Personality

Hey, The 'Canadian'..We have Nufies, French Canuks and Canuks... don't ya love us, eh?

Pete uses "Canuck" as well, but I added a plugin to mix it up when I saw Brother Jerome's are you a Canuck (re) keyphrase. I can't make life too easy for Psimagus.

i'm pretty sure south africans also have a similar accent

My senior year of college, there was a guy on my wing named Donovan who was from South Africa. His accent was kind of like the British accent, but I could tell the difference. He was fanatical about Rugby.

Seth Efricens, yeys, the vewels er elweys fermed en the beck ev the throet. *koff* Always hurts to try to speak with an Afrikaaner accent.

That's hilarious. You're a clever one.

I met a linguist once, who could tell you where you were born,(to what neighborhood) and most places you had lived, by having you say just a few phrases. It was spooky.

within america? a sociolinguist?

It was at school. He got the German Teachers birth place, where she grew up, and the fact she either married an Englishman or lived in England for a time. He did likewise for at least ten people. I can't remember the exact text he had you read, but it had the words toy, tie, library, Wednesday, sugar. and some other simple words. I guess you pick up a base accent before you are two years old, then add to it as you move around, and grow up.

i'd say you get your "base accent" before 12 - 15 years.

According to this fellow, babies start babbling all sorts of sounds. Parents react to the ones that are most like their spoken language.
He spoke a lot of languages. He was brought in because a girl from Boliva had been adopted by an American family. They thought she spoke Spanish or Portuguese
. Turned out she spoke an aboriginal language with a bit of Arabic..go figure?. Long story short, after all this she just had to learn English fast. Anyway, I remember the key to a New York accent is how closely tie and toy sound, and he figured my origins because I said picture and pitcher, library sounded like liberry. I quickly changed my pronunciation.

Heh, that's quite an interesting and amusing talent that dude had.