I really enjoy listening to different accents ...... I have a pretty good ear for them .....

[Stinky The Clown]

I find it very refreshing to hear northern, unabashedly urban speech patterns and inflections.

Please don't read that as somehow saying that other accents are unpleasant. This is not *against* anyone. It is simply an observation.

Listening to Bill Daley's pure, unadulterated Chicago accent. Or that of a few others in the Obama organization.

Listening to Granholm.

To that guy from Google.

Warren Buffett

Joe Biden.

Nothing at all affected. Nothing unusual. Nothing either elite or anti-intellectual.

How refreshing.

[kestrel91316]

1. Yeah, after 16 years I was pretty tired of the good ol' boy twang.

Obama talks like me and my family.

[Kali]

4. I don't mind a good ol' boy twang (and probably have a bit of one)

if it is actually coming out of a good ol' boy. Dip shit is a fake through and through.

[bluedawg12]

6. I just disliked the way dumbya's Texas drawl came and went

it was more of an affectation then a regional accent.

Other than that, I like the drawl as well as the mid-west Daley or Biden mid-Atlantic flavor.

[Stinky The Clown]

8. Idiot Son's "drawl" was total affectation. The oppostite of Peggy Noonan .... who is also an ....

... affected speaker.

What bothers is the affectation.

[kestrel91316]

7. Yeah, he had a way of making it grate on y nerves.

[Kali]

9. oooo I just love the way you refered to him in the past tense!

:woohoo: :woohoo: :woohoo: it is a brand new day!

[eleny]

2. Growing up in the midst of so many different accents, I like it, too

Growing up in NYC with immigrant grandparents & dad and living in a neighborhood of German, Irish and Italian immigrants, I'm wild for accents.

Yes, this was nice, today.

[ginnyinWI]

3. He's the first Mid-Western President in a long time.

And being from Wisconsin it feels really good. Chicago is going to be very important for some time to come. And believe me, they're excited--I've been reading the Chicago Tribune.

Eventually there will be a Presidential library to visit when we go down to visit the Windy City (which by the way was nicknamed that because of all the blow-hard politicians, not the weather--lol).

[shadowknows69]

5. Me to, but I do have a terrible time understanding some

I have some hearing problems anyway (Thanks Blue Oyster Cult!!!) but some are really difficult. I took four years of Spanish, can't speak it worth a shit, but I can get good chunks of a conversation. Any Spanish, Austrailian or Jamacian accent spoken by a woman turns me into jello.

[peruban]

10. I can't tell shit from shinola on this one.

I'm a native American south Floridian bilingual. I can speak different accents of Spanish (Carribean, Standard-Centro-Mexican, and Latin American - to oversimplify) as well as forms of North American and conventional English. I can imitate different dialects of speech on both sides of the red and blue states and seeing a politician do the same does not impress me.

These politicians are intelligent people, probably more intelligent than you or I. We must acknowledge that they are using tactics and strategies to manipulate our sentiments and influence our attempt at conviviality and social caste acceptance for them and consequentially against us. A "folksy" accent doesn't carry as as well in a more cosmopolitan city but a "CNN" accent gets you by pretty much anywhere. How odd?

What is strange is that the non-standard accent persists. People take pride in sounding like "mountain folk". The "hills" are somehow idealized. That's all I can say, but what is interesting is that the standard for American Standard English represent the main focus of artistic endeavor in the U.S. as we have seen by the generalization of accent on both those coasts. The so called "mundane" or "L" accent is focused mainly on the uneducated and the base of the political strategems.

The "generalized" or standard English swept the media and all publications are written in this standard English. It is considered an "H" language since no informative publications have been produced in the Southern or 'L' dialect. When we watch television news it is in this "H" dialect. The south is dead and it needs no certificate to proclaim its passing.