A 'California Accent' Exists: Do You Think You Have an Accent?

Northern british/ yorkshire accent :)
N btw british shouldn't b an accent cuz it was the dirst one, americans are the ones wih the odd accent

actually northern English accents are the hardest for me[next to east ender] to understand. having worked with people from brighton, stevenage, london, and other English cities. but you are right we are the ones who have the accents since the 1700's.

P.S if i took you to brooklyn it would make your head spin brooklynese.

yeah, well I can speak in many other accents, but I choose yorkshire cuz I can say whatever I want n no one knows what I said :D

tho I actually can't speak american, I sound terrible :D

more brits can pull it off than the other way around. the only exception being[ american wise] was Magnum P.I sidekick who souded english but was in fact from Michigan. hue laurie we here tend to forget is not american.....:)
also i would sound like an ass if i tried an English accent. my maternal ancestry is from England/Scotland but the accents obviously dont get passed along with D.N.A ....:)

:D accent can only be picked up by intense listening to the ones who already know it, that's how I picked up British and later all the other... tho no matter how many american tv shows and movies I watch I still can't pull off the accent

I see. you know i couldn't watch eastenders unless my eyes were open and i see the characters lips move. i was tired one night and was listening to the show but it sounded like mumbles and mush.... had to turn it off or change the channel cant remember though. i had a thing for wendy richardson when she starred on are you being served in the 1970's. not now she looks almost as old as Queen Elizabeth !

some brits also drop g's at the end... Lol wow americans swearing is a lot rougher than brits swearing :D ... I haven't heard Boston accent, I'll look it up

it's funny. you cant hear me but we mock them[in jest of course] they drop R's and have a sharp ah sound. so we say pahk the cahh in the hahbah yaaad. mark wahlberg and his brother donnie are from boston. actually . if you can you tube scenes from the departed w/ leonardo decaprio , i know he is hideous for a girl to look at, he has a stong boston accent...mark wahlberg is also in it. if you can you tube a geico commercial/walk across the brooklyn bridge it is funny also. it is a gecko[lizzard ] w/a english accent walking across the brooklyn bridge and tells a bike rider off....

Haha I didn't understand a thing watching that :D

I bloody can.

good on u :)

To people abroad,it might seem like I have an accent.
But to my native southern Britain,people there have the same accent,so it really doesn't matter.

people only realize they have accents when they are out of their home town/area. i was on a bus cross country and people knew i was from new york as soon as i would ask for somthing or order food/drink.

I have a universal accent

Well, I have an American accent. And most Americans would not call that an accent.

So, you'll call it an accent if you are from the UK, South Africa, Oz or Kiwi-land.

And yes, I'm from California. And no, "black" does not come out as "block", "pen" and "pin" are two different words.

But I'll give the nasally "a" sound. Los Angeles does occasionally come out as Los Eyanjeles. But that's as it should be. Unless you want to pronounce it the right way: El Pueblo de Nuestra Senyora la Reina de los Angeles de Porciuncula.

Loss an-gke-less

California doesn't have an accent? Of course they do. I'm Australian and if I were to parody a "California girl" there would be an accent involved.

there is an old frank zappa song called valley girl[san fernando cali] it's funny the woman is like...well gag me with a spoon! and so on. it may be on you tube..... also they say things like ..go for it ! or for sure ! . im from new york but have visited california lenty of times.

I know the song :)

It was written about the girls his daughter went to school with.

cool.it came out when i was a teen . it was funny but its been ages since i heard it..:)

I have a lot of Frank Zappa and The Mothers of Invention.

my sister is a big zappa fan. i remember mostly the yellow snow song, and dancing fool. and the lyrics...the price of meat has just gone up/ and your old lady has just gone down.....

what this person is talking about is the "Valley" in the LA area. people from this place talked like this in the 80's and very few of them talk like this any more. Ive lived in northern CA all my life and I don know any one who talks like this. its only in the movies.

I know I do. New York born and raised.

Brooklyn born ,Rockaway raised. nothing like the apple.

I'm wondering if they're referring to native Californians or those who have moved here from other places. Being a native Californian, I would say we do have a distinct way of speaking... but most people living in California are not natives and have a different accent from their state or country of origin. So I think it's hard to say there's a very distinct California accent that's recognizable, when very few people actually use it. I've never had anyone guess where I'm from.... but I can always recognize a native Californian from others because I've heard it all my life and know what it sounds like. On the flip side of that, I couldn't tell you what make it distinct. I only know it when I hear it.

I've noticed lately that I pronounce certain words kind of like a New Yorker would. I have no clue where that came from. Maybe I travel to New York and have conversations with the locals in my sleep, and I pick up the accents on a subconscious level, and that alters the way I speak without me even knowing it. That would explain why I'm always so tired during school. :P

The most boring accent anyone could possibly have, but yes I think I do.

yea!! like totally!!

like, yeah dude!

New York accent. & I'm proud of it!

Absolutely . . . People around Sacramento say stuff like . . . "Kryste You Gize Drive Your Kyre!" . . . Which actually means "Christ, you guys drive your car." . . . .

Not as strong as when I was a kid. Strong St. John's townie accent. My friend was from Bonavista Bay and I had trouble understanding him. There are literally dozens of "newfie" accents, and I'm sure several for each Province and State too.
So for 8-year-old me, milk was "meelk" and film was "fillum", the letter "h" was migratory, and the verb "to be" had an extra tense implying recurrent continuity (a linguist gave me a technical term for it once), for example, "I be's in school h'a'w day 'til t'ree t'irdy!"
When my work involved speaking on the phone with people all over the US, I was told I had a perfect radio-announcer voice and no discernable accent :-)

Everyone has an accent. I find it obnoxious when people say they don't. Oh, you sound like most Americans so that means you don't have an accent? Tell that to an English person. My accent is slightly southern.

I grew up in Colorado. If you look up a word in the dictionary... that is how we say it. Everybody ELSE has an accent.

You most definitely have an accent. Plus, your dictionary changed a bunch of words to suit the US, so your dictionary kind of has an accent too :P

the founding fathers probably did that as a poke in the eye to King George....;) also when John Hancock was the first to sign the Declaration of Independence, he signed it so large. when asked why ? he responded: so George can read it with out his specs....:0

Haha! I didn't know that.