Life in the USA

When I came to America one of the first things I thought I'd do was drop my New Zealand accent and pick up an American one.   There were three things I didn't count on: first,  it's not easy for an adult to change accents, second, there's more than one American accent and third, women keep telling me what a great accent I have.   It's true that the "almost British" New Zealand accent is considered classy over here, so why change it?

So far as American accents are concerned, I thought there was only a Southern accent and a Northern accent.   Perhaps I might have said there's also a New Jersey (or should I say "Noo Joisey") accent.   In fact, however, there's also a New England accent, a Californian accent, Ebonic accent and lots more variations in between.   In fact, a Southern accent would be much easier to master than any of the others, because it's more regular and consistent.   However, rightly or wrongly the Southern accent carries quite a strong stigma of poor education with it so it would take a deliberate effort to use it.

What to do?   Well, I figured I'd knock off some of the most grating aspects of my accent, and pick up American equivalents.   If you want, you can learn about my beautiful American accent, as well as some of the differences between the pronunciation of American English and British Commonwealth English.   And just in case you imagine that pronunciation is the only difference between the languages, check out my ever expanding list of the differences in vocabulary.   Every time I say something to someone and they look blankly back at me, I know that I'm about to have another language learning experience!   You can see some of the results in this page of American phrases I've learned.