Do you have an accent?

[Keystone Phil]

Yeah, I still carry a little bit of that New Jersey/New York accent with me.  Supposedly, it really comes out when I say the word "water."

[Ban my account ffs!]

I have been hugged by Minnesotans who mistook me for someone who had been there, on the basis of accent.

They were probably just being friendly. 

[Conan]

Like most people I know in NJ and NY, we sound like anybody in the media/tv/films. No accent.

You can take the boy out of Jersey, but you can't take the Jersey out of the boy.

Yeah, I still carry a little bit of that New Jersey/New York accent with me.  Supposedly, it really comes out when I say the word "water."

Hopefully, after another couple of years in Massachusetts, I'll pick up a little bit of a Massachusetts accent and start talking like Tom Kean.

Like what?  I say "wuh-der." Don't you find it that we sound like any newscaster on CNN or any other network?

[MasterJedi]

I also must say I feel sorry for you who don't use "aina".

[AkSaber]

I speak like everyone who lives on the West Coast. I don't think that counts as an accent.

[Torie]

No. None. Nada. No one could tell where I am from, only where I am not from.

[Sbane]

I have a slight Indian accent which comes out when I pronounce certain words but other than that it's just the plain old California accent which means no I really do not have an accent.

[Хahar 🤔]

Answering some questions:

A freeway is a controlled-access road. A highway is a numbered road. An expressway is a semi-controlled, multi-lane road with no properties fronting and speed limits about 60 MPH: a Santa Clara County speciality.

I know the difference between cot and caught academically, but I've never heard it. Cot uses an open o, while caught sounds like "caht".

I can't tell the difference between Mary, marry, and merry.

Yod-dropping is the loss of an unwritten "y" that often appears after u. For instance, it makes tune sound like toon instead of tyoon.

[Boris]

This one person told me I had a weird hybrid American-Indian-British (wtf) accent, so I apparently I do.

[12th Doctor]

I have been told either that I don't have an accent, or that I have a very strange accent... usually the latter.  I come from an area that hangs just on the cusp of where Northeastern PA English, Western PA English and Upper Appalachians English meet, but in addition to that my family also originated from the Delaware Valley, and put a specific emphasis on speaking "properly" (which is to say what they processed as proper, as opposed to what the locals spoke) and then on top of that, I lived in Erie, which has a different accent, for five years and I watched alot of TV when I was younger.  The end result is that I don't sound like anyone else, pretty much.

I use alot of the Western PA colloquialisms, though... except I don't say "pop" I say "soda".

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

I never thought so but apparently people I talk to at work can often what region I'm from before I say so.

[Torie]

Answering some questions:

A freeway is a controlled-access road. A highway is a numbered road. An expressway is a semi-controlled, multi-lane road with no properties fronting and speed limits about 60 MPH: a Santa Clara County speciality.

I know the difference between cot and caught academically, but I've never heard it. Cot uses an open o, while caught sounds like "caht".

I can't tell the difference between Mary, marry, and merry.

Yod-dropping is the loss of an unwritten "y" that often appears after u. For instance, it makes tune sound like toon instead of tyoon.

That about sums it up, but "caught" has a very slight longer a than "cot." And word choice is different from accent of course.

[Torie]

I never thought so but apparently people I talk to at work can often what region I'm from before I say so.

Minnesotans (except Coleman who is from Brooklyn) can be identified in a mili-second. And I can tell them from those from Milwaukee and those from Chicago quite easily. I know Hillary is from Chicago immediately. Iowans have this hard "r' It's ruf and Warshington. Those in Eastern Iowa also have this peculiar lilt that I can put my finger on, but the locals who grew up there have it. Senator Grassley comes close to it.

Go here and click on Tom Kean to listen to a now almost gone upper class mid Atlantic accent. Milicent Fenwick had it in spades. Remember her? And George Meany had a now dead Brooklyn  accent, where "oil" was pronounced "earl."

[Colin]

I know the difference between cot and caught academically, but I've never heard it. Cot uses an open o, while caught sounds like "caht".

Really, I'm suprised. I've always heard them pronounced differently, but then again I'm from one of the regions that is resisting this trend. Really before I moved to Pittsburgh I never heard this, and now tend to associate it with the Pittsburghese accent.

[Fmr. Pres. Duke]

When I speak normally I don't, but I can pull a mean southern accent when I want to.

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

I've discovered that I'm for some reason really, really good at identifying people from Louisiana from my job, who appear to be quite different from even the rest of the south.

I never thought so but apparently people I talk to at work can often what region I'm from before I say so.

Minnesotans (except Coleman who is from Brooklyn) can be identified in a mili-second. And I can tell them from those from Milwaukee and those from Chicago quite easily. I know Hillary is from Chicago immediately. Iowans have this hard "r' It's ruf and Warshington. Those in Eastern Iowa also have this peculiar lilt that I can put my finger on, but the locals who grew up there have it. Senator Grassley comes close to it.

I'm not from Minnesota originally (though my parents are, and I suppose the Dakotas are pretty much the same thing in this category.)

Do you think your statement applies to Minnesota blacks though? (Yes yes I know but it's still 4% of the state.)

[dead0man]

31 of my 35 years have been in St.Louis or Omaha, so no, I have no accent at all.

[Хahar 🤔]

And word choice is different from accent of course.

Hmm. I don't necessarily agree.

I know the difference between cot and caught academically, but I've never heard it. Cot uses an open o, while caught sounds like "caht".

Really, I'm suprised. I've always heard them pronounced differently, but then again I'm from one of the regions that is resisting this trend. Really before I moved to Pittsburgh I never heard this, and now tend to associate it with the Pittsburghese accent.

Well, the merger is ubiquitous west of the Mississippi.

[12th Doctor]

31 of my 35 years have been in St.Louis or Omaha, so no, I have no accent at all.

Actually, you do.  There is no such thing as someone who doesn't have an accent.  You speak English in a particular way, yes?  Thus, you have an accent.

[HardRCafé]

I have some dialect stuff, but no accent of note. And most of the dialect is Boston that I picked up at college. ("Sketchy", for example, although I don't say "wicked".)

I never thought of "sketchy" as regional.  Do you mean it in the same sense as "dodgy"?

[Queen Mum Inks.LWC]

No.

[dead0man]

31 of my 35 years have been in St.Louis or Omaha, so no, I have no accent at all.

Actually, you do.  There is no such thing as someone who doesn't have an accent.  You speak English in a particular way, yes?  Thus, you have an accent.

What's the point of the OP?

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Everyone has an accent.

Anyway, although people often have trouble working out where I'm from (my family is from all over the place and I also used to copy people's voices when I was little), it's fairly easy to work out where I'm not from and, this being Britain, stuff about class and so on.

[Small Business Owner of Any Repute]

A freeway is a controlled-access road. A highway is a numbered road. An expressway is a semi-controlled, multi-lane road with no properties fronting and speed limits about 60 MPH: a Santa Clara County speciality.

Expressways are allowed to have those at-grade crossing and fronting properties, unlike freeways.

The main different in New York (Long Island!) seems to be that trucks can use freeways but not expressways.  It's a bridge height thing.

[Hash]

Yes. In English, I have a marked French accent. I don't pronounce "h" when I don't look out for it, and I still pronounce "the" as "de".

In French, I have a French accent for those in Quebec and a Quebecois accent for those in France. I also like to take up a lot of foreign accents (for two reasons, one it's fun and two I didn't stutter on an accent). I'm good at the Philippe de Villiers accent, Belgian, Marseille, snobbish Parisian, Sequanodionysien, and the uneducated Quebecois accent.