[Gemme]

Originally Posted by SleepyButch

Stong? no. I tend to pick up the regional accents pretty quickly.

I can do this. A weird thing about me is that I pick up speech impediments.



If I'm talking to someone with a lisp, I will catch myself subconsciously replicating it. I'm a vocal chameleon but I can't 'do' accents on demand. They sneak up on me.

Originally Posted by Daniela

I can always tell when someone speaking Spanish has an Argentinian accent (they sound like my parents!), although I'm a little lost at picking up Cuban vs. Puerto Rican, for example.

I wish I could help with this. I've dated both a Puerto Rican and a Cuban and they had very similar speech patterns but both lived in South Florida, so I'm sure their dialect is different from those who live in Puerto Rico or Cuba.

Originally Posted by Ginger

To say someone's accent is "abrasive" seems oppressive to me. Maybe classist, definitely regionalist. Some accents are "deeper," in my opinion, than others—more thoroughly immersed in the way of speaking in a certain region. Why is that a bad thing? An "abrasive" thing?

Abrasive means rough, not good or bad. Just like some people have gravely voices. Their voice might be described as 'gritty'. Some make careers out of it, like Joe Cocker.

Some accents are more rough, like Bostonians and some native Rhode Islanders. Part of it is the accent itself and part of it is the delivery. Very 'you talkin' to me?' when excited and 'eh, whataya gonna do?' when relaxed. Thick; rich with character.

I find English accents to feel very smooth, like water flowing down a quiet creek (pronounced CREAK by me and CRICK by my dad, who has been in MS all his life). The words flow seamlessly and, from my experience, the peaks and valleys are not as distinguishable as with North Easterners. It's very relaxing to me and I could listen to it for hours. I love Scottish and Australian accents too.

Here, there are a lot of stops and starts and the volume goes up, up, up. Most days it feels like home, because I am Italian and that's how I am, but some days it feels like someone broke the control button on the speakers.