Strange Question

[Jake_S]

In college, a friend and I spent one morning speaking to each other in a heavy, fake English accent. It was funny, later that afternoon we found we were still using the accent without even thinking about it.

[Malcolm MacWilliam]

Because of 18th century reenacting, I'll use a Scots accent at times. I'm sure it's quite lame to real Scots, but it suffices for most Americans. I, also, am not really trying to be deceptive, but it can be fun and I usually break into my flat Pennsylvania accent after a bit. I"ve had a lot of fun with it, though. A few years ago at Brandywine, two very proper Scottish ladies probably in their 70s walked up to me and asked about the kilt above the knee. I explained in my "accent" about 18th century vs. Victorian times and later. They asked where I was from. I sometimes answer Caithness and they found me out cause I put the accent on the wrong syllable. We all had a good laugh about it. Malcolm

[Glen C]

I have been told that far southern Illinois is actully farther south than Richmond VA. I've never looked at a map to verify that, but they do grow cotton down around Cairo.

[ThreadBbdr]

You know, language is more hardy AND more fluid than you think. The linguists use root languages to determine both how old a concept is and how far/fast it spread (See Women's Work: the first 20,000 years for a good, deep, but approachable explaination.) On the other hand, there were some young black students/cadets - friends of my son - that I could barely understand when they got to using hiphop slang. That's a change over thousands or tens of thousands of years in one direction and 20 years in the other.

Karla << mind boggles.

[robthehiker]

While honeymooning in Scotland I was constantly being asked "what part of America are you from?". I grew rather tired of saying "actually I'm Canadian" so on the last night when a rather large, rather drunk Scot asked me "what part of America are you from?" I replied ""what part of England are you from?". He turned brick red and thundered "I'm not from England I'm from &$*%&$ Scotland" to which I replied "Well I'm not from America I'm from &$*%&$ Canada". He glowered menacing at me for another second then smiled and replied "guid oan ya " and bought my drink for me.

I wasn't sure if it was going to be the funniest thing I said or the last.

[elitekiltedcommando]

Never been asked if I had an accent. Most peculiar thing to happen to me was when I was attending a play at a friend's school. A rather nice looking female approached me and said she liked my sporran.

As far as accents go, I've been told I have a rather heavy Wisconsin accent. I don't notice it though.