Do Americans have Accents?

I have an accent and people ask me all of the time, "where am I from?" I have lived in Southern California all of my life LOL!
 
MacJezza said:
As Americans we tend to have an slight emphasis on every letter with a bit of a bolder statement. This is in comparison to the lighter, cheekier, or even more relaxed English accent.
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We emphasize vowels, British people tend to emphasize consonants. I think this sounds a bit more dignified, but I wouldn't change my own accent. Wouldn't be real.
 
ZoomZike said:
Heya, I thought of this when I looked at the, "Are accents a turnoff?" thread, and I have a question.

Do Americans have accents?

Now allow me to go a little specific, I'm not talking about Texans with the extremely obvious ones, but I'm talking about the people that sound completely normal to me. When I hear my voice and other's in California, their voice sounds like the same accent, and I'm sort of used to it. But do other people think we have an accent? If so, what kind of accent do we have, do we stress certain syllables or say certain words that don't sound too right?

I'm not even sure if I, myself have an accent :p
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I get what you're saying. Like the American voice that is the most universal? For example I think that in commercials and on tv people sound alike- or at least we conceive them to. They sound more of a "standard american" than say a southern accent or boston accent.
 
TheRandomizerX said:
I get what you're saying. Like the American voice that is the most universal? For example I think that in commercials and on tv people sound alike- or at least we conceive them to. They sound more of a "standard american" than say a southern accent or boston accent.
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TV American is known as "non-regional diction." The closest accents to NRD is some Midwestern ones. My accent is really close to NRD, but there are a few words that people from Michigan just say differently.
 
PeterCoffin said:
TV American is known as "non-regional diction." The closest accents to NRD is some Midwestern ones. My accent is really close to NRD, but there are a few words that people from Michigan just say differently.
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Yeah, I think that if we speak close to that we don't notice each others "accents" as much. If we pronounce some words a little differently it is not as noticeable as certain region accents.
 
ZoomZike said:
Heya, I thought of this when I looked at the, "Are accents a turnoff?" thread, and I have a question.

Do Americans have accents?

Now allow me to go a little specific, I'm not talking about Texans with the extremely obvious ones, but I'm talking about the people that sound completely normal to me. When I hear my voice and other's in California, their voice sounds like the same accent, and I'm sort of used to it. But do other people think we have an accent? If so, what kind of accent do we have, do we stress certain syllables or say certain words that don't sound too right?

I'm not even sure if I, myself have an accent :p
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Well ..yes..you have an American accent lol.
 
When creating the thread 'Are accent a turnoff', I was actually referring to strong European accents. Mainly of people that don't speak english as a primary language.:)
But I suppose the term 'accent' is open to interpretation...
 
Someone asked me on one of my videos if I was from Wisconsin because of my apparent accent.

I didn't realize it was so obvious.
 
He's asking more what we sound like. I was born in Canada and now I live in California and to me Canadians and Californians don't sound that much different.
 
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