colrehogan wrote:

I've been told that I don't sound like an American by someone in the U.K.  I asked what an American sounds like but they couldn't tell me.

I used to be told regularly that I don't sound like a New Yorker. When I think why "used to", it occurs to me I have not been outside of New York City recently. When I pressed, some said I sounded like a newscaster. Twenty years ago a friend told me that the only real New York accents you hear anymore were in New Jersey. Maybe today they are a dead language, like Cockney. 

I noticed a long time ago that British royalty did not have much of a British accent. Maybe message is that a veneer of education wears the edges off regional accents.

Accents are a funny thing. They change over time, too: nobody talks now the way they did in the 1930s. 

Certainly the whole point of an education used to be to smooth away the rough, regional edges - the biggest difference between now and the 30s is that regional accents are now respectable. The royal family speaks perfect RP, or Received Pronunciation, which is the most 'invisible' English accent. But England (let alone Britain) has so many accents that George Bernard Shaw was barely joking in 'Pygmalion' when Henry Higgins claims he can tell what street someone's from by the way they talk.

My accent is a neverending subject of very tedious conversation. Some say I've 'really kept it!' Some say they can hear New York; I used to work with a woman who wanted me to come to her desk every morning and say, 'I wanna cup of cawffee!' Some say I've 'really lost it'. In London it's remarked on in some way by almost every person I meet, and in America people think I'm English. I think the truth is that it slips around all over the place.

Funnily enough I read last week that Americans had voted a Glaswegian accent as the 'sexiest' UK accent.

Ye dinnae mind it? Och, here it is.

KatLondon wrote:

Kazakhstani typewriter! Brilliant, keep us posted on that when it arrives. 

It's heeeere! And it's everything I could have hoped for.

But full description and photos will have to wait for a day with more leisure. 

ztyper wrote:

I feel like the topic of pride is something that has come up here again and again. In my opinion, I do not feel like pride is something that is that should be suppressed, given that it's not used to snub the other person or to make everyone else feel bad. There is pride in one's achievements, history, and heritage. Saying that you're glad to be who you are, and where you're from is not a bad thing, it can be a driving force to make your world a better place, in return gives you pride in the fact that you have done something beneficial to someone other than yourself. But there is also the "dirty" pride, the kind that you say to lift yourself higher than the rest so you may shine with light of a thousand stars and that you bathe in a shower of a thousand kisses. And between those two kinds of pride is a very fine line.

Am I proud to be an American? Yes, yes I am. Much in the same way I am proud to be from New Jersey (yeah take that! "Armpit of America," pffff, give me a break...). I'm proud of the people that live here, and though we can do better, I think overall it's a nice place and I think you should visit sometime.

JustAnotherGuy had a very good point though, we need to be careful about not labeling ourselves to avoid fencing ourselves and further dividing the world. I too have noticed that, especially among my peers, that we like to keep ourselves in little groups of like-minded people. Now, I think that it's just a high school thing because many adults and teachers have pointed this out, but I can't be sure because I still need to mature and see the world for myself. I sometimes wish I was surrounded by like-minded people all the time. Thinking would be much easier (because there is none) and my opinion would always be repeated back to me, reassuring myself that I am always right. But no, I must always challenge my thought process and I must always listen to others to see their opinion and then form my own from my beliefs and morals. Because believe me, both extremes in my school are unbearable, so I refuse to belong to either even if I used to.

So as a wise sailor once said "I yam, what I yam" and that's the philosophy I follow. I'm proud of who I am, what I do, and what I stand for. I don't belong to any group (besides the label of "typewriter-lover"). If you don't like me, well, then you can go... please reconsider because I want to be your friend. 

Very well said.