Accents and Dialects

My native language is English.  Although I’ve learned French, German, and Portuguese, and small doses of Russian, Vietnamese and Romanian, I don’t speak any foreign language fluently enough to avoid having an American accent in those languages (I try for a carioca accent in Portuguese, with debatable success).  My own accent in English is fairly standard.  My relatives from my father’s side, originally from Brooklyn, have mostly kept that thick New York accent despite relocating to Northern Virginia, North Carolina, and Florida – oddly, my father was the only one who didn’t sound like that.  My mom and most of her relatives from Worcester, Massachusetts, similarly have the Boston accent.  I’ve found that movies and TV do an excellent job of illustrating various accents & dialects, at least in English.  Since that’s my native language and the one I’m most fluent in and familiar with, I’ll focus most of my attention there.

England/Commonwealth.   Here alone we have several variants:

1.         There seems to be a standard “English” accent, affected by butlers everywhere.  Listen to Michael Caine.

2.         There is the very lower-class cockney (lower class) accent with dropped h’s,  Recall “National Lampoon’s European Vacation” where Clark Griswold (Chevy Chase) has difficulty understanding the London innkeeper’s thick cockney accent and asks, “what language is he speaking??” and the son, Rusty, helpfully notes, “English, dad!”  See also Monty Python.

3.         A northern Newcastle/Yorkshire accent, though I can’t seem to distinguish this one personally.

4.         I seem to notice a different accent from Liverpool – particularly when John, Paul, George or Ringo speak – it always seems like every statement is a question (?).  I’ve noticed that Ozzy Osbourne – who is from Birmingham – has this accent.  Yet Tony Iommi and Geezer Butler, also from Birmingham, do not.  Go figure.

5.         Welsh.  This is one I have a hard time recognizing as separate, though I’m told it exists.

6.         Scots.  No problem with this one, or shortage of examples, most notably Sean Connery, who can’t seem to drop it no matter the role.  In “The Rundown”, the Scottish pilot has such a thick Scottish accent it’s barely recognizable as English.  It also strikes me that every single sports show on soccer, in English, has to have at least ONE guy with a Scottish accent as a commentator.  And there is Groundskeeper Willie on the Simpsons, and “Fat Bastard” (Mike Myers in “Austin Powers”).  God only knows why Shrek, an ogre, should have a Scottish accent, but I guess Myers is addicted to that particular affectation.

7.         Irish.  “Frosted Lucky Charms, they’re magically delicious!” and “Irish Spring” commercials – and Bono – have cemented this in US culture.

8.         Australians also have their own accents. Sprinkle in “mate” and you’re good to go. Paul “Crocodile Dundee” Hogan popularized it, but you can hear it when Hugh Jackman (Wolverine) or Nicole Kidman (various movies) speaks as an individual and not in a role.  As a matter of fact, I hadn’t seen Kidman play any Australians, so when I first heard her speak in her own voice on a talk show, it surprised me – whoa, she’s Australian!  More recently, the late Steve Irwin was injecting his instantly recognizable Australian accent on his cable shows.

Mel Gibson is a tough call: he speaks in an Australian accent in the “Mad Max” films, but has no trouble losing it for the “Lethal Weapon” and other films; he’s considered “Australian” because he came from there when his film career began, although he only moved there with his family as a teenager, from New Jersey – and the kids at his high school in Australia made fun of him for his New York accent!  Hearing him now speak in his own voice, I don’t detect Australia OR New York in his voice. 

9.         Canadian?  ("Spell like British, talk like Americans.")  I don’t think so.  William Shatner, Peter Jennings, Michael J. Fox, Jim Carrey, are all from Canada yet have accents indistinguishable from the standard American accent.  They don’t even punctuate the ends of their sentences with “eh”.  "Aboot" the only Canadian deal is how they pronounce "about" and "z" as "zed". And Shatner is from Montreal!  All the Canadians I know personally – who are all from Ottawa – sound exactly like Americans.  I can’t qualify “Canadian” as a separate accent.

So there are a total no less than 8 separate accents from this portion of the world alone.

USA.  With a vast and varied population spread across the continent, it’s no wonder we have our own share of idiosyncratic accents.

1.         We have a “standard” American accent, shared with English-speaking Canadians, which you can hear in any news anchor.  This is what I have – so I would believe.

2.         Then you have Boston/New England, as you can hear every time you listen to any of the Kennedys – JFK, RFK, Teddy, or even their offspring.  I can’t say I recall what JFK Jr.’s voice sounds like.

3.         New York/New Jersey/Brooklyn (which doubles as a de facto Jewish accent), VERY popular in TV/movies, with Joe Pesci & Marisa Tomei (“My Cousin Vinny”), Fran Drescher, Matt LeBlanc, Barbra Streisand, Woody Allen, and far too many to name.  Oddly, none of the main characters on “Sex in the City” have New York accents, and LeBlanc is the only “Friends” cast member who does.  On “Seinfeld”, Mr & Mrs Costanza really top the bill, though Mrs Seinfeld’s accent is very strong.  Popular expressions in this accent are “OH MY GAWWDD” (usually spoken by young Jewish women) and “foggetaboutit” (usually spoken by Mafia types).

