I agree with Buck, the "no accent" thing out of California is ludicrous.

Californians DO have an accent, only they are so self-absorbed they think that they speak the one, true accent-free tongue. Get over yourselves.

Native Californians speak with a certain accent (you can especially hear it the letter "L", eg, "curl" "mostly" etc). California transplants take with them what they had at home.

Geez, what's up with all this California hating? Fine, so we like where we live and we're proud to be here. Don't have a conniption fit over it Buck. Gettin' a little antagonistic about it aren't we? Cool off buddy!

In response to the question, I thought i'd just offer some input on the whole California thing. I personally don't hear much of an accent when speaking to a native Californian, but then i've been here practically all my life. However, I do notice a difference between the way Northern Californians speak and Southern Californians speak. Not so much the pronunciation of specific words, but there's a difference in the cadence as previous posters have pointed out. However, taking the state as a whole, there really is no "regional" accent. As Oaktown pointed out, CA is an extremely diverse state. Recent census statistics show that there is no longer any ethnic background that holds a majority position here.

With respect to the "unaccented" standard, I think the people who argue that what's seen on television can be considered "unaccented" have a point. Doesn't necessarily mean that it's Californian, just means that when used, you can't identify where a character originates, thereby eliminating any of preconceived regional stereotypes a viewer may have. May not be fair, but it's what happens. Even CA has a regional stereotype on TV (i.e. picture a guy with a surfboard saying, "Duuuude, whuuuz up?")

Perhaps the only place in the U.S. that does not have an accent is Washington, D.C. That's because hardly anyone is a native.

Amber, my charming friend, you bring such a smile to my face when you actually go to the trouble of transliterating your phrasing so we'll get the point that you don't think you have an accent!

But you do have a valid point when you try to define not having an accent as speaking without providing obvious clues to your place of origin. That's a great observation.

But on the other hand, it's also a matter of how broadly we draw the circle. In other words, another American might not recognize from your speech that you come from California (although I bet some might!), but they would suppose you are _not_ from the South or New England -- and someone from England would know instantly that you are from the US.

The fact that northern Californians and southern Californians might hear differences in their respective ways of speaking is also an indication that they both have an accent of some sort, however subtle.

The "neutral" TV accent is not a myth. It is called the "voice from nowhere," and is meant to not suggest that the person speaking is from any specific region of the country. This is the diction and "accent" that is taught by voice coaches to actors and news anchors/reporters who are tryong to "regularize" their accents. (The big three anchormen--Dan Rather, Tom Brokaw, and Peter Jennings--all have slight accents that betray their Texan, Plains, and Ontarian [respectively] origins, but most news anchors/reporters strive for a "neutral" accent, which is seen as more saleable.) Likewise, before everything was computer-generated, the "time lady" on the telephone had the "voice from nowhere."

In general, people from the west coasts of the US and Canada tend to have the diction closest to the "neutral" accent (hence the claims to no accent): round vowels and enunciated consonants, in contrast with, say, the flat vowels of the "Midwest" accent, the slur of the "Southern" accent, or the nasal twang of the "New York" accent. Northern California north to Vancouver probably fits this mold most closely, because, as has been noted by other posters, there is a distinctive cadence and inflection in some Southern Californians' speech.

As has also been noted, a) accent is entirely relative, so anything that's "unaccented" is only so compared with more distinctive or obvious accents, and b) in any area, there are many natives who do *not* have a noticeable regional accent. The majority of native New Yorkers do not have a "New Yawk" accent, and there are many native southerners from many states without a noticeable accent, and so on. I grew up in norhtern California and have met people from all over the country whose speech sounds like mine; I didn't know they were from Memphis, or wherever, until they told me so.

For Carmen, who originally asked, I would say that, compared to other areas with strong regional accents, such as Boston or the south in general, Californians do not have a strong regional accent. Most native Californians (i.e., born in the state and having English as a first language or early-learned second language), whatever their ethnic backgrounds, will speak with the round vowels and enunciated consonants that you hear on TV commercials, etc., an exception being the noted distinctive inflection and cadence used by some (not most) southern Californians.

