I have died and gone to linguistic heaven–I stumbled across the IDEA (International Dialects of English Archive) site! I’ve often said that I would like a “collection” of accents, and here I have found exactly that! Many are reading the same boring text, but….accents from all over the world. Not boring. I listened to “Nigeria” three times, and “Haiti” twice. I could listen to the Central and Eastern European ones for hours, and I am giving consideration to asking, “Male, actor, Moscow, English poor” to marry me (“…fadder wass pro-FEH-sor econo-MEH-trrik, meth-eh-MEH-tih-ken”). 🙂

According to the quiz I took yesterday on another site, my own accent is “Mid-Atlantic, also known as the ‘Philadelphia accent’.” I listened to the Nova Scotia accents on IDEA, and they’re exactly right, but I know I don’t sound like that, so perhaps I did end up with a “Philadelphia accent” after all. Americans make fun of Canadians for saying “aboot”, but I’ve never known one who did; they say it like “a boat”, and I made a conscious effort to not say it that way because I thought it sounded silly before I ever heard an American chuckle at “aboot”. Sometimes I’ll lapse back into my Annapolis Valley accent, but only when I’m tired or pissed off and only if I’m talking to someone who does talk that way. Anyway, whatever I sound like, at least it’s not that gawdawful flat, nasal twang from Buttfuck, Illinois! 😉

P.S. Also on my list of potential marriage proposals is the guy from Georgia (EU, not US). English that sounds like that can be as “halting” as it wants; I’ll listen to it anyway.

P.P.S. After mapping it, the quiz isn’t actually all that far off. Wrong country, of course, but only 1350km away.