like whom do you sound?

[Liam]

I've been told I sound a lot like my twin brother! Hahaha

[PiperOfThePlains]

I have been told, mostly due to a major misalignment of my teeth, that I sound like Sheldon Cooper. Then again, as I have always been an enjoyer of vocal manipulation, I have also been told that I sound like Anthony Daniels (C-3PO) when excited/nervous, and Leonard Nimoy (Spock) when angry. Somehow, my "West" Texas draw has yet to set in...

[Peter Crowe]

My normal speaking voice/accent is a fairly soft spoken middle class Glasgow-Lanarkshire accent, and the only celebrity whose speech sounds similar to mine (that I can think of) would be Gordon John Sinclair who was the male lead in Bill Forsyth's movie Gregory's Girl (1980) and it's sequel Gregory's Two Girls (only in the original versions where the dialogue was not dubbed for American audiences) made about the same character some 20 years later.

The most perspicacious description of my accent was an elderly gentleman I met in the Borders describing it as a Ferniegair accent. Ferniegair is a village just south of Hamilton and marks the notional boundary between rural Lanarkshire and those parts of the County which are part of the contiguous Greater Glasgow conurbation, and it is about 4 miles south-east of where I grew up in Uddingston.

I usually speak in Scottish Standard English peppered with Scots idioms and phrases, although since living in Massachusetts I sometimes notice myself using Boston area expressions like 'You're all set' and 'quarter of three', etc.

I have not consciously ever tried to change my Scottish accent or speech although living here in Massachusetts I have consciously tried to slow down and leave greater space between individual words.

[CDNSushi]

I have a pretty distinctive voice, and thus haven't been told I sound like any particular person (other than my father a bit), let alone a celebrity. However I HAVE been accused at times of having a "Mormon accent" -- which would make sense, being from Lethbridge, Alberta, originally.

[OC Richard]

The same site where you can look at the distribution of stuff like the cot/caught merger has a quiz you can take

http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2...-map.html?_r=0

I took it, and it said I most closely resemble Salt Lake City Utah! Which seems odd due to the fact that I've never been to Utah, but not so odd because my accent/dialect is a strange mix of West Virginia and California. On many of the quiz questions I was at a loss... both choices sounding equally 'right' to me.

As far as sounding like a celebrity, not any that I know of!

But Andy Griffith, from Mount Airy North Carolina, has an accent very much like my family members back in West Virginia, what might be called an Appalachian accent. However I have a coworker who has recently moved here from Mount Airy and he doesn't exhibit the cot/caught merger, whereas West Virginia and California do.

So anyhow in my California mode I pretty much sound like most Californians with the addition of odd features like a pin/pen merger and saying 'set' for 'sit', and lengthening of 'i' in words like 'pig' which becomes something like 'pee-igg'.

[OC Richard]

There is a tape recording of me when I was five years old and I have a quite pronounced drawl.

I tend to start subconsciously mimicking other strong accents if I'm around them for a particularly long period of time.

I can relate to both of these things! Of course as a kid back central West Virginia I had a strong local accent at the age of 5, but mostly lost it here in California. I have noticed, on my annual trips back to West Virginia, that the kids in town have stronger accents than their parents. When I asked about it, the parents said it was because the town-kids go to school with the true hillbilly kids from the hollers, and pick up their talk.

I too pick up accents I'm exposed to. I can revert to Appalachian quickly when exposed to it, but also if I'm around Canadians I start picking up their accent. When I spent two weeks at piping school with a load of Canadians I came back talking a bit like them, though I wasn't aware of it until people pointed it out.

[sydnie7]

I have rather precise speech patterns, pronouncing all the letters that "should" be heard (for example, the "h" in white, wheat, etc.). I've been asked if I'm British, but born and raised in Southern California by a mother born in Calif and father born in Texas. Daddy was very conscious of his accent as a young man and worked hard to eliminate it -- it only surfaced in a few words I can remember, such as "mirra" for mirror.

I've worked to maintain this, wouldn't even allow myself to say ain't until I got older and realized I can use it for deliberate effect. As a writer and occasional voice-over 'talent,' as the industry calls us, it's a combination of pride and necessity.

I travel to TN often on business (with Nissan/Infiniti) and while out to dinner one night requested my BBQ on a wheat bun. The waiter actually asked me to say that again, got quite a kick from my "wh"! I did have a voice-over coach teach me how to drop that and say "weat" and "wite" for clients who prefer it that way, but I give 'em H in day to day speech!

[McElmurry]

We'll see if any of you that have met me agree but the best my family could come up with is James Garner. The runner up is Kevin Costner. Pretty hard to sum up vocabulary, accent, pitch, pace, lopsided grin and other factors in one person.

[brewerpaul]

Years ago when I moved to Missouri from my native state of Texas I had a bit of the "Texas twang" to my voice. I was a paramedic at the time and we still used the radio system that broadcast to the various hospitals. People, all who were near, could hear my oral patient reports. At the time there was an ER doctor in Houston Texas name Red Duke who had a television spot once a week. He was a real down home Texan with handlebar mustache and all. He had quite the twang when he anounced himself as "Dr Red Duke, University of Texas health science center Houston Texas." Well quite a few people thought I was the same guy when I was on the radio. Im sure Tobus might remember Dr Red Duke and his show. Ive also be accused of sounding like Denis Weaver also..... Although he was from Joplin MO he did a few shows with a pronounced twang that I sounded like according to other people.

[OC Richard]

That's funny Paul!

I just remembered that a coworker teases me and say I sound like Huell Howser

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=539jdK3eN1o

About pronouncing the 'h' in 'wh' words, I used to do that with my kids when I read bedtime stories to them, in order (I suppose) to make how the words were spelt make a little bit more sense.

Of course it's reversed, 'hw', in reality; modern English is misspelt. In Old English it was:

hwaer (where)
hwa (who)
hwanne (when)
hwi (why)
hwit (white)

and so forth.

Indo-European KW > Common Germanic HW, thus IE 'kweit' (to shine) > OE 'hwit' > modern English 'white' (and 'wheat').