I'm from a US Border town with Canada...we sound like canucks...they sound like us...So, although an "outsider" could probably identify us as "North American" They wouldn't know if we were from the US or Canada...to be "geographically specific", eh.

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Originally posted by Lira Yes, and these are the reasons: 1 - Rhotic: You guys pronounce the letter "r" in hard, which doesn't happen in other dialects (like Brit or Aussie English). From this point, we know you're not from these places. 2 - non-labialization of "o": When you say "god" it sounds like "gaaad" for foreign speakers, which doesn't happen in other dialects (like Irish or Scottish english). 3 - entonation: you guys speak in a "circular" way... kinda hard to describe. 4 - Southern US: you guys talk very nasal and the way you release the vowel is quite peculiar. Keep in mind that we ALL have accents. I have accent in Portuguese even though it's my native tongue. Why? Because I speak the way people from my district talk. If I go anywhere else, there'll be some minor differences, which is what accents are. here are the common mistakes americans do when speaking a foreign language: 1 - "r": you guys usually can't say the "tapped r", like in Spanish, Italian and Japanese; nor the "r" with your throught (German, French). As we have both sounds in Portuguese, we can spot an American speaker right away. 2 - "a": Keep in mind that our "a" is, 90% of the times, your "o" (as in "god"). In Portuguese, we listen to "bad" the same way you say "bed", so when you say "samba" we listen "semba". Once again, not hard to distinguish. 3 - vocal glides: this is quite common in english. You guys have some sounds that only appear in dipthongs, reason why often when you listen to these sounds in another languages, you tend to glide between the vowels as well. 4 - "t", "d": You guys usually aspirate too much pronouncing these sounds or pronounce it as a "tapped r" so, when you guys try to say "Italy" we hear "Iraly". And so on... by the way, don't expect people to distinguish North American accents easily when English is not their native tongue. Personally, I can only distinguish 4 accents: - From Vancouver (and only if they say things like "about", "ice" and "ace") - From Southern US - From NYC - From the rest of Canada/US

^New smartest guy evar award

dipthongs and tripthongs pwn me.

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No offence, but that has to be one of the stupidest questions ever asked on TA, and that's saying something.

Every country and/or person has some kind of accent. Americans just happen to have a particularly distinctive one.

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quote:

Originally posted by arctic No offence, but that has to be one of the stupidest questions ever asked on TA, and that's saying something. Every country and/or person has some kind of accent. Americans just happen to have a particularly distinctive one.

Australians have an accent??? Are you sure about that?

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quote:

Originally posted by occrider Australians have an accent??? Are you sure about that?

Too right mate!

I think so.

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Northwest US doesnt. We sound like people on the news.

quote:

Originally posted by arctic Too right mate! I think so.

Too right I am! I'm a grouse, corker bloke remember? Hooroo!

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Originally posted by occrider Too right I am!

Passable.

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I'm a grouse

What were you thinking?

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corker bloke remember? Hooroo!

Not bad.

Methinks someone needs a refresher course in how to speak Australian!

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on the ta boards you can tell by what they say

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Like Americans are always these calm people, and the rest of the world bitches about them being supreme beings of the universe when it isnt their fault for being so awesome?

For sure Americans have an accent, you can tell them from a mile away

I can sometimes tell which part of America people are from if their accents are very strong e.g. Boston, Texas, New York etc

I find that most people around the world can't tell the difference between American and Canadian accents, but i find it quite easy since my dad is Canadian.....

One of my favourite games is to go 'American Spotting' in London or Stratford (Where William Shakespeare was born.) It's actually quite easy, you can usually tell from the huge camera, baseball cap and XXL waistline! If they open their mouths it's blatently obvious that their american (although I couldn't tell where in the US exactly.)

Another random point - I have noticed that some Americans find it difficult to tell the difference between an Australian, South African and Netherlands accent?!


Yet another random point - In my natural language and linguistics course my lecturer pointed out that americans can't make the 'oh' sound that us brits use in words like 'god'. An american will pronounce it 'gawd' and not 'gohd'

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Last edited by smallSHEEP on Mar-04-2004 at 15:13