Why do Americans assume they don’t have an accent?

39 comments

1. Some people, for whatever reason, are under the impression that “accent” means “accent that is different from my own”. It’s not universal by any means, but I don’t get how people come to that conclusion either.

2. We’re aware that we have accents.

3. I do it to take the piss

4. You’re doing the same thing here . Everyone has an accent. We don’t speak archaic English, language is fluid and evolving.

5. When people from the US sing they pronounce words the same as when they speak it. When people from the UK sing, they pronounce the words differently and sound like people from the US for the most part.

6. You’re the one with the accent, not me.

7. We all know we all have an accent to others.. the discrepancy is that to me I speak normal and you sound different, and vis versa.

8. >they aren’t the ones with an accent.

   If you told me that I had an accent and you didn’t, I’d argue you to death just for the fun of it, and my arguments would be really stupid shit like “come on. I sound more like Hollywood than you do. Obviously that means I don’t have an accent.”

   Everybody has an accent. People who claim otherwise are joking or haven’t really considered what an accent is, or it’s a context where one accent is considered the neutral “accentless” version for a specific reason.

9. This is one of my pet peeves too as a guy with a linguistics degree and that speaks multiple languages. A lot of people think accents are things foreigners have. Every single person has an accent. Probably comes from just ignorance and lack of cultural awareness

10. Because we don’t have accents /s

11. bc British accents are fake & if y’all would just relax your mouths a bit, you’d sound normal like us.

    KIDDING – they’re just used to hearing Americans, so you’re the ones with “the accent” to them. this happens all the time, even in america to other americans. the voices you’re accustomed to hearing sound neutral to you & the ones you’re not sound like they have “an accent.”

    of course everyone *has* an accent. but what they’re referring to is what sounds like an accent to their own ears.

    Americans know we have an American accent. no one thinks we don’t.

12. Because the fact of the matter is at the time of our nation’s founding English spoken in Britain sounded a lot more like American English. Y’all are the ones that changed to sound more posh like your elites you look up to.

13. In Horry County, SC, I don’t have an accent. That California-by-way-of-Ohio news anchor accent they call standard American is a northern accent to us, just like RP is a British accent. But if I go to California or Ohio (or England), then I accept that I have an accent as far as everyone there is concerned. So to me, it’s about location: Geordie is an accent to South Carolinians; coastal South Carolinian is an accent to people in Newcastle.

14. That sounds like someone from the Midwest or West Coast who has one of our more neutral accents, which would fall under what some call standard American. It’s close to what’s commonly used in broadcasts here. Some people just aren’t aware of their own speech patterns, even when relocated to another place.

    I have a Tidewater accent.

15. Most people use accent to mean “identifiable accent.” A Boston accent is obviously a Boston accent, but many a Midwestern accent have features the listener cannot place somewhere specific because they don’t know what to listen for. These “not-specific” accents aren’t considered accents by the average person, at least for general purposes. How likely they are to defend the position that there is such a thing as “no accent” depends on how hard-headed they are.

16. It’s only the Canadians that freak the fuck out about this

17. I don’t have an accent, everyone else does 😂

18. What do midwestern US accents sound like? Everyone says the Midwest has no accent.

19. I don’t know anyone who thinks this.

20. You just caught them sounding ignorant is all. They naturally feel like their accent is the default and anything different is “an accent”. There are very distinct differences even regionally or state by state in the US. There is no “American accent” and we all know this.

21. Everyone assumes they don’t have an accent when they are surrounded by people with the same accent.

    In reality everyone on the planet has an accent.

22. I’m aware of my accent

23. Because I don’t

24. ignorance?

25. It is very typical of people in my part of the country to claim they don’t have an accent. These people will also usually argue if you try to explain that everyone has an accent, because they legitimately believe that “general American” is “accentless” and everyone but them has an accent. It seems ridiculous, and it is, but it is what it is. Some folks are just ignorant and happy to stay that way.

26. I remember talking to someone from Tennessee years ago ( I’m in Ca) and I don’t remember how it came up but I mentioned something about his Southern accent and he’s all “what accent??? y’all the ones with the accent!”

    ​

    Ever since then I realize we all have accents to someone.

27. Americans are very aware that there are accents even just within America. No person from Alabama, or Staten Island, or Chicago, is under the impression they have no accent.

28. I don’t think many people actually believe they have no accent at all. They just find the “average” American accent as being hard to pinpoint where it’s from. So it just sounds “normal” and isn’t noteworthy. Which is what they mean when they say “no accent”.

