Is there such a thing as a Californian accent?

Have you seen clueless?

Alton was born in LA, but he grew up in the south. He wouldn't have a CA accent anyway.

I worked with two women from California, not sure which cities, but they both said "Good Morneen."

The valley white girl accent is the CA accent lol

Heather Tom and Katherine Kelly Lang have it in spades.

Look for the way they pronounce "Bill". It sounds like "Bell".

Nope.

Don't confuse Valley Girl accent - or stoner surfer accent - with California accent, they aren't the same.

Which part of California, OP? The Valley and L.A. are very different than Orange County, San Diego, the Bay Area, or Modesto.

Um, yes there is a distinct California accent.

Drew Barrymore

Painful to listen to but here's a prime example.

I hella agree!

They invented vocal fry too.

All of those examples are L.A. accents. Not everyone in CA sounds like them.

It’s characterized by “vocal fry” and “up talk”.

Have you ever watched brady bunch?

Like this.

[quote]Not everyone in CA sounds like them.

Duh. Not everyone in Canada says "eh?" or "aboot" but it's a distinct accent nonetheless.

I’m from Northern California and I use the word like and hella excessively.

Vocal fry - Kardashian style.

What I meant, r18, is that very few people outside of L.A. sound anything like the people in the videos on this thread. Northern Californians sound nothing like that. California is 800 miles long- do you really think we all have one specific accent?

Lots of sample California accents at the International Dialects of English Archive, all submitted by real people.

You betcha, r21!

-- Snook

And this ...

R17 if USA needs a new torture method for terrorists, that'd be a good one

Anymore real examples?

In the UK things are referred to as "Californian" or "Texan" where in the US they'd just be referred to as "California" or "Texas"

"I was dreaming like a Texan girl" by the Eurythmics, for example, or conversely "I wish they all could be California Girls" by the Beach Boys which would be "Californian Girls" if the Beach Boys came from Swindon.

When I was in high school in the San Fernando Valley, people used to ask me if I was from New York, which I wasn't, but I had a distinctive accent. It was popular to use a lot of slang, and invent your own slang to obfuscate meaning in front of adults. I had a weird quality, which I couldn't control, of copying speech patterns of whomever I was conversing with. It would be annoying to people who knew me because it seemed affected.

Then I moved to Laguna Beach for college, and my Valley accent mellowed and my academic neutrality prevailed. Moving to the Bay Area, and maturing, has availed me of a standard California (TV news) accent.

When I'm just home with my partner I adopt a completely different tone, that I would be loathe to describe, but it is weirdly funny and endearing.

[quote] Don't confuse Valley Girl accent - or stoner surfer accent - with California accent, they aren't the same.

That makes absolutely no sense. The Encino Valley is of course entirely IN California. Thus the Valley Girl accent is a California accent.

There can be different accents within a large state though. Pennsylvania, which is considerably smaller than California, has different accents east to west with a Philly sounding somewhere between a NY and a Baltimore and Pittsburgh's accent being more rust belt - more Chicago than East Coast.

I grew up in the Bay Area and people ask me if I'm from New York, or New England all the time. My mom (who also grew up in rural part of the South Bay) also gets asked that a fair amount. I wonder what that's about??

Both Baltimore and Philadelphia do that weird thing where they cram syllables together (so "Baltimore" becomes "Ball-mur" to Baltimoreans, and "Philadelphia" becomes "Fluff-ee-uh" to Philadelphians).

But I have never heard anyone from NYC or Balitmore do anything like that weird Philly whine (as in "Bye-EE!" when they say goodbye).

Kevin Costner:

“Anymore”, R26 - there’s an example for you.

R34 ha, I realized my mistake as soon as I hit "Post," and figured some cunt would get on my case about it.

Whatever Alton Brown's accent is it's an affected accent. He grew up in Cleveland, Ga., a tiny town in the foothills of the Blue Ridge mountains (and the birthplace of Cabbage Patch Kids, I might add). Nope, he didn't grow up talking as he does now.