Do you have an accent?

More than half a century ago, my family moved to Florida. When we went to school, everyone made fun of our accents. My brother and sister and I begged for speech lessons so we would sound like the other kids. It was so long asgo, I don't remember the details, but still, after all these years, an R will slip away, or I'll "lahf." I can't imagine why it hasn't gone away completely, but now I feel a little nostalgic for it. I can still tell which part of Mass a person is from, most of the time. I was born in Worcester.

I grew up in Illinois. I never thought that people from Illinois really had accents, but I was talking to my father the other day and he told me that I still sound like I live in Illinois even though I have lived in Missouri for 4 1/2 years. Maybe he is surprised that I didn't pick up an accent.

Everyone has some type of an accent, whether they want to admit it or not. I am from Oklahoma now living in Connecticut and I'm always getting ribbed about my accent. Sometimes it gets on my nerves. Once while working in a store a customer said I had an accent...I said "yea? So do you." Her response was "I've lived here all my life, I have no accent". I just laughed, and she got all upset and told the manager I was being rude. I still think it was pretty funny.

I want to say yes, and I want to say no at the same time. Within the same city, we have to major accents: Whatever accent I have, and the southern accent. When I was little, and I went to school with farmer's kids, I had a terrible, terrible accent. But, now that I think about it, I have always gone to school with people that have a different accent than I do. I think it could be because my family is from a different part of the U.S., and I was always around them. A big problem that I have is that, if I am around a person, I pick up on their accent almost immediately, and start talking like them until I get away from them.

I'm from western and central Mass, now living in Oklahoma. I've been here for almost 5 years. When I first moved here, I frequently had to ask people to repeat themselves. Now, I hardly notice the accent, nor do I hear an accent when I talk to friends and family in MA. But, people here in Oklahoma still ask me where I'm from, or if I'm from Boston. Friends from MA now tell me that I sound like a southerner. Guess I'm stuck in the middle...lol.

Yea I agree Massachusetts people has an accent like when you say mountain, you will skip the "t" or skip the "r" of some words like what you said too. It was little strange to listen to but now I am getting used to and I understand.