accents/dialects

["Black Bob" Craufurd]

Hehe wow, I have no idea what that means. My mother was from London area, but that must be Northern?

My father was from Oregon and I grew up in Virginia. I ended up with absolutely no accent/dialect. lol

[Kaiser of Arabia]

I'm from freakin NJ and I understood that!
of course I got family from VA/WVA and I got Southern Blood.

[Gregoshi]

I'm of Pennsylvania Dutch (Deutch = German) blood and my grandparents spoke the language. Alas, my dad only learned how to understand it and I picked up none of it. Anyway, the Pennsylvania Dutch speak with an unusual accent in which "V" sounds like "W", "J" sounds like "CH", and so on. It can have some funny results, like "garage" comes out almost sounding like "crotch" and "Abe" (as in Lincoln) sounds like "Ape". I actually found a book which teaches you how to speak "dutch-ified" English. As with speaking the language, my Dad has a little bit of the accent and (un?)fortunately I have no trace of it.


I did a bit of searching on the internet for audio samples of how the Pennsylvania Dutch sound when they speak. I had little luck...until I remembered Raymond the Amish Comic. Now the Amish and Pennsylvania Dutch are different groups, but they are close in their speaking patterns. So here's the link the Raymond's website: http://www.amishcomic.com/media.shtml You can find a sampling of how Amish/PA Dutch sounds on this media page of his site. It is a phone interview of Raymond done by an Ohio radio station and it is quite funny. One comment: Raymond's accent seems to be toned down a bit, perhaps to be a little more understandable to the general public. How can an audience get the joke if they don't understand what is being said? Anyway, you can pick up the "V" sounding like a "W". A note about the Amish: if you've seen the movie "Witness" with Harrison Ford/Kelly McGinnis or "For Richer or Poorer" with Tim Allen/Kirsty Alley, then you have seen at least a little of the Amish culture. No cars (horse-drawn buggies!), electricity, phones, plumbing etc. Fortunately for me, the Pennsylvania Dutch have no such restrictions or I would n't be posting this!

[Goofball]

Newfoundland. Enough said...