Unexplained Accents

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The Rookie
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Unexplained Accents

#1 Post by The Rookie »

Ok, this is going to sound a bit strange, but I've had this strange accent that's constantly been pointed out to me through out my life. Now having been raised in Australia my whole life to two Australian parents; you'd think I'd have an Aussie accent.

Instead of having a default 'Australian accent' I've some how ended up with this hybrid thing that's been called a mixture of American, Canadian, Northern Irish and Australian by dozens of people, and I haven't the foggiest how it happened.

So yeah, I was curious to see if anyone can help explain this to me, or if it just happens to people sometimes.
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TinyVoices
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Re: Unexplained Accents

#2 Post by TinyVoices »

Seems... odd. But I think I remember hearing of this before. Someone growing up in Nor Cal with an Alabama accent, or something similar. A big fat "wait, but how" sort of situation.


There's probably a science behind it. But now I kind of want to hear what you sound like. :P

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midnightblink
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Re: Unexplained Accents

#3 Post by midnightblink »

Hmm, did you watch a lot of foreign television as a child? Seeing a lot of people talk a lot in different accents in the formative years can have that effect.
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Re: Unexplained Accents

#4 Post by Kellard »

midnightblink wrote:Hmm, did you watch a lot of foreign television as a child? Seeing a lot of people talk a lot in different accents in the formative years can have that effect.
Perhaps the answer is as simple as that. Though...
I live in Mexico, and some of my friends say I have an English accent, but there is nowhere I could have gotten it from.
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The Rookie
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Re: Unexplained Accents

#5 Post by The Rookie »

midnightblink wrote:Hmm, did you watch a lot of foreign television as a child? Seeing a lot of people talk a lot in different accents in the formative years can have that effect.
That's the leading theory, most T.V we had available to us growing up were American cartoons or British glaymation stuff. At least what I can recall.

However, I feel that would have something of a larger impact on my generation here.
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Re: Unexplained Accents

#6 Post by kiabugboy »

Tyten wrote: Perhaps the answer is as simple as that. Though...
I live in Mexico, and some of my friends say I have an English accent, but there is nowhere I could have gotten it from.
Same here, some friends and teachers say that i occasionally sound british but i did watch a lot of movies/ youtubers with english accents so i know where i got it from. Most of the time my english sounds pretty normal with some slight weird pronounciations here and there which might be unusual for some people since most indonesians have a pretty weird way of pronouncing english words. So i'm in that spot where i don't sound like an indonesian but also not exactly like an american (which most people in my country consider normal english)

I guess rookie just doesn't have the stereotypical australian accent but also doesn't sound completely american. Also, i agree with tiny, now i'm curious on what rookie's voice is like

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Re: Unexplained Accents

#7 Post by Butterscotch »

My Girlfriends family started to complain she was beginning to develop a Scottish accent after spending ALOT of time with me and my Irl friends.

You speak with any internet friends regularly, who have different accents?
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Re: Unexplained Accents

#8 Post by ReBob »

I'd just like to throw out that head injuries can cause things like this as well. There are cases where people have developed new accents to speaking entirely in a different language.

Probably exposure to other cultures though, as others have said. It's pretty rare for the condition I mentioned to happen. And they're usually pretty significant injuries, so I've heard.
Please excuse any wrong information contained above, I admit I'm fairly ignorant on the subject.
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The Rookie
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Re: Unexplained Accents

#9 Post by The Rookie »

Butterscotch wrote:You speak with any internet friends regularly, who have different accents?
Actually, quite a few.
Between the ages of 15 and 19 I would speak to people all over the United states from Oregon to Florida almost daily. However, my accent had already been pretty well established at that point, sometimes prompting them to believe I was from Canada or an other state before I told them where I was from.

It was particularly bad when I was in a party with other Australians and they mistook my accent for somewhere else S:P
TinyVoices wrote:But now I kind of want to hear what you sound like.
kiabugboy wrote:Also, i agree with tiny, now i'm curious on what rookie's voice is like
Maybe one day, but no promises :roll:
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Re: Unexplained Accents

#10 Post by BasettLord »

Again in theory it would be cool to have a massive Skype call with all the people here. Listen to accents, and make jokes. Alas curse you timezones busy schedules and bad internet connections.
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Re: Unexplained Accents

#11 Post by minime »

if we were guessing accents then when it comes to British we should make people guess what part of Britain they are from. :flora:

With our range of accents it could be fun to see where some are from.
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Re: Unexplained Accents

#12 Post by Myperson54 »

The Rookie wrote:Ok, this is going to sound a bit strange, but I've had this strange accent that's constantly been pointed out to me through out my life. Now having been raised in Australia my whole life to two Australian parents; you'd think I'd have an Aussie accent.

