Speaking Like An American

Dude, that’s, like totally duderiffic.

I hate that I know people who actually talk this way.
“Yeah so, blah blah so, you know, yeah”

If she has said “like” just a couple more times, she’d blend in so much we won’t be able to tell she’s not a native speaker!

Like, you know, basically, it was definitely, totally, uhh…. cool.

Not bad. After three years my husband can only manage to say “y’all”, “ten” and “g-damn” convincingly in my Southern accent. And she certainly did better than Michelle Ryan as the Bionic Woman.

This is their revenge for all those bad Monty Python impersonations American teenage boys do.

Didn’t sound like she had much of an English accent to begin with to me.
Her American accent was convincing though for the most part. There were a few parts where she couldn’t hide her native accent but it’s better than I could do if the tables were turned and I had to sound British.

With the exception of “Americar”, she did a pretty good job. She sounded a little off here and there, but just I’d assume she was from the Minne-soh-ta or Wis-can-san area. For me, being from that area is enough to explain anything strange about anyone.

Yeah, as much as I die a little inside when my family fakes a British accent around my boyfriend, it is at least as cringeworthy when my boyfriend tries to talk with an American accent. It’s just so…wrong.

But maybe we all DO sound like vaguely retarded yokels.

The name Hugh Laurie pops to mind…

She didn’t fool me or any of my friends. We could easily tell she was not American, but she’s still better at faking the accent than I am at pretending to be British! I was on vacation in London for a week and I tried to fake the accent, but people kept on looking at me like I grew horns.

Te “Americar” could be authentically American if she were from Boston!

The “Americar” sounds like really awful New York to me. (Actually, most New Yorkers I’ve encountered are actually from various European countries; the “typical” accents must be endemic to smaller neighborhoods without much influx from outside.)

The “A”s spoken through the nose are very New Jersey; I just cringe every time I hear that!

I caught some very “round” “O”s that sound very Wisconsin or Minnesota. Since my parents are from Milwaukee, I grew up with a slight Midwestern accent despite having lived my whole life in New Jersey (I do an excellent Mr. Rogers impression). I NEVER say my “A”s through my nose! My students often assume that I must, therefore, be Canadian. If I lived in Wisconsin, students there would assume otherwise, since they’d actually know some Canadian accents (and they’d probably perceive me as a surprisingly intelligible New Jerseyan, assuming they had any idea of New Jersey accents).

Anyway, Miss Grace’s “American” accent is difficult to pin down to one specific location, just as mine is. She could easily fool most Brits with it, I think, and probably many United Statesians — but nobody would be able to hear her and say, “Hey, you must be from Minnesota, enso?” because it contains elements from widely disparate regions.

I love when an occasional student feels they’ve mastered “the” British accent (oh, there’s just one?) and decide to try to trick the entire class into thinking that they’re actually British and have been using “the” American accent (oh, there’s just one?) all this time. When it’s really time to get back to work and they won’t let it rest, I’ll pop their bubble by saying, “British, ay? What’s the last letter of the alphabet?”

In the immortal words of Sgt. Bilko, “Don’t think of it as losing; think of it as a learning experience.”