h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

In case any of you would like to *hear* the dialects, rather than merely typing them, I've found a pretty site ...

http://www.ku.edu/~idea/england.html

http://www.ku.edu/~idea/australia.html

http://www.ku.edu/~idea/northamerica.html

http://www.ku.edu/~idea/europe.html

This thread is starting to sound like a H*Y*M*AN K*A*P*L*A*N
story. Oy!

Mr. Christopher, I would be hard-pressed to figure out where you live based on your accent. The thing is, *everybody* hears all kinds of accents no matter where they live. They watch television, listen to radio, and meet people from just about anywhere, since people move around a lot more than they used to. Regional accents have faded somewhat, because people who want to land jobs in corporations with nationwide offices can't afford to have such a pronounced accent that nobody can understand them. They might be transferred just about anywhere.

Yeah, but I love Shea's Lawn Guyland accent.

I have no discernable accent.

One of my best friends in college was a girl from Huntington, Lawn Guyland. I well remember that accent!

You've probably the same accent as me, AWK

Being from the midwest, she seems to have tiny bits of several different US accents, in my opinion. She pronounces some words as if she's from much further south... and some others as if she's from much further east.

But then she's so good at imitating accents that it wouldn't surprise me if she was doing it on purpose.

I do?!!

Ohio is smack dab in the middle of everything, you know.


I couldn't hear an accent when I was in California, Amy. But, as with everywhere, as people relax and/or become drunk, their native speech pattern emerges.

Lady Scott usually catches me straight out of bed on Doobry mornings and I could care less about enunciation or pronouncing a darn word properly at that time of the week.

Oh, here we go with the whole "Buckeyes don't have an accent" thing! Like I don't hear that constantly!

My accent really comes out if I'm excited about something I'm talking about. I can tell when I "overly" pronounce something, because it makes TJ smile, giggle and outright laugh.

Buckeyes *don't* have an accent. Not in the slightest.


Betcha can't cite a single incidence with TJ.

He says my name funny ... and don't get me started on "camera" and "pajamas"!

*starts Shea on "camera" and "pajamas"*

Yeah! What's wrong with Ohio cameras and pajamas?

Oh my lawd! camera an' pajama, wot ever next? Lumme!

http://hcs.harvard.edu/~golder/dialect/staticmaps/state_OH.html

All of this here Harvard survey seems absolutely correct and without flaw to me, Shea.



I can't imagine that anyone would feel the need to pronounce these words any differently than a Buckeye.

My mother's parents were born and raised in Ohio before escaping over the border into Michigan. To my ears, my mother has no accent. My father has a somewhat twangy yankee accent, but it's not a Boston accent. When I first moved to Boston, I had trouble understanding the natives.

You found it difficult to pahk your cah in Hahvahd Yahd?

So you're saying I can call it a Buckeye accent instead of a generic American one? Lady Scott's really the only one that can compare how we speak, AWK... Unless your phone thingy will actually let me call you now...

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Not difficult, just prohibitively expensive.

When my sister was in college at Mount Holyoke, she dreamed up a publicity stunt involving one of her professors, who also taught at Harvard, and who was entitled by charter to keep a cow in Harvard Yard. Her idea was to bring a cow into Harvard Yard.