Thursday, December 14, 2006

I want to play too!

Since everyone's playing telephone on their blogs and I suspect it wouldn't be free for me to join in from overseas, I thought I'd steal this accent meme from Mrs Mac instead. In the audio file here you can hear me answering three questions about my accent, which are kind of unnecessary really, since you get to hear my accent yourself. Are you excited yet?

Here are the two tongue-twister examples I use (in case you can't understand what the hell I'm saying):
"The bare bear doesn't have any hair, but he does despair of his fear of tears in his pair of spare chairs."
and
"Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers. If Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers, where is the peck of pickled peppers that Peter Piper picked?"

If you want to do this meme, but aren't sure how to record yourself, I can recommend using Odeo.

And if you want to hear more weird-ass Australian and New Zealand accents (or any accents from all over the world), I highly recommend visiting this site.

I'm going to go and cringe some more at the sound of my recorded voice now.

13 Comments:

Anonymous said...

that was fun to hear you after reading your written words for a while. i "read" in my own accent (in my head), so it sounded quite different from what i imagine!

Anonymous said...

Awesome! Even though I knew you should sound a lot more familiar, it's always a pleasant surprise now to hear a non-American voice, even if you do have some funny vowels :)

-Lucy
(blogger beta won't accept my password, today)

StyleyGeek said...

Yeah, I read in my own accent in my head too, so it has been incredibly freaky to hear all the American bloggers leaving messages to each other on those Snapvine players. No one sounds like I expect them to.

On the other hand, it's pretty freaky hearing my own voice too. I don't sound like I expect me to, either. I think my 'inside my head voice' is different entirely.

Lucy, I know what you mean. When we was living in Denmark, Geekman and I ran into a couple in the supermarket who were from NZ, and we were all so excited to hear each others' accents that we pooled the contents of our shopping basket and went back to their place to cook dinner together. They ended up becoming close friends and the woman's sister even boarded with us for a while in Denmark, and then visited us in Australia. And Geekman's parents visited them in Denmark when they were passing through.

And all because of sharing an accent. So bizarre.

Dr. Brazen Hussy said...

Ohmygod I love your voice and your accent.

But yeah, it's always weird to hear yourself. I totally sounded better in real life than I did on any of those snapvine recordings. I'll never get an album contract this way.

StyleyGeek said...

Wow, if you sing even better in real life then you totally deserve an album contract. Your singing is amazing.

BrightStar (B*) said...

This is a fabulous recording! Your voice is lovely. I enjoyed hearing about the different accents, too. And the recording is so clear!

Anonymous said...

Thanks for picking this one up and running with it! Funnily enough, when I heard Lesley's, my first thought was, "Oooh, I wanna play too!"

I can remember hearing an NZ accent for the first time. I remember thinking that the person sounded Australian but, not. Aussies so totally say "feesh" by the way!

kermitthefrog said...

Surprisingly educational, for a meme! I now feel prepared to distinguish all the Aussie and NZ accents I come across. Which approaches zero, alas. But it was quite fun to listen to, in any case.

Ianqui said...

Awesome! New Zealand and Australian accents are such a mystery to me. I can't really keep them straight, although I can hear the differences if a New Zealander and Australian are talking to each other.

Mostly I think it's funny to hear all of the uptalk on these snapvine recordings. I think of it as a feature of American college-aged speak, but apparently 30-something American women do it too.

StyleyGeek said...

Ha, I went to a talk at a linguistics conference last year where the speaker was presenting uptalk as a feature characteristic of Australian English. I've also heard NZers claim that it's a terrible thing that only NZers do. It appears to be one of these things that everyone does, but each country things 'belongs' to them.

(I tried to tell the speaker at the conf this, but he wasn't having any of it).

And thanks, Mrs Mac, for dropping by!

Anonymous said...

That was really fun; thanks for sharing!
-sheepish

Queen of West Procrastination said...

That's really fun. I made Chris listen to part of your recording, and he instantly said, "Hey! That's a New Zealand accent!" Because his aunt is also from NZ and you sound exactly like her. (It helps that both of you have lived extensively outside of NZ, and therefore have made modifications.)

Anonymous said...

speaking of snapvine and aussie accents...i noticed they have australia local phone numbers so now i guess we'll hear more aussie accents on those snapvine players !