    Another thing worth knowing is that while someone from the Carolinas is gonna sound drastically different to someone from Boston. Most Americans, especially those from the Midwest. Tend to sound very very similar to each other. There is even a term for it called “General American English”.

    Then there is the fact that a lot of Americans have noticed foreigners seemingly “lose” their accents when singing. Many have also learned that the current English accent was largely “man made” during the 1800s.

    Another point that I have seen made by General Speakers as to why they have little to no accent. Is that they believe they pronounce most words how they are written. Obviously they don’t pronounce *everything* how it’s written. But I kind of see why they might believe this. Because to me the English, Southern, Australian, Boston, and other accents leave out so many letters in their pronunciations that it seems almost like a conscious effort to ignore those letters (obviously it’s not). Funnily enough, at least in my experience. A lot of people from the South or Coasts also think General Speakers have “no” accent.

    But all of this is just my thoughts on it and the reasoning that I have heard. I think we all have accents, but some are more unique than others.

29. To piss off the Europeans who love to generalize 330 million+ of us.

30. Everyone has an accent.

31. Two things.

    First, any foreigner anywhere “has an accent” to the locals who “do not have an accent” (meaning only that they have the accent of that locale). People are just curious about where you’re from because your accent (as opposed to theirs) makes it clear your not a local.

    Second, this tendency to think the OTHER guy has the accent is going to be stronger in the USA because we have a standard accent called “General American English” which is very common across most regions of the country and has only fairly subtle regional variations. This “General American English” accent exists alongside the “stronger” regional accents.

    For example you can find plenty of New Englanders who speak with a rhotic “General American English” accent with only a hint of the local non-rhotic New England accent of many of their neighbors. Such a person sounds more like someone with the same General American accent living all the way across the country in California or any point in between than he does his next door neighbor with the Boston accent.

    People with this standard accent are often thought of in the USA as “not having an accent”. Of course they DO have an accent but it’s not one that says much about them. They could be from almost anywhere in the country and of any socioeconomic background… though more likely in a middle or upper income or wealth quintile than lower.

32. Americans with generic American accents think like this. I have a pretty thick Vermont accent and any time I travel outside my state people think I am British, Irish or Australian lol. Also doesn’t help that 1/4 of Americans dont even know the state of Vermont exists haha. Last winter I was at a gas station in Washington state and the cashier said, “you’re not from around here. You have an accent.” I told him I was from Vermont and he asked where that was. I said, “New England” and he said, “Ah! LONDON!” I decided to give up there and just said, “yeah”

    So it happens to us Americans with regional accents as well. Especially regional accents that aren’t “Hollywood accents”. I think Americans don’t think of those accents as “accents” because they hear them all the time in movies. So I guess it is just because they are so familiar. Most people don’t know what a Vermont accent sounds like, so to them I have an accent and they don’t.

33. The same place where you don’t think you have an accent.

34. The people you happened to meet were not the brightest bulbs?

    No idea. Before you typed this, I would have said no American would’ve said they had ‘no accent’ when in England! Maybe they’re just really sheltered?

    The only other places this happened to me was when I lived in the midwest, and people there kept insisting they “had no accent,” and there I am patiently trying to explain that “accent” is simply the dialect you use and everyone has an accent, and what’s more, I can hear their midwestern accent quite clearly. But they just kept insisting they had ‘no accent.’ These people had never traveled outside the midwest, which is why I wonder if the Americans you met were just really sheltered?

35. That really does sound like a West Country accent! I had no idea! Thank you so much

36. Do we?

37. There’s a particular family of Midwestern-to-westernish accents in the U.S. that are often referred to as “nonaccents” because they’re regarded as the easiest for someone from anywhere in the country to understand, and they are therefore very strongly favored in American media. Add in the standard American provincialism and here’s what you get.

38. I think some Americans feel there is a “non-accented” version of American speech and they may consider that to be accent free. By this I mean people who don’t have a southern, or midwestern, or New English accent. Often it is likely they also had little experience outside of the US. Think of it as like Blockbuster Movie or American TV a lot of actors just have a “generic” American sound. Chris Evans, Robert Downey Junior, Brian Cranston, Scarlet Johansson, etc.

    I always liked working with my teams in Asia when they told me I had a “very neutral accent” for an American.

39. Wait. Aren’t Brits usually the ones saying there are only like three different accents in the US while bragging about the variety of their own accents?

    Wouldn’t these Americans who think Brits have the accents be in agreement with Brits?