jerryc41 Loc: Catskill Mts of NY

I was having breakfast in my hotel over the weekend, and a woman sat down opposite another woman at my table. They immediately began talking up a storm. That went on for several minutes until one of them said, "Oh, my name's Susan." The other one said, "I'm Joan." I thought that was hysterical! They didn't even know each other, yet they were talking like old friends. When I sat down at the table, there was a man next to me. We ate in silence, and he got up and left.

One of the women had a very familiar accent, so I asked, "Are you from New York?"
"Yes. How did you know?"
"I can pick out that accent from across the room. Long Island?"
"Yes! I used to live on Long Island and work in Manhattan."

It's always nice to hear a familiar voice when I am away. What's ironic is that I don't have that accent, although I was born in Brooklyn and spent my growing-up years on Long Island. When I worked in a supermarket during high school, people thought I came from England or Ireland.

Continuing - that woman lives about ten miles from me. The woman she was talking to lives fifteen miles in the other direction. A third woman used to live a few houses down the road from me. Yes, it's a small world.

nimbushopper Loc: Tampa, FL

I was born and spent the first 60 years of my life on L.I. in Suffolk County.

jerryc41 Loc: Catskill Mts of NY

Five in Bayridge, Brooklyn, and seventeen in Nassau County. That was a great place to grow up - then, not now. It's much too crowded.

nimbushopper Loc: Tampa, FL

Definitely too crowded and expensive, property taxes are out of sight.

jerryc41 Loc: Catskill Mts of NY

And the traffic!

therwol Loc: USA

I grew up in Alabama and ditched the accent even before high school. I have tape recordings I made of myself growing up, and I cringe when I listen to them. Maybe it helped that I watched too much television or more likely that my father was from Brooklyn and my mother The Bronx. Don't ask how they ended up there. It's a long story, but they were actually happy. I personally don't think it's a bad place to live. You should have heard the way my mother said y'all. You would have cracked up. Accents can be fluid in some people. When I went to college in Massachusetts, no one suspected that I was from the South. Others from the South going to my school had their hard core southern accents intact. If I moved back to the South, I believe I could revert to a convincing southern accent. It's wired somewhere in my brain.

Here is a BBC article that looks at how the Queen's accent changed over time.

https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20220915-what-the-queens-english-told-us-about-a-changing-world

Doddy Loc: Barnard Castle-England

Most men just get on with life jerry, but most Women want to know all about lives of other people!

Rich2236 Loc: E. Hampstead, New Hampshire

Hey Jerry...
I was born in the Bronx. I lived in NYC until I was 19. And that is when I moved to Los Angeles. I lived in LA until 2017. I'm 86 now. The point I'm making is that in ALL this time, I STILL have my Bronx accent! People spot me a mile away the minute I open my mouth. It's one of the accents that, unless you are totally conscious of it, you can never get rid of it. But then again, who wants to. LOL.

JRiepe Loc: Southern Illinois

I was born and raised in southern Illinois. When I moved to Chicago the where are you from question was posed many times to me. After living in Chicago a number of years those in southern Illinois told me that I talk like those northerners. Guess my accent is a bit of both.

Sharona Loc: Alpharetta, Georgia

Me too, first 17 years. Lived in Smithtown and went to Hauppauge HS. Have not been back since a visit in 1980.

StanMac Loc: Tennessee

I think a person’s accent changes with who they associate with through life. Being born in Tennessee, I think I had a pretty strong Tennessee accent. But after moving away and associating with folks from many different parts of the country in my work and social contacts, people told me I didn’t sound like I was from the south. Now that I’ve been back in my state in retirement for 10+ years, I detect that I am backsliding a bit. Although when hearing some of the locals talking, I think to myself, I hope I don’t sound like that to others.

Stan

therwol Loc: USA

A southern accent is just an accent, and I don't consider it a sign of being ignorant/dumb. I grew up around some very smart and successful people. The problem I found with it is that it attracts attention when you're not in the South, and that can even be creepy and unwelcome. My relatives in NY just couldn't stop talking about it when we visited. I think that was the motivation for letting it go, and I was young enough to manage that. The brain is flexible on new languages and accents up until around the age of 13 but sometimes beyond.

PaulBrit Loc: Merlin, Southern Oregon

It does depend on where you live.

I was born in London some six months before the end of WWII. I emigrated to Australia in 1968 and quickly put on a rather poor Aussie accent as within a few days I had a sales job with ICI’s Inorganic Division in Sydney.

Much later on in my life I met a fellow English woman in Mexico. Jean was also born in London! I left England in 2008 and went to live with Jean. In 2010 we moved to the USA, to Payson in Arizona, and were married. In 2012 we moved to our present home in Merlin, Oregon, just a few miles from Grants Pass.

Here in Oregon people never get tired of saying: “I just love your accent!” I am more English than ever before!

fourlocks Loc: Londonderry, NH

Agreed. I went to school in Brookville and spent a lot of time in Glen Cove and Oyster Bay. I'd love to go back but when I look at the satellite image, a once rural road is now a 4-lane highway lined with offices and strip malls. They say to never return to your Shangri La...

sippyjug104 Loc: Missouri

Jerry, I believe that you need to work on your "pickup lines" a bit more.😜