Do Americans generally have an accent, or a lack of an accent?

Question

I've always wondered.

Answer 1

Well as an American I can look around and notice many different accents, mainly by the state they live in. Some differentiate very distinctly like those from Texas and New york for example.

Americans have many different accents so I prefer to think of it as a dialect.

Answer 2

This answer is tied up into what is the “standard” of a language. If you are talking about American standard then it would be no, because in theory it is the core language ideal, but the problem with standard is that no one ever really speaks standard. Every one will have had influences from all the places that they have lived.

The standard of a language is an ever changing. What some one holds in there head as accent free will change from year to year, from decade to decade. This means what is talking with out an accent is will always be in flux.


Also what is the “American” accent, who has it? Do people in Iowa talk accent free, do people in Boston talk accent free or do people in California talk accent free? I think that you will find if you think about it you will have problems pinpointing a group (or area) that talks accent free. Even news reporters, who train and are selected for there “accent freeness” will have aspects of regional dialects in their speech.

My shorter answer is that EVERY ONE has an Accent!

There is a lot of research that has gone into who has accent and who doesn’t have accent in linguistics and anthropologic linguistics. There are theories and debates on this subject; some say that there are no such things as a language but rather collections of accents that are jointly understood! It takes whole text books to explain them! I have not read nearly enough of them to give you a better answer. So I am sorry that I can’t make it clearer but I hoped that helped

Answer 3

Everybody has an accent of some sort. For example - to the British, it is not they who have the accent, but everyone else, while to an American, the Brits most definitely have accents. The US has a range of accents, mostly due to its large geographical area. The more common and easily identifiable ones ones are the southern, New York, Boston, and northern (Wisconsin, Minnesota area). The midwest "accent" is by far the most boring (which is what I have) and is characterised by its lack of any odd pronunciation or inflection of letters

Answer 4

according to a friend who lives in britain , to him all americans have accents just like americans think they have accents. Within the states there are accents for example , southern and new york...

Answer 5

Yes there is an accent, everyone has an accent. Here it's an American accent. Remember English from England it's what it's supposed to sound like.

Answer 6

Everyone on the planet has an accent, but when your're around people with the same accent they speak the same way as you so you don't notice. But to me you have an American accent and I sound normal. Put the British news on (BBC News 24) I bet you'll start laughing, I get the same thing when I see the American news ;)

"however go to europe ask them to imitate us and youll get an idiotic and exagerated southern accent."
Lol its like when you ask an American to impersonate the English, they almost always start talking like the Queen or Tony Blair. What the Americans perceive as "British" is actually Old Fashioned English. British can refer to Scots, Welsh, Cockney (Londoners) or Received Pronounciation which is how the Queen speaks.

What the American's percive as a British Accent is actually Received Pronunciation, spoken by about 3% of the population. I myself speak Norfolk dialect which is definitely not posh and back in the olden days when the Norfolk accent was more exagerated everyone form Norfolk spoke like farmers (the turnip farmers of Norfolk as Jerrmy Clarkson put it)!

Go here and find your accent, its amazing when you realize how differently you actually speak to everyone else
-- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_dialects_of_the_English_language

"While there is a meaningful degree of uniformity in formal written English in the UK and Ireland, the forms of spoken English used vary considerably more than in most other areas of the world where English is spoken, both geographically and socially, so the concept of "British English" is difficult to apply to the spoken language. Dialects and accents vary not only between the nations of the British Isles, for example in Scotland, Northern Ireland and Wales, but also within these countries themselves. There are also differences in the English spoken by different socio-economic groups in any particular region. The written form of the language, as taught in schools, is the same as in the rest of the English-speaking world (except North America), with a slight emphasis on words whose usage varies amongst the different regions of the UK. For example, although the words "wee" and "little" are interchangeable in some contexts, one is more likely to see "wee" written by a Scottish or Northern Irish person than by an English person. In publishing, English English norms tend to be used." - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_English

Answer 7

everyone has an accent that correlates to what part of the country they are from. Some accents are more prominent than others

Answer 8

Varies with the region you live. I recently moved to Texas from the midwest and have been told I have one. I never really thought about it. I always thought the midwest was a dead zone for accents.

Answer 9

All people have an accent. If you are american you might think other americans hadnt got one but if you were British for example you would think that everyone who wasnt did have one and certainly that americans did!

Answer 10

people in the southern states have an awesome accent and ppl say that we Chicagoans have an accent but I cant hear it