1. What accent do you speak in when you speak your native language? Don't tell me you don't have one, because everyone has an accent, even if it's the "standard" accent for the language in question.

I had a Chicago accent a few years back, and my mother would comment on it over and over at any given time. My brother and I would make fun of it. Then I moved to California, and I might have a Californian accent, but I'm not really sure. No one has commented on it. My brother and I make fun of Californian accents too - they say it "taaahhh coe," with a really long ahh, instead of the normal taco. I guess I do it a little like that. That sucks. Anyway, I'll have to ask someone if I have a definitive accent later.

2. Do you mispronounce words because of your accent? I'm not talking about simple variant pronunciation. I'm talking about the way people in Boston say the word "career" like "Korea" and "Korea" like "career" (or, for example, the way Billy Joel sings about "Brender & Eddie" in "Scenes from an Italian Restaurant" ).

Like I said about "taco." If we're going by mispronounced words here though, I have a "reading accent," when you read a lot and don't know how words are really pronounced because you've only seen them in print. Like Pie-gee-on (pigeon) or port-CUE-less [portcullis].

3. Do you speak any other languages fluently enough to have a distinctive local accent in that language? For example, my Moscow accent, my friend's Parisian accent when he speaks French, etc.

I speak Spanish fairly well, and I'm told I have a somewhat reprimandable accent there too. I think I do fine though, in comparison to some other kids in my class. They don't know how to work their tongue for Spanish at all, and it comes out terribly.

4. Are any of your accents "looked down" upon? (For example, Cockney or similar accents in England, Algerian accents in French, Caucasus accents in Russian, Long Island accents in American English, etc., etc., etc. )

Well, not entirely. I look down on my Californian accent [which is not, and I repeat, not a valley girl accent], but I don't get teased or whatever about it. When we start talking about Californian accents, the aforementioned Valley Girl accent always comes up, which is def. good times to make fun of. Sometimes I hear people who actually have one, and I think "Are they serious?"

5. As long as we're speaking about accents, are there any foreign accents which, when you hear your native language spoken in, turn you on/sound pretty ?

Irish is nice, and so is British. Spanish, because it sounds really exotic. Not French though.

6. Are there any foreign accents which make your language sound awful?

French, I think. My math teacher has a French accent though, and it's really amusing. We don't like German accents much either; it always sounds like your cursing when you talk in one.

Okay, that's it. 'Twas a short survey.

I guess I spent too much time on it.


I seldom fling children from towers to improve their health.