Instead of having a default 'Australian accent' I've some how ended up with this hybrid thing that's been called a mixture of American, Canadian, Northern Irish and Australian by dozens of people, and I haven't the foggiest how it happened.

So yeah, I was curious to see if anyone can help explain this to me, or if it just happens to people sometimes.
Heyo, a linguistics thread! Something something my jam.
SperoWolf wrote:You probably just happened to hear certain, small pronunciations throughout your life that you enjoyed, and grew to assimilate them.
Strictly speaking, accents can be specific to an individual, but I get what you mean. The question is, does this unusual pronunciation extend to just a few key words, or is it consistent across most of Rookie's speech?

Hey, Rookie, I might actually be able to figure this one out. I was in Phonetics last term and I used a program called Praat to determine exactly how I was realizing certain sounds in a word list. If I were to take measurements from a recording you made and compare them to averaged Australian English speakers, I could probably figure out if you were consistently using different allophones than other Australians (which would be an accent as opposed to consistent, specific mispronunciations).

Shoot me a PM if you're interested, eh?

A quick edit: You guys have rather distinct vowel realizations, which there is real data for; I think I could actually do this outside the realm of speculation.
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Re: Unexplained Accents

#13 Post by Razmoudah »

I hope he's able to take you up on that offer. The 'accent' mixture he says people have accused him of having doesn't exactly sound like it would be an accent, but it could be possible if it is only specific allophones he's 'picked up'.
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Hmmm......about what I expected when almost half of the questions I'd want to select a few of the answers not a specific one.

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Re: Unexplained Accents

#14 Post by The Rookie »

Razmoudah wrote:I hope he's able to take you up on that offer.
Yep. I've already sent over a few things for Myperson to play around with. Though I'm well aware it'll probably take time, and it mightn't end up proving or disproving anything.

Razmoudah wrote:The 'accent' mixture he says people have accused him of having doesn't exactly sound like it would be an accent, but it could be possible if it is only specific allophones he's 'picked up'.
Most likely the second one, but I dunno. It's sort of difficult to explain howI sound given I've been listening to it my entire life. Simarly, most people I've spent a lot of time with notice the difference less and less, but they still admit it was certainly different in some way when we first met. I'm really just going on outside opinions.
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Re: Unexplained Accents

#15 Post by Razmoudah »

Well, not everyone is good at identifying accents either. I've been exposed to so few true accents that I'm not worth [censored] at identifying them (it also doesn't help that I live in the American Midwest and that's the dominant accent of Hollywood, though don't ask me why), not to mention that when I'm talking to a person face to face I rarely notice what, if any, accent they have, until it makes them nearly unintelligible. Talking to them on a phone however.........there even a slight accent screws with me something horrid.

Now, the reason why I say that what you are describing doesn't exactly sound like a true accent is because of both quirks to it and a quirk regarding myself. I'll start with the quirk regarding myself. Although I haven't heavily studied any foreign languages one of the more pronounced peculiarities I have is that instead of speaking what I do know of the language with an American Midwest accent I actually speak it with the same accent as the person who taught me. So if I'm learning from a native speaker I actually speak it with that specific native accent. I think that's actually a big part of the problem I personally have with identifying accents, especially with someone I'm talking to in person (now if Rosetta Stone could understand me when I'm not talking as fast as it......especially when going by the voice pattern graph I am saying the exact same thing, just somewhat slower, particularly since I do have a natural speech impediment that makes it difficult for me to speak quickly). Now, regarding the quirks of accents, or I guess quirk really. Some languages actually use multiple allophones for the same vowel (thus how English has short and long vowel sounds, along with the myriad 'other' examples that aren't properly either of the first two). So, the real question here is do you tend to use a 'wrong' allophone for certain uses, but use it consistently across multiple words, or do you only use it 'wrong' with certain words (a prime example of the last is how I pronounce assume as [censored]-ume and not a-sume, but that is intentional to emphasis the saying "when you assume you make an [censored] out of you and me", as very frequently when someone assumes something they do a spectacular job of acting like an [censored] temporarily, and not that unusual for the other person to end up acting like an [censored] for a while as well) and not others? This is where it hits the realm of maybe it is and maybe it isn't an accent. The complication is the mixture of other accents other people say it almost sounds like you have. This heavily implies that you don't really use the correct set of allophones for your area at all, but instead 'borrow' allophones from all over the place, and that is extremely unusual. In that instance it is more likely to be a case of many 'mispronounced' words (or more accurately, words pronounced in specific accents) but without fulling incorporating any part of those allophone sets into your remaining vocabulary. If you have developed a personal allophone set that heavily borrows from several other accents then I'll be very surprised, and then I'll be asking you if you've ever considered trying to learn other languages.
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Hmmm......about what I expected when almost half of the questions I'd want to select a few of the answers not a specific one.

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