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Hmm... I would file southern under "accents I hate." Not all southern, just Texan, really, and it all has to do with bad associations with my redneck relatives.
I really like the New Zealand/South Pacific accent. It's like Australian, but somehow softer and with weird Es. I also like South African accents.
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Oh, I really enjoy the southern and texan accents. Half of that reason is probably because *sooo* many movies and TV shows have tried to teach me that everybody with an accent like that is either ignorant, stupid, or mean, and I know that it just ain't true.
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Scottish. When we landed in Edinburgh, my friend and I nearly fainted because the bus driver had such a wonderful accent. You can imagine how the rest of our trip went...
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I like different accents on different genders. For instance I really like the Irish and English accents on guys, but not really on women. But I love French and southern (Georgia-ish) accents on women, but not so much on guys.
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Irish, Scottish, English accents... They are rather nice. And German and French ones as well. Haitian accents are pretty too.
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A dismissal of southern accents as ignorant merely displays the opinion-holder's own ignorance. My Texan English professor - with as thick a drawl as I've ever heard - would tear y'all to pieces.
My two Latin professors, my favorite English professor, and my first love were all from the South, and I simply love the voices. It's like music.
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I really like all accents, except those that people exaggerate or undertake on purpose. That always sounds wrong. I can't stand the sound of my own recorded voice, though, and part of it is that it sounds way more southern to me when I hear it on tape than it does as it leaves my mouth.
I love those very cultured old southern accents like my grandmother's and great aunt's.
Whenever I travel, I quickly come to love the accent where I am, and start imitating it without intending to. Language just begins to play in my head that way, and so it spills out of my mouth too, I guess. Still, nobody's ever mistaken me for a native.
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Southern accents? Uhg. I can't stand them, they sound so horrible. (Living in the south doesn't help, either. )
I love Scottish accents (Billy Boyd!), Irish, and Aussie. For that matter, I like british accents, too. Posts: 4174 | Registered: Sep 2003
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I always think folks with really thick southern accents are putting me on. I LOVE Irish and Scottish accents.
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Don't worry, Kama. My boss is a Wodzinska -- I'm pretty sure I know what to expect accent wise Posts: 3243 | Registered: Apr 2002
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Eruve, why is that? Have you had some bad experiences with people with Southern, and some good with the British?
In other accents that I love, I don't know if it is the country of origin or just his own sexy voice, but Antonio Banderas as a CARTOON CAT had me melting. That's one powerful accent.
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Katharina- No, not really. I just don't like southern accents. The grammer (or lack thereof), slang, and "twangy" sounding voices. *shudders* I was dissappointed when someone told me recently that I was finally starting to get an accent.
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Bad grammar isn't part of an accent, and it's also not exclusive to any region. I think that's part of the stereotype. That's too bad that's how you think of it.
I figure it's culture. One of the most foreign-culture experiences I've had in a while was when I drove down to a friend's ranch in East Texas and stopped in a little two-stop-light town. The town diner, the local beauty shop, knick-knack store, and that hardware store (all operated by their local owners) circled the town square in the center of which a flagpole and a gazevo lazily kicked back. On a little side street was the tiny local art museum housed in a converted Victorian home. They were having a garage sale of frames out in front, and the curator of the museum was talking over the fence to the eye doctor with her office in the frame house next door.
It was so different, and so picturesque. It looked like something out of a book, and the horses and trucks lining the streets didn't dissipate that impression. I liked it. I like that we have it. I like that there are still parts of the US that don't look and sound like an LA strip mall.
If it was the sound of Indian or Turkish people or folks from the Australian outback like in A Town Like Alice, it'd be considered romantic. Since its Southern, though, it's not. I wonder why that is?
quote: Bad grammar isn't part of an accent, and it's also not exclusive to any region. I think that's part of the stereotype. That's too bad that's how you think of it.
That's true. I guess I've just found that often bad grammar and southern accents are related. Now the old southern accents, for example in Gone With the Wind, they were actually kinda cool. But so many people now are almost uninteligable, and sound like Boomhower from King of the Hill.
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Boomhowser doesn't have an accent that I love, but I do think it's picturesque. Isn't it cool that in this age, where accents are dissapearing more and more, we can still stumble across some uniqueness?
