chriswinter

In answer to "What's up"...the answer is...."nothin' but the rent"..

Ridski

Excellent!

clarissageo

We've been here 2 and a half years, and my kids (now 13 year old hormonal pubescent ratbag twins) sound 100% American. No-one realizes they are English and in fact, I hate to say it, but when they try to do an English accent they sound totally stupid.

My Husband says he doesn't notice my accent anymore. My mother, when I call her, says I sound American. My American Friends at work say I have a weird hybrid thing going on - they laugh when I say english expressions or words, and they laugh when I slip a 'y'all' and the occasional 'boy howdy' in. (on accident, honest, I don't realize i'm doing it!)

I spoke to an English friend on the phone about a month ago who has just moved over here and she agreed with the hybrid thing..... apparently I enunciate like an american, with the same speed and the loss of the ability to use the letter T in the middle of words, but with a strange twang of Yorkshire / American.....

The real shocker came when I listened to an answermachine message i'd left for the kids and hubby on my way home from work..... I sounded like I was born and bred in KY...... *sigh*

And yet all my patients at work do the old 'I love your accent, are you from Australia' .....

Kaffy Mintcake

My goodness, how time flies. It seems like yesterday I was welcoming you to cicada-infested Cincinnati.

S Folinsky

I also show my age sometimes -- like when I told a young car rental agent doing the documentation on a Chevrolet that it was an appropriate way to "see the USA." She just looked puzzled.

margaretmwilson

I'm from North East of England (near Newcastle upon Tyne) so have a Geordie accent. I've had people ask if I'm Scottish, Irish, Australian and Canadian! It does make me laugh though. When I go to the stores, the Mall etc and anyone hears my accent they always stop and talk to me, I spent nearly an hour talking to one lady in the Mall, it's great and quite a good way to meet people too.

robin1234

A few weeks ago I was accosted by a woman in the parking lot .. she asked about my car, I have a Toyota Yaris, we got to talking about gas mileage, she was interested in lower gas mileage cars etc. After talking for several minutes, I asked her if she was from Long Island because I detected an accent - she was! Then she asked where I was from. I felt I had finally arrived, when I was the first to ask about a "foreign" accent!!

Redwing

We are due to get the 13 year ones this year, in May I think. At least that is what they said on TV.

clarissageo

It does fly! And I remember thinking a week after I'd arrived 'OMG..... I hope this doesn't happen EVERY year!'

mmhendrie

I've been in the States for 14yrs and since I was here about 2yrs, people back in the UK began making fun of how American I was sounding. When I originally came here I had what I would term as a fairly mild Yorkshire accent. I found I had a lot of trouble with American's not understanding me, and after about a year of toughing it out, I attempted to change the way I was speaking. Not, I repeat NOT, to try and sound American, but to deliberately try and speak that more 'home counties' English.

Now I'm at the point where American's immediately either asks me where my accent is from, or asks me if I'm from England. And everyone in the UK thinks I'm American. Not think i sound a bit American, they actually think I'm fully a yank!!

ameliapond

Talking about accents, this is quite funny

Lift: You have not selected a floor

Boldie: Ai we have!!! Eleven. & Ahhh if you don't open up these doors I am gonna come to America, I am gonna find whatever desperate actress gave ya a voice...

Anian

I've lived here for almost four years. I haven't noticed as much of a change as I did when I live here for a year around 1999 (which softened and became slower and clearer), but I do use a lot more of the lingo without thinking about it. Often I have to stop myself and ask people if the sentence I just said made any sense to them, since I still use a lot of British slang without realising.

My recorded voice has always sounded odd to me (and far more accented), so I wouldn't know how much it has altered since I got here. My phone has a voice recognition function. When I first tried using it, it would error, not recognising a single word. Someone suggested it might be a problem with my accent, so I tried my awful American impression and it worked fine for everything. I eventually found the settings for it and set them to British, now it works fine on my normal accent. I type using British spellings on everything non-local, so at work and on local opinions boards I -ize everything. The tech editors now know how to interpret some of my less common phrasings when I write documents.

My daughter is almost five and has live here since she could speak. She has picked up an odd American accent that is different from my wife's and the locals. It really grates on me when she says words like "boy" and "girl" with two syllables (boyee and gir-yall). Despite that I always use the word "bath" as they do in Bath, she still ALWAYS goes for the American pronunciation. Hopefully she will be a bit more flexible as she gets older.

CandyBelle

My husband and I have a rule - when we're in the UK we speak like an Englishman, when we're in the USA we speak like an American. Except I still say things like "bollocks" and "bloody hell"..... along with the normal English-isms.

When it comes to an American accent, I try not to slip into a weird hybrid but it is hard. Except when I'm drunk and my REAL accent comes out. I have to disguise my black country-born-in-dudley-in-the-west-midlands-Lenny-Henry-esque way of speaking so my In-Laws can understand me!

.....I've never been mistaken for an Australian.... one girl in Eau Claire WI thought my (English) family and I were Canadian....?

Manc

I couldn't do that.

jimandtina2008

" Except I still say things like "bollocks" and "bloody hell"..... along with the normal English-isms. "

This made me laugh 'cos I do the same all the time without even realising until I get blank stares from my co-workers. 'Chuffed' is one word they think is really cute.......