Language and accent

On the bus home today I knew that the driver was from the west midlands of England but hadn't identified his accent better than that. But today as I got off there was one word that pinned it down: he was from the Black Country, as am I.

So I started thinking about accents. At school in the 1960s I learned French and German, got to practice both a little on vacations then later worked for a few months in Montreal. Montreal had people from all over the world, was very cosmopolitan and the standard language was English, but outside the city in Quebec Province speaking French was very useful. Not long after that I moved to Cambridge in England and one of the guys in our shared house had a French girlfriend, from Orleans. She told me I spoke French with an agricultural accent. No longer an English schoolboy but now a French peasant. Yeesss!

Now for German. Very useful on business trips to Germany but even better in Hungary where older people also spoke German instead of the Russian that the younger ones had had to learn. No-one mentioned my accent, nor did they in Germany. The only comments I ever had were from Austrians 😜

I didn't speak German in The Netherlands although Dutch sounded enough like it that I could understand quite a lot. Then at my regular hotel in Amsterdam the owner who had good English and his daughter who was excellent were away on a motorcycle camping trip, so the owner's father was in charge. He was definitely of the generation who had experienced wartime occupation and I was such a regular guest there (weekly over one winter) that he would have been briefed that I am English. So at breakfast he asked how would I like my obligatory egg cooked -- in Dutch. I replied in French. Nope he didn't speak French. He tries again in German so of course I can now reply in German 👍

My English accent now? Mostly East Anglian fens, but I'm told the Black Country comes back when I'm under stress.

I don't have a typical "Jersey Shore" accent ... not that I can tell. I tried to develop the "neutral tech support" voice as I do phone support. Though, when I get mad, I start talking like Joe Pesci.

I lived on the Jersey Shore for three years doing tech sales and support. I could understand New Yorkers but the Philly accent got me every time. That and their sticking to phone exchange three-letter names when I was expecting to hear just numbers.

KLOndike5-0123?

Any Cheeseheads down at the "Bubbla"? (or is that only Milwaukee-ians?)

Yeah, that sort of thing. We never got a customer in Philly, but we were selling to the oil and power generation industries and most cities had pure numeric phone numbers. In my time in that job the only customer we got ever was in Connecticut. But a biggie. Anyone know Combustion Engineering?

I know a guy out there that says "yinz" for that.

I'm south jersey nee central jersey (a myth,right @Aroxx ?)

Cawfee, wadder, mirer.

My mother’s family is from Philadelphia and my father grew up in Baltimore. We were talking about how the baseball player Tyler Flowers might get traded to the Phillies and end up as Tyler Floors or the Orioles and be known as Tyler Flares.

My father in law from the St. Louis area does this. It’s the worst lol. My entire large extended family is from New England so they omit the Rs. There was a comic who did a funny bit about how the one group stole the Rs from the other.

Paaaak the caaaaa = Park the car. Also, dead giveaway for a New Englander is if they use the word “wicked”. Bonus points if it’s in conjunction with pissah.

I feel like the stereotypical “Jersey” accent is really a NYC Brooklyn accent. Then we kind of blended that with Philly and created our own jawn.

My wife’s accent got really bad lately. I swear it didn’t used to be like that. Cawfee. Dawg. Auwto. And of course, wooter. I speak completely 100% normal of course.

Clearly, none of us are as sophisticated and well traveled as the OP lol.