Testing your American Accent

Since my parents immigrated here a thousand years ago. I've always wondered what kind of American accent I have. Unlike other people my accent has been influenced by my surroundings and TV in general. It's not like I snubbed my parents or anything but as far back as I can remember they have always encouraged me to speak proper English without an accent. Well here's the proof of it all... their hard work finally paid off:

What American accent do you have? (Best version so far) Northern You have a Northern accent. That could either be the Chicago/Detroit/Cleveland/Buffalo accent (easily recognizable) or the Western New England accent that news networks go for.

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Okay, now you have to understand this really is an accomplishment because I have been exposed to a lot of the wrong kinds of accents so it's a miracle that none of them stuck. For example, I grew up in East Brooklyn, borough of crack whores, shootings, and gang wars; where every other sentence in a conversation ended or started with yo yo! And the sentence "she didn't do nothing" was considered proper English.

I guess you would have to blame it on the nuns for griding grammar into my head. But in all honesty their old Italian-American accents weren't that great either. However, they weren't the only Italians I was exposed to. Around when I was 10 we moved to the then totally racist community known as Howard Beach.

Howard Beach got a bad rap because of an incident involving some white Italian guys beating a black guy so bad that in desperation he tried to escape them by running across the Belt Parkway, thus ending his life. So it was no secret that in Howard Beach they like white and nothing but white. So you can imagine the surprise when my Spanish dad bought a house there and I was thrown into the situation of being the only Spanish kid on the block. Surprisingly I survived without any scraps and even managed to get along with the neighborhood kids without getting on the bad side of the mafia families.

So there you go I went from an old Italian Brooklyn accent to a new Italian-American accent. I guess you can say I was going in the right direction. But the biggest impact of the accent I have today were the girls at TMLA. Yup, I went to an all girls Catholic high school. And just to let you know, all the rumors about Catholic School Girls are pretty accurate.

Anyway this was a whole new world. I was among the middle and upper middle class. Some of these girls had connections for concerts, outings in the Hampton's and even knew a couple of A-list Hollywood movie stars. So you can imagine how I fit right in. Of course that's where the whole life lesson of blending in came in handy. I studied my friends habits I'd pick up there mannerisms and in the end according to my brother I was talking like I was from those fancy places in Connecticut.

But of course all things must come to and end and I was thrown into the college environment. This time I did not try to blend in so my accent became my accent a combination of good English and TV. So Ma and Pa I achieved the American dream... I sound like a freakin Yank!