I can do any accent you can think of
I was in town on Wednesday afternoon, helping my mother order some new curtains when completely out of the blue, the woman in the shop said that I had a nice accent for Lancashire. She said I sounded like I was well travelled and that I could be a news reader! With the amount of times something like this has happened, you'd think I'd not be surprised by it any more but no.
When I was at uni, doing my Linguistics degree, part of the course included phonetics and we had to transcribe our own accents. The teacher told the class to put where they were from at the top of the page so she would know what accent they had. I had to ask her what I should put because I knew then that I didn't sound Lancastrian. She told me to put 'near RP', RP being Received Pronunciation, otherwise known as BBC English. Since then, I've spent 5 months studying in Connecticut and trips of varying lengths to Boston and I know I picked up bits of the local accents in both places at the time, although I didn't think they'd stuck this long. That might explain some of the suggestions I now get as to where I sound like I'm from because otherwise I can't understand why people think I'm from Ireland, Canada or Australia.
Now, I'm sure this has made some of you curious about my accent, not least those from Ireland, Canada and Australia. Ages ago, I saw that emsy had done a post with a survey about accents and dialects, I'd wanted to do it at the time but my iRiver was broken so I didn't have any way to do a voice recording. However! I now have a lovely shiny new mp3 player with a recording feature and that seemed like a brilliant way of trying it out.
So the meme is
Your name and/or username
Where you're from
Pronounce the words:
aunt, route, wash, oil, theater, iron, salmon, caramel, fire, water, sure, data, ruin, crayon, toilet, New Orleans, pecan, both, again, probably, spitting image, Alabama, lawyer, coupon, mayonnaise, syrup, pajamas, and caught
Then answer:
What is it called when you throw toilet paper at a house?
What is the bug that when you touch it, it curls into a ball?
What is the bubbly, carbonated drink called?
What do you call gym shoes?
What do you say to address a group of people?
What do you call the oval shaped spider with long legs?
What do you call your grandparents?
What do you call the wheeled contraption that you push groceries in at the supermarket?
What is it called when it's raining while the sun is shining?
What is the thing you change tv channels with?
And the sound file is here: clicky! It starts off a bit stilted because I was very self-conscious of my accent and talking to myself so I'm not sure how much it sounds like my genuine voice. I'm sure you'll let me know what you think :)
When I was at uni, doing my Linguistics degree, part of the course included phonetics and we had to transcribe our own accents. The teacher told the class to put where they were from at the top of the page so she would know what accent they had. I had to ask her what I should put because I knew then that I didn't sound Lancastrian. She told me to put 'near RP', RP being Received Pronunciation, otherwise known as BBC English. Since then, I've spent 5 months studying in Connecticut and trips of varying lengths to Boston and I know I picked up bits of the local accents in both places at the time, although I didn't think they'd stuck this long. That might explain some of the suggestions I now get as to where I sound like I'm from because otherwise I can't understand why people think I'm from Ireland, Canada or Australia.
Now, I'm sure this has made some of you curious about my accent, not least those from Ireland, Canada and Australia. Ages ago, I saw that emsy had done a post with a survey about accents and dialects, I'd wanted to do it at the time but my iRiver was broken so I didn't have any way to do a voice recording. However! I now have a lovely shiny new mp3 player with a recording feature and that seemed like a brilliant way of trying it out.
So the meme is
Your name and/or username
Where you're from
Pronounce the words:
aunt, route, wash, oil, theater, iron, salmon, caramel, fire, water, sure, data, ruin, crayon, toilet, New Orleans, pecan, both, again, probably, spitting image, Alabama, lawyer, coupon, mayonnaise, syrup, pajamas, and caught
Then answer:
What is it called when you throw toilet paper at a house?
What is the bug that when you touch it, it curls into a ball?
What is the bubbly, carbonated drink called?
What do you call gym shoes?
What do you say to address a group of people?
What do you call the oval shaped spider with long legs?
What do you call your grandparents?
What do you call the wheeled contraption that you push groceries in at the supermarket?
What is it called when it's raining while the sun is shining?
What is the thing you change tv channels with?
And the sound file is here: clicky! It starts off a bit stilted because I was very self-conscious of my accent and talking to myself so I'm not sure how much it sounds like my genuine voice. I'm sure you'll let me know what you think :)