Date: Sat, 7 Sep 1996 10:33:26 -0400

From: "Christopher R. Coolidge" ccoolidg[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]MOOSE.UVM.EDU

Subject: Re: American accent (was: Kimmelweck)



Growing up in Montreal as an Anglo, I notice that the Anglo-Quebec

accent isn't. It's the closest I've heard to non-accented English from

native English speakers. It's the kind of non-accented, perfect English I

hear from people in the tourism industry in Holland or the Scandiavian

countries, like they learned it from an instruction tape. In Montreal,

though, I'll hear Anglos borrowing little bits of other peoples accents

unconsciously(like my mother!), or at the other extreme, sounding stodgy

and square("Uh, Hi, John-Gee. How's it going, eh?"). In my case, wherever

I go, people think I'm from somewhere else. I have never been mistaken

for a native of wherever I happen to be.