I am told I don't have an accent when it comes to speaking English in the US.  I know a bit of other languages  but I speak them like an American.  I love the US southern accent when it is geniune and tend to slip into  it when I am talking to someone from the South. I think this is from years of living in New Orleans.

Do  you speak  with an accent?  Is there something different about your speech?

Daisy-Mae Southern, here......I try to speak with a more "bland" accent, but it takes much conscious effort .... and when I'm emotional......happy, sad, enthusiastic, etc...any strong emotion, here she comes again with a drawl thick as molasses.......in some circles this stereotypes me, but I have a very hard time overcoming it!

(Moon square Mercury)

Demelza, that can be such a cute accent!  I know it well.  If one is going to have an accent that one is such a charmer!

My cat understands me...............Just sayin....

No accent here, I was born and raised in Iowa.  Living in NC has taken some time to adjust to the listening to the "accent" here.

When I was going to ISU, there were several people who came from the South to the journalism dept. for their degree.  They came to the Midwest schools to "lose" their accent so they would have a shot at big time TV newsreporting.  One more thing:  they always had a speech therapist on board to de-program their pronunciation of words. 

The only way I found out how their true accents was when they had been drinking at parties - that was a hoot to hear for us at Moo U!

I have a neutral accent. I've lived in 3 countries, had elocution lessons since I was 7 and my mother is from another country all together.

But sometimes I make fun of words. Like for instance. When I say the word disguise, I put  a funny accent to it. Reason? Because it's in disguise. 

I've noticed my voice is fairly low and high pitched. I don't know how else to describe it.

sunny, your voice  is low but  high pitched?  I  don't understand?

sunny - you have a beautiful accent! :)

No accent for me, though.

Ever seen the movie Fargo?  We're kinda funny-soundin' up north here.

Overlaid by serious rez accent which for me is impossible to produce in written form.  Ya have-ta be there.

@ Alicia, oh come on you Paaak the caaah in the Yaaaaad....lol

Annalisa, my voice is not constant. Its fairly animated. I think its an Irish Cork thing I've picked up. Our voice range changes, we are known to sing/shout our words out. 

I can start of low, then my voice goes up with emphasis, then straight down again and well as inbetween. I guess it's also a singing trait I've picked up. LOL My first name is actually Melodie! Irony!

I speak 'received pronounciation' or 'Oxford English' - what used to be standard BBC pronounciation but no longer is (sadly - since esp now I'm going a bit deaf I find regional accents and even 'American' quite hard to follow). I watch a load of stuff now with the sub-titles on!

I find a lot of British and American accents very ugly, esp the 'nasal' whiny ones. We have a kind of bastardised London/SE/Essex accent here which has been dubbed 'Estuary' - it's really horrible. If you had that kind of accent in the past, you were encouraged to get rid of it if you wanted to 'get on in life'

It's mostly people with a private education who speak like me now so my way of talking is increasingly seen as elitist. I think it's a great shame - and I'm hardly as plummy as the Queen!

LOL, thank goodness I don't have a Boston accent! Only 6 years here and some of the thicker accents, like Southie, still make me shudder.

@Alicia, thank you so much! 

Blessed Place, yours  sounds like a nice accent. 

Sunny, I see now. thanks for explaining that!

Most people in the US think I am from elsewhere, which I sort of am. A dialect coach I met at a party described my accent as "continental with a slower cadence." Essentially an unplaceable almost European lilt. It's hard to describe and subtle but seems to communicate a lot about me.

Kr, I notice that many with Leo prominent in their charts speak slower. It's a strange thing but it seems to hold true a lot!

Annalisa, its very hard to describe my accent because I've lived in a very different cultures. People in Australia don't even know that I have an Australian accent.

People ask me if I am from NY a lot and say I have an accent. It's pretty baffling to me, actually. I'm from the desert!

Interesting, Annalisa! I have been offered voice-over work in the past. My speaking voice is a nice. I wish I could sing, though. :)

Elsa, I am guessing it's the Italian-American in your voice that makes people think you're from New York. I think that's a strong association for people. You don't sound like Italians in NYC, though.

in english,,  i've taken years to rid myself of my accent, which is subtle and strictly from the town i grew up in, but truly aweful.  it is tight and nasally....  kind of whiney..  words that aren't contractions have become one word (yous) and we drop hard constanant sounds at the end of anything...  it sounds hick without being country.

in spanish,,  people aften think i'm from madrid, and spent too much time in buenos aires...  little do they know, i've never been to either.  not sure how i ended up with that accent, but it's just how the language comes out. 

interesting about  the Spanish, Rantares!

No accent where I live, but when I holidayed got a mention of this everytime I opened my bloody mouth.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xn_CPrCS8gs

Secretly, I loved it .

No such thing as "No accent" although most people do not have the skills to perceive and differentiate between accents.

I love the speech accent archive:

http://accent.gmu.edu/

I have a slight Massachusetts accent :)

LOL. I don't have an accent..ya'll just talk funny.

eh, mine is a little appalachian with some cajun (from my grandma's influence) mixed in.

southern

but my dad teases me that i sound like a yankee due my years spent up north

"Southern Light." Never lived anywhere else but in the South, yet it isn't thick or difficult to understand (unless I wish it to be!)

In English my accent depends on the company I keep.  Hanging on the West coat or with desert folks it's pretty neutral.  Put me back with my NY homies and you would think I came straight out of Harlem (which I did).

In Spanish it also depends on who I hang out with.  I mix street slang I picked up from who-knows-where and can cuss like a sailor, take your ears off at 10 yards.  If I'm on the phone, no one can tell...not even native Spanish speakers...they usually think I'm from Argentina, Colombia, Venezuela, Peru...Mexicans think I'm from Mexico...

In French I am not sure...been told it sounds Parisian.  I do a pretty good impression of a flirty butcher.  :)

as a young child my aun always thought my cousin to have a speech impediment of some sort..  he "over-rounded" his vowels, seeming to open his mouth to wide.  he didn't use the letter 'R', it was missing from his tongue.  and very loud with his voice. 

at age 6 he was taken to a speech pathologist, who told my aunt "there's nothing wrong with him, he just has a Boston accent"

to which she replied..  "he's never even been to Boston!!"

he eventually moved to boston for college and fit right in..

English- London area.

Jennifer, I always think native New Yorkers have several different accents for different social situations -- your experience seems to bear that out . . . my husband is the same. Private school boy who can bring the street when necessary. It's a safety thing, I think, particularly for those of us who were here when this was not a safe town.

I notice that many with Leo prominent in their charts speak slower

Wow Annalisa I'd never realised that before but you're so right! Maybe it's for dramatic effect ;)   Leos like to be *listened to* and make sure you pay attention...

Interesting kr!  I have to agree...I worked over by the UN for a few years and I never talked to my bosses the way I would with my neighbors in Harlem...I wouldn't talk to my Colombian ex's mother the way I'd talk to the Mexican guys in the kitchen at my old job...

Totally Californian, dude! 

Whenever I switch in and out of Korean, I get an accent.

I also speak Japanese with a Korean accent.

Yes, I probably speak Korean more than 60% of the time. lol

I have the true, nasally accented voice of a cold-hearted New England WASP. Not that I am that way, just that my ancestors were since way back when. :D

French is my second language, my mother's side of the family is from Maine/Canada from way back when, too. I have a working knowledge of many other langauges and I'm told I speak Swedish  with a French acccent. *heh*

I speak the "dialect-free" English of most Northeastern Americans...though you can tell I'm Canadian by sticking on "eh" after lots of sentences.