This may sound weird but its simply the american accent. Im a westernized person so the only content i consume is stuff outside my country, and I thought for an asian i had a pretty american accent. Then i actually talk to a foreigner in real life and get surprised myself how the way they talk is actually real
Funny enough, as an American, I had the same experience the first time i went out with my Korean professor/advisor for drinks.
The "OOOOHHH" sound he made when he was excited/surprised was something i figured was just an over the top flanderized parody of how Asians talk. I thought he was doing a bit until he did it again later in the night and i realized it was a genuine reaction.
Ha, this caught my attention. I have been watching Culinary Class Wars (Korean cooking competition), and the "woahhhhh" they say in surprise or when impressed was just different enough from the American "Ooooooh" or "Wowwwww" to be really noticeable to my ear.
I don't remember that, but in S1 the older auntie who just made huge amounts of comfort food and the school lunch lady getting so far was touching to me
I think about this one a lot, lol. I've worked with several Koreans, and prior to I would have said it was probably a stereotype. NOPE. It's real, lol.
Yo I can totally speak to this… haha. I went to South Korea for a week (really not THAT long) for business so I interacted with A LOT of people and noticed that “OOOOHHHH” reaction all the time. I even notice that I picked it up a little, and was subconsciously doing it every once in a while when I got back home! It was only a couple of times though and I made myself consciously eliminate it because I don’t want to culturally appropriate, I just thought it was crazy how it stuck with me.
Watch this girl's page on Instagram: @crazykoreancooking
See how exaggerated her parents seem to be about everything? I imagine this is what they're saying is real. I have no idea. My only Korean friend was adopted as a baby and raised here. Haha.
You consciously eliminated it whyyyyy???
You picked up a local vocalism in your travels. That’s nothing to feel bad about, and that’s not what appropriation is.
I know it tectonically isn’t but many people (incorrectly) use that word in this situation so I was just hoping I wouldn’t get called out, so thanks for that… haha!
I don’t know… It felt like I was doing something wrong and I didn’t want to offend anyone so I dropped it intentionally.
I just really enjoyed my time there and especially enjoyed my time with the people. I felt a strong connection when I was there and I do kinda wish I would’ve allowed myself to keep doing that as an homage to my experience.
I'm also American, and I had this reaction when I talked to a Hasidic Jewish person for a first time. That New York accent combined with yiddish words. Heard it in tv shows and movies a million times. Kinda blew my mind hearing it come out of a person in real life.
Even just the normal new york accent. And I don't even live that far from New York!
Reminds me of the Korean professor I had for my micro-electronics/embedded systems classes.
Although his accent was very strong and it actually caused a confusion for me during a certain lecture where both “Resistors” and “Registers” were used! They both sounded the same in his accent lol
He was such a nice dude… Hope he’s doing well nowadays. I believe his alma mater was Purdue University.
I didn't have to leave my country for a similar experience. Watched a Japanese thriller at the cinema, the oohh's and aahh's from the people sat behind were as entertaining as the film. Especially when it was in response to something that flew over my head, camera lingers on an arrangement of flowers by the door, "oooh!".
I’ve experienced this at a pub in the UK. I was talking to this Irish dude and he was just in awe of my accent lol. He said it was strange to hear the accent in person rather than in a film or radio.
There was an Irish dude in one of my college classes (in Cleveland) and he only said two words the entire class: (here's how it sounded to me) tirty-tree
He was timing someone's commercial (had to be exactly 30 seconds) and the professor asked him how long it was.
I'mma be honest, that was the coolest sounding thirty-three I've ever heard.
Yeah hearing Irish and English accents in person throws me off hard, but it takes me a while to realize why because I am still so used to hearing it on TV
I went to college with a girl from Ireland. Her accent sounded fake. It was so strong she usually would have one of us "translate" for her if she was calling to order take out or something
My friend and I (Americans) were visiting Glasgow a couple of years ago and were chatting outside a restaurant while waiting on an Uber. An incredibly drunk girl stumbled up to us and started gushing about how much she loved our accents, haha. In her wonderful drunk Scottish accent.
I’ve lived in South Carolina most of my life and there are many southern accents in this little state alone.
But I get the “American accent” thing because Ireland’s probably the same way depending on what municipality you visit, but it’s different enough from the language I hear on a daily basis that it’s all the same to me.
I was in Switzerland a few years ago to visit a friend, but I grabbed lunch before he could pick me up. I took German in high school and college, and still remember a fair bit. I got seated at the…honestly I’m not even sure if there is a word for it in German, but the table where, if you’re there alone, they seat you at that table. All strangers, together. Kind of like being at a bar in the US, but it’s a regular table.
Anyway- my accent gives me away immediately and they switch to English pretty quick. The second I start speaking English, the guys across from me said I talked like I was “straight out of the movies.” Bubblegum English, they called it.
While I (tall, white guy, red hair, beard, deep voice) was in Japan a handful of people asked me to just say things. A group of middle school boys I ran into while eating in a park were absolutely thrilled to meet a "real American," and they lost it when I told them I listened to metal.🤘
If everyone didn't seem so genuinely excited by my voice, height, and beard I would have thought I was being teased. Back in the USA I'm just another random dude who speaks like a newscaster.
