Accents vs Education

I think it depends. If the person is going to school for somthing like business or non-tech related they ususally conversate, read, and write more often than somebody who isn't going to school. The pressure for their accent to go away and fit in with their peers is also and insentive to work on the accent.

But to refute your hypothesis: Many engineers, compter science majors, physisists, chemists, and other scientist will always have their accents. They are more intelligent than me yet they have accents. They just happen to be in a field were an accent isn't a big deal.

Everyone has an accent. You just can't hear your own.

well, there's accents and accents

- some use really bad grammar and misprononounce words and mangle them horribly. I think the more educated you are the softer your accent becomes because your grammar and pronunciation improves - so you may say your 'a' short or long and you may have a nasal accent or slur your words a little but basically it is more understandable to others.

The local accent would pronounce 'I've got to go' as 'I gorragoo' - that's the sort of laziness that people do lose, it's really ugly. An elderly lady I know with a fairly broad accent says when she's rushed and frazzled 'I cud g'madan g'rockaway' absolutely incomprehensible to me the first time she said it!

I do like regional accents though.



Translation: I could go mad and give rock (local old slang for sweets) away.

I have a master's degree. Don't want to brag about my IQ score, but let's say, that it is "up there". I also have been told that I sound like Rhoda, (from the Mary Tyler Moore show). Go figure!

I disagree. To some extent that is true, but not to any relevant extent.

Thanks to literate parents, a western PA upbringing and a strong-minded dramatics teacher my accent qualifies as "Standard American". I've been accused of being English, Canadian, Billingsgate and "furrin".

In Yorkshire a retired nanny cross-examined Mr. Noddy about my background. She was baffled both as to country and to class.

I have no ear for accents in other people to the point where I unconsciously resist picking up local intonations.

That is very possibly the vaguest thing I have ever heard.

Accent:

A characteristic pronunciation, especially:

1. One determined by the regional or social background of the speaker.
2. One determined by the phonetic habits of the speaker's native language carried over to his or her use of another language.


Are you saying you don't pronounce things in a characteristic/consistant way?

What kind of accents are you talking about? People for whom English is a second or third or fourth language are very likely to retain a foreign accent, regardless of their intelligence or level of education. If you are referring to regional dialects, I don't think that there is a necessary correlation between education and diction. JFK never lost his Boston Irish patois. Bill Clinton and Jimmy Carter could both be spotted as Southerners right away. All three men had excellent educations. An accent is not a measure of a person's level of learning but, rather, a reflection of that person's attempt to create a particular self-image. It's true, of course, that a dull person or a person with little education might not be aware of his/her accent and thus make no attempt to "correct" it.

Good points, Merry, I think the concept I'm considering is simply that more educated/intelligent individuals are more likely to fish out what they believe to be the incorrect or foolish-sounding portions of local accents. It's definitely a measurable phenomenon.

I take phone calls from all over America, so that's what I'm taking most of my experience from.

I'm from the Bay Area California, so my only experiences with accents are from those that have English as a second, third, or fourth language.

but all of these had a clearly understandable soft version of their accent and their grammar etc was reasonably good - the southerners didn't talk like hillbillies - accents are modified with education to use the language correctly and for clarity.

I was never allowed to have a regional accent - strict parents! I have a fairly good ear for accents though.

the cadence and manner of speech often remain even when people lose their accent.

So true, Vivien. There are really two kinds of accents -- one of pronunciation and one of inflection. People may learn not to mispronounce words but it's much harder to lose the unique inflection that one is used to.