Accent and voice ponderings

[burntcopper]

Inspired by tenebraeli's ponderings on this.

See, I think of myself as fairly normal middle-class Berkshire Estuarite, having grown up here since I was five, and gone to a school which was a jumped-up snobby grammar school which bore a slight resemblance to an exam-results-obsessed St Trinian's. With possibly a hint of Cornish when I lived there, but only then.

Except I keep being mistaken for a Kiwi.

Of course, when I *listen* to my voice when recorded, it sounds nothing like I think of it. The answerphone is fairly flat. Customer service voice gradually becomes Tour Guide Barbie. Asking questions to guests at conventions brings out this *terribly* plummy voice, probably because I'm enunciating.

So, for all of those who've met me... whayt the hell do I sound like?

Comments

[cynicalcylon.livejournal.com]

At least the Kiwi accent is relatively soft, & often mistook for other accents. I just keep getting mistaken for an Australian.
I mean, I know my English accent is rather non-descript, but Australian?!?

[marta-eggerth.livejournal.com]

As a person who studied theoretical phonetics at the university I can say that the way you speak does not totally depend on the place you were born and live and the people who surround you but on the peculiarities of your respiratory system.
And of course you're absolutely right mentioning customer service voice.

[akadougal.livejournal.com]

You sound nice. And English - very English without being nails down blackboard. Perhaps to an English person you sound more exotic.

What do I sound like, since I'm having this discussion up here with additional foreigners.

[juleskicks.livejournal.com]

Ahaha. Customer service voice.

To me, it sounds like a middle class Southern English accent -- I can't, of course, recognize all the little differences, but I can usually rule it down to a class bracket and a region (and, hell, I can't rule it down to much more than a vague region with Americans, so that's not really much different). I'm pretty good at picking out New Zealand and distinguishing that from Australian, too, and it doesn't really sound Kiwi to me.

See, and I tend to think of myself as having a fairly generic mid-Atlantic accent -- I know it's not Southern, as NoVA is totally different from the rest of the state, and I grew up in NoVA/DC/Maryland. But people invariably ask me where I'm from, and comment on my 'accent', even at home. Doesn't help, either, that I'm extremely auditory and tend to unconsciously mimic whoever I'm talking to (which I'm always afraid is going to offend someone, but no one ever seems to notice, thank goodness, as I don't even realize I'm doing it).

Linguistics and dialects are great, aren't they? *g*