RateItAll: The Opinion Network

I'm a guy of many voices, and accents. You can't believe when I speak to someone on a phone using an American accent if I wish. Really you may mistake me to an American, unless you see my body.

My mom is british,so I can speak with a pretty good english accent if I want. but in public I have done it just as a joke a few times.

I do a pretty mean Spanish!

A bunch of us were in Scottsdale, Arizona, a number of years ago, and we posed as an Australian golf team! How lame was that?

Of course we picked up the accent on our many dingo hunts, so it was easy.

While goofing off with friends and such I will. I do pretty good British and Australian accents and one that is kind of a generic Middle Eastern accent.

At my previos job I was in the office one day during off hours. We were doing some cleaning and updating files. One of my co-workers was out checking on some things and I was expecting a call from them. When the phone rang I assumed it was them, so when I answered I used the Middle Eastern accent and said, "Hello there. Can I help you?" Not only was it not them, but the woman on the other end of the line paused before speaking to me with the same accent, only hers wasn't a put on. I dropped mine to answer her questions and have sometimes wondered just how confused she was by the time the call was over.

I love accents, and do many impressions.

I never actually pretended to have one to fool people, I just always liked to read out loud with one while I read Harry Potter.

While I stink at learning foreign languages, I have always had a pretty good ear for accents. As a kid I use to freak out my younger cousins doing lines from Dracula (it seems so dumb that it scared them now). Later I realized I could do fairly decent British, Irish and Scottish accents. I could also immitate my relatives from Bal'imore. Depending on the direction you take out of Indianapolis you will hear the flat midwestern thing going on and it will take on a slower southern sound as you head to KY or tighten up and go into a nasal Chicago as you head north. So, between living in the so-called crossroads of America and having relatives and friends all over the country, I've heard just about everything regional in the US. However, outside of a dramatic competition I did in high school, I have never dared try this very far outside my comfort zone. And, as much of an Anglophile as I am, I would curl up and disolve of embarrassment if an British person ever heard me doing an immitation of them.

I never thought of myself as having a noticeable regional accent, but when I travel somewhere else in America...California, for instance...they peg me right away as being from the Garbage State...ahem, sorry, I mean Garden State. One young lady at the car rental agency was nice about it. Before I submitted any paperwork at all, she said, "You're from New Jersey!" I replied, "Is it that obvious?" She responded, "Yes, but that's ok...I love the New Jersey accent!" I said, "Thanks, but you're probably the only person in history I've ever heard about who felt that way." I have a friend who married a lady born with the silver spoon embedded firmly in her mouth. Hence, her natural tone is one of snooty upper-class pretension. When drunk (which used to be often), she affected an pseudo-Irish brogue. It was ridiculous, but, in the interests of friendship, I never remarked upon it. I didn't have to. Once, we went to a local tavern-restaurant and proceeded to get lit. "Lovey" Howell quickly transformed into Maureen O'Hara in "The Quiet Man". A few more boiler-makers, and she had morphed (or degenerated) into a female leprechaun. There was a couple sitting at a table nearby, and I guess it got to be too much for the guy. He turned to us and said, "Excuse me...exactly WHAT kind of accent is that?" My friend, looking at his wife, said, "That's a drunk accent."

Yeah I did and I got laughed at.

I have a Boston accent that measures 7.4 on a scale of 1-10 in Indiana, so I guess there's no pretense here.

"Accent"? Hell, I pretended that I don't even speak English! Some people just assume it, anyway, mind as well go with it once in a while.

I myself didn't but a buddy of mine did and I was an accomplice. We were in the boonies in WV and she was from the bronx so she thought she would act like she was from LIverpoole...hey she had the nasel thing down. It was pretty funny. Oh to be 18 again!

Everyone in the DC area has some kind of accent. . .

I have an accent as it is, but I love playing with other accents, British, Hindu, French, and Italian are my favorites. I get a kick out of it.