<p>How many people were told they had an accent after they went to college?</p>
<p>I never thought I had an accent before I went to college. I used to think most accents were dying out, but I guess I was wrong. I went to college one state over in Wisconsin and almost everybody tells me I have a major Minnesotan accent. I'm from northern Minnesota and even some people from Minneapolis tell me I have an accent.</p>
<p>Anyways, I thought it was pretty hilarious when I first found out I had an accent. I'm horrible at detecting accents in other people unless they're from the south or Boston or something.</p>
<p>When I first went to Texas, I thought it was weird that everybody said “y’all”. Now, I use it in everyday speech. My accent has probably changed a tad, but that’s the thing that most people tell me when they see me after an extended period of time.</p>
<p>I can usually tell accents. I can tell the difference between someone who lives in my town, and someone who lives an hour drive away. Accents are certainly not dying out.</p>
<p>I lose mine when I’ve been away from home for a little while, but pick it back up immediately if I go home or talk to someone on the phone from home. My ‘usual’ accent is a sort of light West Virginia accent, but I’m around so many different accents and non-accents it just faded away with time, and I started mimicking those around me. There are still a few words that I say different than other people like ‘color’ but they’re few and far between.</p>
<p>As a native NW product, it seems like most of the country has a noticeable accent. Some parts of the Midwest don’t have much, but CA, WI, MN, New England, and the South, and TX are pretty distinctive for me.</p>
<p>I have a mainstream American accent (the kind most people on TV will speak with) but I’m from NY and there are several accents here - I can usually guess if someone’s from Long Island, Brooklyn, the Bronx, Upstate, etc. I can usually distinguish whether someone is Midwestern, Southern, Northern, Northeastern, but I can’t guess the specific state unless it’s Northeastern. I notice many people from other parts of the country also have “mainstream” accents (my South Carolina friend talks just like me) and not all Southerners have the “southern” accent.</p>
<p>i’ve been told i have a slight jersey accent, you know a lawng cawfee tawlk. but the accents that really drive me crazy are chicago accents, with the short a’s. two of my best friends are from the chicago area and their accents took me forever to get used to. i’m pretty used to southern accents since my mom is from the south but i found that most people that i know from the south don’t have strong accents.</p>
<p>I’m from Ohio, and I find the Chicago accents far more appealing than the Michigan ones. The Michigan accent just sounds way too crude, and I hear it all the time. </p>
<p>My accent doesn’t quite match up with where I live. I’m trying to make it unidentifiable.</p>
<p>RonPaul - Nobody ever really says you betcha! And nobody actually talks like they do in the movie Fargo, either.</p>
<p>Besides accents, there are also cultural differences between MN and WI. Hardly anybody in my college knows what a hotdish, lutefisk, lefse, or “oofta” is unless they’re from MN. And nobody here knows who Sven and Ole or Toivo and Eino are! </p>
<p>In WI, some Wisconsinites call a drinking fountain a bubbler.</p>
<p>JBVirtuoso - I never heard much about the lower peninsula having an accent - only the upper peninsula. Do you think the UP accent sounds crude too?</p>
<p>I haven’t had as much experience with the UP one. I’ve never been there. I generally lump the northern ones into one category with the Canadian accent, but I don’t really have enough knowledge to be an authority on that. I’m really only good with the Ohio, Pennsylvania, and southern Michigan accents.</p>
<p>I have a very strange accent. I’m from New Orleans, and we are sometimes said to have New York Southern accents. I went to University of Miami, where I encountered many New Yorkers, so I got an even more New York like accent. Then I had a roommate/coworker from Rhode Island. Oh, boy. Now I have a Southern/New York/Boston accent. When I first started teaching after college, the kids were mystified as to where I was from. Put me in a room with somebody, and I take on their accent. So I say ahhse for ice, heya for here, and other words that nobody understands.</p>
<p>Excuse my northeastern ignorance, but… there’s a difference between Minnesotan accents and those of people from Wisconsin?! </p>
<p>I’m from Long Island… I have a HEAVY accent. I’m actually worried that if I leave for college or for professional reasons, I won’t be taken seriously. Apparently we’re generally stereotyped as either being snobbish or ignorant. Go figure. </p>
<p>Every time I leave the area, though, everyone’s first reaction upon hearing me speak is, “You’re from New York, aren’t you?” Or, if I’m upstate, “You must be from Long Island.”</p>
<p>“Excuse my northeastern ignorance, but… there’s a difference between Minnesotan accents and those of people from Wisconsin?!” </p>
<p>Yeah, I guess so. I can’t notice it, but other people do. My college is in a more metro area of Wisconsin, though, and I come from way northern Minnesota aka da sticks - closer to Canada than Minneapolis. Pretty much everyone I know has some Scandinavian or Finnish heritage, whereas southern Wisconsin is mostly German heritage. I s’pose this might cause the accents to differ?</p>
<p>I really don’t think there’s that much of a difference, though. Rural areas probably just have thicker accents or something.</p>
<p>Oh. and my college has a lot of people from other states too. People from the east and west coast notice my accent the most, but I even get called out on it by people from the twin cites.</p>
<p>I’m not in college, but I’m in from California and I have no idea, upon hearing an accent, who’s from where (with the possibly exception of maybe, a really vague idea such as “Oh, he’s from the South…?”).</p>
<p>I don’t even know what accent I fall under, and such. Last time I went to New York no one asked me where I was from when I was speaking, but maybe it’s because I was there for a short amount of time.</p>