Finally, that's pidgin and Portuguese.

Mona, I think you misread my posting. I was expressing the idea that since i'm FROM California, I don't think that Californians have an accent. I wasn't arguing that we don't have an accent, just that it's all relative. Someone from Boston, who is used to hearing fellow Bostonians speak, wouldn't think they have an accent either. It merely depends on where you're from and what you're used to hearing. I believe that I even expressed the idea that the state as a whole DOES NOT have a regional accent, if you look two sentences further. My point that N. CA and S. CA hear differences, was further intended to ILLUSTRATE the point.

Mona, but I do see where you're coming from. When I say CA has no regional accent, I mean nothing you can use as a generalization. We all speak perhaps a little differently in CA because we are such a diverse community. Someone from my neighborhood in SF is going to have a slightly different speech pattern and sound than someone from, say, San Diego.

Amber, some good points. And I'll tell you a little where I'm coming from:

I grew up around Boston, although my parents came, respectively, from the Conn. valley (mother = "neutral" accent) and Western NY (father = more like a midwestern accent, esp. with a very flat "o" and "a" so that "shopping plaza" becomes "shapping pleahza" to outsiders). However, my mother was raised by an English lit. professor who was a bear about good diction, so I arrived in suburban Boston kindergarten speaking quite differently, and much more carefully, than the other kids ("kids are goats -- 'children' please").

I was in a blue-collar neighbor with a very heavy dominant accent, and some of the "big kids" would follow me home and tease me about my accent: "say 'mahthah'!" they would demand, and when I said "motherrr," I'd get hit or knocked to the ground!

Later, because I am blessed with a particularly sharp ear for such things, I learned to hear and mimic the differences around New England, and there are plenty. That "park the car" phrase can sound very different, depending on whether you hear it in South Boston, Chelsea, Cambridge, Gloucester (Glawstah), or Augusta, Maine. So can the word "butter" -- which can be anything from "budder" to "buddah" to "buttah."

That's why I got into linguistics, but it's also why I say it depends on where you begin, and how you draw the geographical lines.

Areas without a lot of coming and going of new ethnic groups tend to preserve distinctive accents. California, as one of the latest areas to be settled by people from elsewhere, is of course going to have a much less distinctive accent. What's interesting to me is why there's any accent _at all_ out there -- what on earth prompted the whole Valley Girl stuff? Where did that questioning "lilt" that "Grapes of Roth" (great name!) described come from?

And, to pick up on what Buck said, it is really interesting to watch people fight over who has the "standard" or non-deviant/distinctive accent -- what does it say about us that we think this is important?

Hah! Make that: "I was in a blue-collar neighborhood..."!!! No jokes, please, it's Friday!

I think Caitlin summed it up quite nice: Native Californians DO NOT have any regional accent at all -- PERIOD!!!

Um, Bill, that's not what I said.

I have a slight Mexican accent, because I was born and raised among first and second generation Mexican around Los Angeles. Now that I have broadened my life I have lost it a little, but when I am at my mother's home in Montebello it comes right back. Kind of like a southern drawl with clipped vowels.

I can hear my own accent - it drives me crazy, especially since I don't live in LA anymore.

How about a non-American (Toronto) perspective? When I visited California many years ago, one of the first things I noticed was how much like TV many people spoke. I also noticed the SoCal drawl, when a waitress dropped a bowl of soup and exclaimed, "Oh, wo-o-o-o-ow, man!" It's easy to mimic the Valley Girl accent, but much harder to do the straight California. What I also noticed there is that the short "i" sound often has long "e" overtones, e.g. "on a night like thees" (not the full Latino, but definitely not as short and clipped as, for example, my own short i's). And for those from Toronto who think WE don't have an accent (but everyone else does!) listen carefully to your t's -- aside from at the beginning of a word, we pronounce them like d's ("Peppermint Paddy") and we are terrible for dropping or swallowing final consonants. Accents are really interesting; I love trying to pick out where someone is from by the way they speak.