I hate that people treat the US as if it doesn’t have a wide variety of accents. I can drive an hour in any direction and the people sound different than where I live. A lot of states have their own accents, and there are regional accents within them. I live in Illinois and people from No. IL and Central IL sound completely different from people in So. IL.
Accents get even more differentiated the further North or South you go. PNW sounds different than NE. Etc. The real difference is that a lot of the accents in the US aren’t based on indigenous languages spoken in that region (even though some are), they’re largely based on the group of Europeans that settled in the region.
Americans are very very good at code switching, which is why I think a lot of people think there are only one or two accents.
Americans are very very good at code switching, which is why I think a lot of people think there are only one or two accents.
Is this why I can hear my Finnish friend’s “generic euro” accent when no one else can?
(She travels a lot and has a very, very weak Finnish accent, but a fairly strong “generic European” accent. None of our other European friends can hear it; the only people who can are American and even then it’s inconsistent).
That’s a thing with us Europeans - especially if you don’t want to perfectly adopt a British or American accent. This is when you end up with the “euro accent” - you’re perfectly fluent in English, without the accent of your native language, but since its neither British nor American English, it sounds just the slightest bit different.
I’m pretty sure my father has only ever been in one state over, and that’s to visit Vegas. I’ve been to multiple countries on multiple continents, and I’ll continue traveling the world
How brave of you.