Posts: 26077 | Registered: Mar 2000
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Everything's pretty much been covered, but I'll throw my opinion in.
I like Russian and Irish accents, mainly on dudes. I have to really agree with Annie on the South African accents. I was watching TV on Saturday and I caught about ten minutes of some show called "Scout's Safari". There was a dude on there that got knocked out, and when he came to he said, "Deed anybodeh cotch the licenze numbuh of thot veeldebeast thot hit meh?" It was such a weird mish-mash of sounds put together, and it was excellent to listen to. But I pretty much like any African accents.
Southern......yikes. There are too many feelings associated with that one. When my relatives use it, it sounds like home...but that's only a good thing half of the time. I also despise any accent on myself.
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Yeah just the way he says "Jessica" makes you want to change your name so you can pretend he's talking about you. AJ
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And judging by Sean Connery's total sex appeal, I think ifwhen I go gay, Scots are gonna be high on my calling list.
And British! Whoo damn, that's so hot. You just keep talking, Tony Blair and Keira Knightley. Aw yeah.
Southern never really did it for me. Just, gah. Neither do most Latin American accents, but I know some guys who pull it off with real sex appeal -- female Latin American accents seem fairly neutral, in my experience, though they can still sound appealing as hell. French-Canadian tends to annoy me, but then, maybe I hung around with the wrong Canadians.
Have I mentioned I'm a total sucker for French accents? You fox, Pepe LePeu...
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I do a rather convincing Irish accent, and though I speak French with only the smallest of English accents (I'm often complimented by native speakers), I can't for the life of me do a good impersonation of a French accent in English. Why do you suppose that is?
I also have a very dear friend who's German and remarked to me that no one ever seems to find her accent cute. I thought about it and realized that while she herself is very cute, something about the intonation of her accent is a bit grating. Why is that? Are there people who like German accents that could clear this up for me?
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I have a friend who had a mission companion when he was in Germany who was from Texas, and my friend does an impression of his companion speaking German with a heavy drawl. It's hilarious.
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I know why, Annie. The French accents on TV don't sound like real French accents, so when you try to do one you have to pull from a source other than your actual knowledge base.
That's what I decided anyway. My father-in-law has a heavy accent and can't understand the people on TV who talk with fake french accents.
quote:That's true. I guess I've just found that often bad grammar and southern accents are related.
You're confusing accents with dialects there, methinks.
While not generally fond of 'Southern Accents' in general, the only one I can single out that I think can sound quite stately is a gentlemanly spoken Virginia Accent.
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As I've said before in general, most European accents make my Nondescript Standard American English accent (what most americans mean when they say someone 'has no accent') sound quite boorish.
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I've been thinking a lot about how American accents sound to other language speakers. I've decided they sound really bad. Every syllable sounds really hard. The Southerners probably have an advantage over the rest of us there.
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AJ -- You would think I would know that since I'm of Welsh descent. It is just a bad day for me to be trying to type and think at the same time. Too busy here at work for me to be on Hatrack at all, but I can't resist...
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Accents that make me grin are New Zealand, because it reminds me of Lord of the Rings, North of England (like Sean Bean, for example) just because it has a multitude of connections for me, and Welsh because it sounds really nice.
Being accented myself, I try to look beyond accents, but that doesn't seem to stop me from finding them interesting and cool.
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Some British accents are nice, but others are just annoying. I seem to come across mostly the grating kind here. Among native speakers, my favorite is probably northern England and up into Scotland. For husbands I prefer a slight Slovak accent. Like just enough to occasionally (but not often) say "wiolent."
In myself, I'm trying to cultivate an accent. Not, obviously, in English; I'll stick with what I've got. But I am forced to accept the fact that I will most likely never speak Czech entirely like a Czech, due to the combined factors of: 1) I'm a foreigner, and 2) I will have a very bad example at home. By the end we'll probably both speak Czechoslovak. Since I will therefore always have at least a slight accent, I have determined to develop a sexy, endearing accent. Endearing in the sense that when I make a mistake, people think, "How cute! What a charming accent!" instead of "Doesn't she know that verb takes the sixth case, not the third?" Maybe a touch of mysterious and exotic thrown in. That may sound impossible for an American, but sources say my current accent doesn't sound American - just foreign. My main method of pursuing this goal is to periodically ask people if I have a cute accent yet.
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