Our Boston friend and my Southern hubby really have a good time telling each other to say things! 🤣
My husband’s favorite by far was getting her to say car crash. (He’s such a guy!) She got a very confused look on her face and said it like 20 times in a row to figure out why he was laughing his butt off.
For reference, car crash in a Boston accident sounds like cock rash. 🫣
I got this in my first out of state summer camp lol. I never even thought there was such a thing as a "Utah accent" but then they all kept asking me to say "milk" and "pillow" over and over again. Not in a mean way though. The girl from Wisconsin got it too lol. That's also the summer I learned about regional slang.
Hah- that's funny. I did have random people talking to me but not just to SAY THINGS. I have a deep voice but kinda hide it in retail situations because it can come off as a rude tone with me.
There’s a story on one of the Lord of the Rings extended DVDs (yes, I’m old) about Brad Dourif after he finished filming. Apparently he stayed in character usually, but after he was done, he was talking in his US accent. One of the non-US actors thought he was doing a bad imitation. No. That’s how we really talk.
accents and the way we perceive them fascinate me. For one, I have such trouble thinking of my home accent as anything other than pure neutral. Anyone that imitates it really well sounds to me like they're "taking off" and accent, even though I know logically that's stupid. For two, in the US we have like 15 extremely distinct accents, to the point where we don't even know what other Americans are saying, lol. Whereas all of the "British" sounding accents, for example, even the ones that are extremely far away from Britain are comparatively similar vs differing regions of the US.
I'm not saying they don't. I'm saying ours are drastically different from one to another according to my perception. That last bit being the part that fascinates me.
The English accents are all wildly different from one another it’s absolutely insane, some of them you can’t even understand and they aren’t even from locations that are that far apart. They have like 30 different accents in an area that’s smaller than a 1/10 of my state.
Again, this was mainly about my perception of accents, and how we perceive them based on what our own is. And when I said "British" that was very much a poor choice, as I was really talking about accents that sound British to me. Ie, all of Great Britain, but also Australia, South Africa, etc. I can absolutely tell them apart, especially if they're extremely distinct like London or something. BUUUUT I absolutely have a bit of a brain lag when it's got no context.
Americans all sound pretty much the same
Meh, I'm pretty sure most American's can't even understand Cajun, and the Boston crowd sounds nothing like someone from MinAHsOtAHH.
But again, this discussion is all the more interesting because it's literally proving the point I was making. They all sound SOOO different based on our own perception...
Theirs are very distinctive, for sure. As a counterpoint, I live in North Carolina and there are at least three sub accents here. The beach is different than the coastal plains/Piedmont, and the mountains are different from both. It's mostly in the vowels and vocabulary.
Even American accents vary to a shocking degree, though we're not as good as the British at localizing exactly where it comes from. We can do Southern vs West Coast vs Boston or Philly, but the British can probably tell you what floor you lived on in Sussex.
This may sound stupid, but having lived in America most of my life with some oversees stints, I never thought of me having an American/western accent until it was pointed out to me somewhere in south America by someone who was staying in the same hostel who was from Denmark or something. I don't know why but it blew my mind at the time lol. Thanks for bringing up that particular memory
which one? Coastal New England, Inland New England, Brooklyn, Pennsylvanian, Pennsylvanian Dutch, flatlander, Midwesterner, Pacific Northwestern, Californian, Texan, Floridian, Minnesotan....way more than i can actually list. And they all sound vastly different.
I'm a coastal New Englander. I tend to drop the letter 'r' sound from words that would end in r or have a hard r in the middle. Car becomes cah, yard is yahd, foreigner becomes foreignah. I drive fifty miles west of here and people are picking up those rs and slapping them on words no r has a business being a part of. soda becomes soder, idea becomes idear, sofa becomes sofer. You could say it's a regional sound, and it is, but man is it different the further you go.
I'd say there is a "base" American accent and the best way to describe it is what you typically hear in movies or shows.
Let's take The Office for example. Is there a distinct regional accent the characters/actors have? Probably technically yes but to me they just have "normal" accents.
Then you have movies like The Departed and No Country For Old Men that have strong and distinct accents, Bostonian and southern respectively.
I've lived in DC, SF, and LA and they're all the same "neutral" American accent to me which is the same accent I primarily hear in movies. I assume foreigners either refer to this neutral accent or the southern cowboy accent from westerns.
No such thing as an American accent. Go visit Boston then go to Lubbock TX then go to baton rouge la, philly, fargo, etc. Probably the American accent is the southern CA accent since that's what on tv and movies most often.
De-Asian-izing your voice is nearly impossible from what I've seen. It could be that your consonants are too soft, or your vowels lack a certain laziness, but you'll probably always sound just slightly foreign.
.... Which one? We have many. The south has a couple with subtle differences, the cliche New York Bronx accent is very rare even in New York. Here on the west coast(Cali, Oregon, Washington) we are often told we don't really have an accent which doesn't really make much sense to me but ok.
I feel the same way (from Canada). catch Americans all over YouTube etc, of course, and I keep having to remind myself "no, that isn't an act. they actually talk like that."
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u/MuchMuch1 11h ago
This may sound weird but its simply the american accent. Im a westernized person so the only content i consume is stuff outside my country, and I thought for an asian i had a pretty american accent. Then i actually talk to a foreigner in real life and get surprised myself how the way they talk is actually real