My Pacific Northwest Accent
(Written in 2017)
I discovered my accent many years ago while on a visit to Vienna, Austria.
I was on one of the elevated inner-city trains heading across town, staring out the window at the tops of the old buildings, when I overheard a woman in the booth next to me talking on a cell phone in English, but her accent was all over the place.
When she got off the phone, I first apologized for overhearing, then told her I couldn’t place her accent and was curious.
She asked me what I thought it was.
I said it sounded like she was Viennese speaking English with a Viennese German accent, but then she’d slip into British English, and then she sounded like she was from my neck of the woods (the Pacific Northwest of the United States), which is weird because I’ve always thought we didn’t have much of an accent. Hence the confusion!
She said I was actually spot on.
She was indeed Viennese but had lived in England for several years as well as in Vancouver, BC.
I can’t describe what our Pacific Northwest accent sounds like but I could hear it clear as day in this Austrian woman. Even if it was Canadian and not U.S., it was distinctly Pacific Northwest.
I was on one of the elevated inner-city trains heading across town, staring out the window at the tops of the old buildings, when I overheard a woman in the booth next to me talking on a cell phone in English, but her accent was all over the place.
When she got off the phone, I first apologized for overhearing, then told her I couldn’t place her accent and was curious.
She asked me what I thought it was.
I said it sounded like she was Viennese speaking English with a Viennese German accent, but then she’d slip into British English, and then she sounded like she was from my neck of the woods (the Pacific Northwest of the United States), which is weird because I’ve always thought we didn’t have much of an accent. Hence the confusion!
She said I was actually spot on.
She was indeed Viennese but had lived in England for several years as well as in Vancouver, BC.
I can’t describe what our Pacific Northwest accent sounds like but I could hear it clear as day in this Austrian woman. Even if it was Canadian and not U.S., it was distinctly Pacific Northwest.
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