native speaker. I took that as a compliment. :)



rushfanatic
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30 Oct 2007, 10:15 am

This is very interesting... a month or so ago , an English boy had brain surgery to correct something, cannot remember why.BUT WHEN HE WOKE UP FROM SURGERY, he spoke in a posh british accent, something he had never done before. He was at the beach, and spoke of a saaaannndd caaaaaaaaaaaassssttttlllee, which made me laugh, because I can honestly picture this..I, too, have been asked if I am english, though I have lived in Ohio all my life.. I just speak very properly and clearly, that is all...no slang, no street talk,just as I have always done....



jread
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30 Oct 2007, 11:31 am

I grew up in Southeast Texas (Louisiana border) where people have very strong accents. I was always told that I didn't have a strong accent, even though everyone else in my family does.

I moved to Austin in 2000 and nobody has an accent here (just a generic, American accent) and what little "twang" I did have completely disappeared.