Quote Originally Posted by TheOfficialBren View Post
That's very true, Ozark Ridge Rider. Some folks have a descernable-enough ear to peg an accent that closely!

California, for example, has a modest variety of accents: Southern California (faster paced and with somewhat odd metre, less rhotic than farther to the north), Okie (transplant-somewhat Southern but not quite as drawled and with Californian metre), Northern California (steady metre, quite rhotic), San Joaquin Valley (they tend to shorten the long "E" and morph it into a short "I" ["feel" sounds like "fill"]; long "A" becomes a short "E" ["fail" sounds like "fell"], moderately rhotic).

Then again, these don't always apply considering how much of a salad bowl even California can be. Most people seem to pick up bits and pieces from everywhere they've lived. Some people never do, however.

My father, for example, was born and for the first portion of his life raised in Arkansas (to an Arkansan father and a Kentuckean mother--both of Scottish descent) so he uses the odd Gaelic word here and there (although hardly aware of its origin on most occasions as the family history is more my area of interest than his) but he has an accent almost entirely distinctive to the Hillfolk of his birthplace. After moving permanently to California in his late teens (and being 70 now) he still has his accent without much Californian colour whatsoever. Perhaps he's stubborn, perhaps his sympathetic ear (I believe that might be the terminology I have heard linguists use describing this phenomenon) hasn't developed very much.

My mother, in the otherhand, was born in Oregon (the next state north of California) and her accent is entirely local to Southern California. She sounds nothing like her Oregonian relatives in speech.

I was educated in private schools when I was younger and as a result it is reflected in my own speech (not the typical Southern-Californian accent, very slightly less rhotic and with a steadier, more deliberate metre and an even timbre). That was probably a subconscious adaptation, though intentionally-exaggerated, extra-hard "R's" are kind of distracting to my ears (I don't to watch anything with actor Matt Frewer because of it--and his bad acting, too [the poorly executed "Australian" accent on "Eureka"---shudder).
Like Jock, I too had heard that the Invernessians speak (or at least spoke) the purest form of English. My grandpa spent much of his formative life just up the road in Elgin and was fond of telling my sister and I that we would benefit from "a year or two in Inverness", when slang or grammar failed to impress him! I am sure the claim relates to the precise enunciation of the accent in those parts.

Might I also recommend "Mother Tongue: English and How it Got that Way" by the excellent Bill Bryson for anyone that hasn't read it.