Re: when your accent becomes a figure of speech
 

My accent is very British sounding but I also feel and identify with my American side but that seems to get ignored or not even considered when I talk to people. It's very disconcerting and it makes me feel a little sad as it's like more than half of your personality gets dismissed.

Re: when your accent becomes a figure of speech
 

Had to modify my N.Irish accent so that when I say things like "there" and "where" they sound more standard as opposed to the native "thur" and "wurr" pronunciation but that's about it. I've long learned to say tomato in north americanese.

Re: when your accent becomes a figure of speech
 

YouTube has some clever and funny Michael McIntyre videos on accents. Well worth a look.

Re: when your accent becomes a figure of speech
 

It's weird that that's such a tell for the Canadian accent. How does it get retained, I wonder. I could understand if it were limited to the Maratimes, but it seems to be countrywide.

The speech pattern which kind of grates on me is "...or no" rather than "...or not". I'd noticed it maybe 20 years ago in North America, but it seems to be creeping into British speech as well.

Re: when your accent becomes a figure of speech
 

That's a good illustration of the emphasis that seems to be placed on the letter "R" which to me, can make the BC accent very hard to understand - especially when filtered by a mask. It's nearly as bad as my satnav (sorry, GPS) which has some very amusing attempts at pronouncing anything with an R in the word, boulevard being an example.

Re: when your accent becomes a figure of speech
 

That was for Canadians' "oat and aboat". It's useful for other nationalities as well. There's "oot and aboot" for Scots; I don't think it spreads very far into northern England. Australians say "at and abat", with the short-a sound sometimes stretched into almost two syllables. If I were ever to hear someone say "et and abet" I'd guess they were Seth Efrican. Any others?

Re: when your accent becomes a figure of speech
 

One of my ex-wives has a French GPS. When the driver makes a mistake it doesn't say "please return to the highlighted rout" (sic) as the American ones do. It says Oo-la-la!

Re: when your accent becomes a figure of speech
 

My accent is of the 'Fens", having spent my school years in Ely.

24 years in Canada (immigrated at age 42) and my accent and use of words is pretty much the same, which due to the Fen accent has people thinking I may be from Australia.

Re: when your accent becomes a figure of speech
 

It irritates me when people use 'cloudiness' instead of plain old cloudy and something used to be a problem but now it could be problematic. Then of course we hear ' bring' instead of 'take', arrggghhhh, maybe I should head back to blighty!

Re: when your accent becomes a figure of speech
 

On the same theme, I dislike "impact" when "affect" is likely to be suitable, save impact to imply something forceful. Like many things now, it is becoming commonplace to use a word that implies greater impact! Great instead of good, perfect when it isn't, awesome when it's just average etc. It's all rather challenging.

Re: when your accent becomes a figure of speech
 

"Open the light" :lol:

Re: when your accent becomes a figure of speech
 

I've only ever heard that usage in the Irish joke about the vanload of monkeys. (Which you can check on YouTube. Very funny.)

Re: when your accent becomes a figure of speech
 

Irregardless, language does evolve, no ! :unsure:

Re: when your accent becomes a figure of speech
 

Yes indeed! Well said. https://grammar.yourdictionary.com/v...ifference.html

Re: when your accent becomes a figure of speech
 

I try not to be an old duffer who moans about evolving language - of course language evolves, otherwise we'd still all be saying prithee and verily and spiffing and spazzo. But I have certainly raised an internal eyebrow at the speed of the almost univeral adoption of "Can I get...?" instead of "May I have...?"