Yesterday, a Canadian friend tagged me on Facebook in a
post. He was writing about a friend of
his who commented that someone had a strong “American accent.” He went on to discuss the fact that the
various regional accents around the US disproved the idea that an American
accent could even exist.
I strongly agree, and would point out that there are at
least a half dozen different accents specific to regions of Texas – in fact,
there may be at least that many specific to areas of Houston. There are still pockets of white, East Texas
speakers in the Channelview area, Spanish speakers in Denver Harbor, Blacks
with a hint of South Louisiana in Fifth Ward, Vietnamese accents in Southwest
Houston, etc. Add to that the influx of
refugees from places like California and the Rust Belt, and the more affluent
sections of the North and West sides have blended their accents into something
that is homogenized – almost generic.
I am reminded of Richard I Fu Ho, my college roommate. He already had an engineering degree from
Tung Hai University on Taiwan, and had come to Austin College to work on his
English before entering grad school. He
had an older sister who was a professor at M.I.T. When he called her on the phone, they would
try to converse in English, but she spoke Boston (with a Chinese accent) and he
was leaning East Texas (with a Chinese accent) and it soon became clear that
they could not communicate without switching to Mandarin.
Bob, I spent the first 4+ years of my life growing up in Toronto then 2 years in South Australia before finally moving to Vancouver when I was seven. They say that young children who move, let's say from Scotland to Louisiana, will loose their native accent and adopt the accent of their new home. My family says when we got back to Canada I had the weirdest accent on the planet. I think that's the reason I have the strange ability to start sounding like a local after about a week in a different city.
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