Have you intentionally changed your accent?

Not just changed your accent, but also avoided certain regional colloquialisms.

I have. As a native Texan I have something of an accent that is probably unavoidable, but I don't have a heavy drawl. When I was around 11 years old I started making an effort not to speak as though "I just fell off the truck." As I became more aware of certain regional expressions I began avoiding them. One of the main ones is 'fixin' to,' I prefer 'about to.'

I've compared my speech to two guys my age, one a neighbor & friend, the other a friend. All three of us about the same age (52/53), and are native Houstonians who haven't spent enough time away from Texas to affect our accents. My neighbor has a slight accent, no heavy drawl, and he uses quite a few colloguial expressions. My friend speaks as though he was raised 'out in the sticks' and uses many colloquilal expressions. The main differences between us is how much we read/have read and education level.

 

Hmm, I never think of myself as having an accent so it's hard when I'm around people that tell me that I sound like @LordEden. I want to sound neutral and educated and be easily understood.

When I'm in a business setting I do my damnedest to sound like the side effects reader in a prescription drug commercial. Or Dave Chapelle's White Guy voice.

I agree that reading a lot and being exposed to others is crucial to taming the wild beast that sits on your tongue.

And, really, it should be our collective goal to sound more like @Baraka_Guru.

...

Side note: @LordEden is educated and easily understood but definitely not neutral. Which is why he's awesome.

 

If anything, when I'm around strangers, I like to go thicker with my East Texan dialect. I get a quick read on people and how they react to me and my drawl.
Depends on the situation, though.

Now, if y'all will excuse me, I'm fixin' to take a nap. Yee-haw!

 

No, but after years of life in Dallas Texas....I had an accent. And it creeps up on me when I least expect it!
So now I'm fixin' to go make some BBQ, y'all.

 

Mom was raised in Tennessee, with the typical southern drawl on lots of things.
Hailing from West Michigan.
Spent going-on-six-years in the Upper Peninsula.

Each of these different dialects come out at random times in conversation.
I have actually uttered the phrase "I'm fixin' to get pissed at dese hosers."

What am I?

 

I can affect a Southern drawl and sometimes I do with certain people or sometimes just for fun. Some things in my head just sound better with a Tallulah Bankhead-type southern aristocrat's accent and, honestly, I would love to have that voice, but my own voice is kind of accent-less. At least that's what people tell me.

 

Never would have guessed your roots from your voice.

Born and raised in Michigan, I speak regular American. Everyone else has the accents.

 

My accent is nothing at all if you ask me. It would probably fall under whatever "pacific northwest" does if I do have one.
However I do tend to pick them rather quickly and use some U.K. sounding ones fairly frequently, no doubt as a result of most of my favourite shows being BBC productions like Black Adder, Benny Hill, Monty Python, Are You Being Served, etc. etc. The humour in American shows is all too often just bad compared to the British shows.
I recall when my family visited the Dallas/Fort Worth area 20 some years back for two weeks and I caught that "Y'all" creeping into my speech, made a quick stop to that.

 

I love the word 'ya'll'. I use it all the time.

 

Yes, I have.
From age 6 and above I've been a Canadian ex-pat, first to a small town in Connecticut about 90 minutes from NYC and 2.5 hours from Boston. The people there spoke oddly to my ears and if I ever lapsed into the local dialect my mother would box my ears. My southern California years were the easiest as most everyone I met was a non-native, though folks who traveled enough asked if I was from Canada. I've lived quite awhile here outside of Chicago. The typical city accent is strong but gets quite diluted where I live in the NW 'burbs. I like to occasionally make fun of my spouse and son, who are both natives of this area. Normally, I say the names Dawn and Don the exact same way. For fun, I'll pronounce them like the natives, Dawhn and Dan. Chicago is Chi-cag-o vs. Chic- caw-go.

I've made a point to refresh my Canadian accent every summer that I go back and for the last few years. Going forward, I'll live there a couple months each summer. When I come home, my Southern Ontario accent is thick. It does actually sound 'posh' compared to the local accent, so in a business setting I make sure to turn it up.
Since my parents are Canadian and I learned to talk there I say 'eh', 'bum' (for ass), pop (not soda) and so forth. That never changed regardless of where I've lived.
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When I try to say y'all it comes out ya-all. It sounds goofy when I say it.

 

I say & even write y'all, but I mentally kick my self if I use fixin' to. Southern accents seem to cause people to think less of you.

 

Lordy, womman, Imma knock you one, iffin you don't put that apostrophe in its correct place.

I don't have a significant accent, I don't think. But I tend to pick them up very, very easily depending on who I spend time around. Coming back from two weeks in Sweden was hilarious.
I can affect a spectacular Southern accent or drawl, which drives my husband insane. He tried to kick that East Texas accent in his early years. I grew up in Florida. It was a crazy mix of accents and I did well in Spanish and French with pronunciation, which is NOT working for me in Louisiana. All these crazy people made up their own pronunciations for things.
I use some colloquial things that I didn't know were such... like soda, y'all, etc. But I like to pick up others' as well. I love "trolley" instead of shopping cart. And "alla yas" when I'm feeling particularly snarky or sarcastic. I just have fun with it. Being a therapist, it sometimes helps to adapt to the idiosyncracies of my clients' speech. It puts many at ease.

 

you're right! but it looks righter in front of the l's
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yes.

 

My accent seems to have diminished over the years because I always have people ask if I'm from the area.
Speaking with hard of hearing people and my english as second language in-laws must have taught me to enunciate.

 

I did, as a teenager. From a little under age two to just after my bar mitzvah (13), I lived in Minnesota, and developed a Minnesota accent (though not as pronounced as some I've heard). But when I then moved back to Los Angeles, I found myself a source of some amusement to my new friends there, to whom my accent seemed thick. So I spent a summer hanging out with surfers on the beaches in Venice, Seal Beach, and Huntington Beach, learning a little boogie boarding, soaking up rays and discovering local hotspots, and most of all, consciously soaking in the accent and speech patterns. By the time I started school that autumn, I spoke like I had been raised in Southern California, and spent years hanging on the beaches with a somewhat shiftless crowd.

That was the only time I did it for real, and permanently (the accent has mellowed over the years, but I still sound Californian and beachy). But as an actor, accents and dialects were my specialty, and I've often spent days in one accent or another, just for fun, and to keep my hand in.

 

Relevant


Video
Soda vs. Pop vs. Coke: Mapping How Americans Talk

 

My wife moved to Texas from England at 15, after 23 years here she now has a Texas accent you could cut with a knife, though it's not a slow drawl. When she spends a few minutes speaking with her relatives in England & Scotland, or with someone with a strong British accent, she falls into a loopy Geordie accent.

I sometimes fall into a strong Texas drawl, but only when I spend quite a while around several people with heavy drawls.

 

I talk like that for fun with my mom - she was a news anchor, so she sounds very proper. But we like to pretend we're real country with each other. We don't do it with anyone else. Or I might say "fixin to" with her where I don't normally say it. This all probably started to irritate her, but she plays along now.

I don't think I sound particularly southern, but some northerners have said I do.