4.         a flat Midwest accent;

5.         A Minnesota accent, perhaps a variation on the Midwest accent, almost sounds German (“Fargo”) the way they say “yes” as “ya”.

6.         There are variations on the southern accent, including

A.         Texas (long and drawn out, like the huge flat plains of Texas) – hear our Beloved Leader speak, or Phil Gramm, and you’ll hear it; and

B.         Louisiana, particularly New Orleans, which have their own sub-accents.  I recall having immense difficulty understanding Sean Penn et al in “All The King’s Men”, which is loosely based on Huey Long.  It’s like some strange mix of Southern and French which ends up sounding like neither of them.

7.         Latinos have the “Mexican” accent popularized by Cheech Marin. Given the huge amounts of Hispanics living in the US permanently for decades, I categorize this as a native US variant. 

8.         Blacks of course have their “ebonic” – which is, to my ears, simply a black version of the southern accent even among blacks from New York, Chicago, or L.A., far from the south.  Of course, for a black to be taken seriously among whites – e.g. Barack Obama – he has to drop the ebonics, with rare exceptions such as Eddie Murphy or Chris Rock. 

9.         You could also qualify the California “surfer” accent as one of its own (listen to Keanu Reeves), meaning 10 accents of English from the US.

Foreigners speaking English. 

1.         We’ve all heard French people speaking English.  Most of them seem to be better at making themselves understood than the hapless Inspector Clouseau from the “Pink Panther” movies (originally Peter Sellers, most recently Steve Martin). 

2.         Despite living in the US since the 70s and taking speech lessons, Arnold Schwarzenegger still has a thick German ("Cherman") accent.  We’ve all seen enough WWII movies to recognize Germans speaking English with an accent, the older of us remembering Henry Kissinger.  W’s turn into V’s, V’s turn into F’s, and with no J sound – G is pronounced as in “gore” and J is pronounced as a y – they have to resort to “CH” instead. 

3.         My friend Leila still has a delicious Brazilian accent (“that is not a MEAWLLL!”) despite living in the US, off and on, since the mid-70s.  Brazilians and Portuguese seem to have trouble with L’s at the end of sentences, curling them up as if there was a W in there somewhere, especially if there is an offending R before the L (“world” turns into “wold”).  Both Brazilians and Spanish – listen to Penelope Cruz, who is from Madrid – sound much different than Mexicans, so I put this as a non-American variant. 

4.         Romanians tend to sound like Dracula, very similar to Russians and Hungarians (e.g. Zsa Zsa Gabor) – very seductive coming from a woman.  Boris & Natasha from “Rocky & Bullwinkle” give us the classic Russian accent.  Andy Kauffman did a passable Hungarian accent as “Latka Gravas” on the TV show “Taxi”, so much so that Gene Simmons, the bassist from KISS, remarked that when he first came to the US from Israel (his parents were Hungarian) and his English wasn’t very good, he sounded like the “Taxi” character.  Russian does not have definite articles (“the”) so Russians who don’t speak English very well often drop the “the’s” when speaking.  They all love to roll their R’s, which Scots seem to do as well.

5.         Italians have their own English accent.  The deal we hear is that they pepper the speech with Italian words (“capiche?” (understand?), “bellissima!” (very pretty, referring to a woman) and “presto!” (faster)) and, if really thick, add “-a” after every verb.  This variant seems to have been the source for the New York accent mentioned above – an irony, because my father’s relatives are from Poland, not Italy, yet they have that accent.  Like most of the others it’s part musical and part comical, even somewhat endearing – particularly coming from someone like Sophia Loren.

6.         On the other extreme of aural aesthetics to my ears, are Asians speaking English poorly, particularly Vietnamese.  ARRGH.  As attractive as some Asian women are, there is nothing sexy to me about a Vietnamese accent.  It could just as easily be Bai Ling (schwing) as the yelling old woman in curlers (“Kung Fu Shuffle”).  Chinese and Japanese are notorious for turning R’s into L’s.

7. And there is the common Indian accent we hear more and more often when calling tech support or when being hassled by cluelessly persistent collections departments.  Nothing endearing about it, whether from a 7-11 clerk or a dot-headed, sari-wrapped Indian woman.  Incidentally, Pakistanis sound similar, although they’d hate to be lumped in with Indians.

8.  Likewise, Arabs and Iranians – yes, I know Iranians speak Farsi, not Arabic – still sound the same to me speaking English.

Foreign Languages:

French.  So far as I understand, there is northern, Parisian-style French, and southern French which is leftover from Celtic.  And French Canadians speak a completely different dialect, which French can tell immediately.German.  Northern German vs. southern German (Bavarian and Austrian).  My friend Jean’s German wife, Ina, wasn’t a big fan of the Austrian variant.  I’m not aware that Swiss have their own variant.

Portuguese.  Brazilians can distinguish Portuguese from Portugal itself, from their own accents, which come in different variants: carioca (Rio de Janeiro), paulista (São Paulo), northeast (Bahia, Recife), and southwest (Rio Grande do Sul), which passes for the “southern accent” in Brazil.

Vietnamese.  As with so many other countries, there seems to be a north accent (Hanoi), middle accent (Hue), and southern accent (Saigon) – as well as a few other more obscure ones.  I can’t tell the difference.