what can i do to sound californian?

**you should have no problem if you understand and speak English at a competent level**

I'm working on it.....may get the hang of it one day then hopefully I'll be reasonably capable of being understood... should I ever decide to venture out there someday but it's not on my priority list right now.

it a different situation to that of a Californian in Scotland.

MXMANIC: Surely a Scottish accent in California IS foreign if we want to be technical? Just as an American accent is foreign here in Scotland. If I'm in California then I'm a foreigner....cannae argue against that. A Californian in Scotland is just as foreign as a Mongolian or an Abyssinian or whatever. So our respective accents are foreign in any place outside our home countries. In England I've been told that my Scots accent is foreign...I'm quite happy with that even though technically I'm still in the same country overall.....just in a different component country that is part of the whole which probably makes the situation different to that of a Californian in Scotland..or anywhere else in the UK.

Just because basically we speak the same Language doesn't mean our respective accents are'nt "foreign" in other English speaking countries. I've met two Americans who took offence at being called foreigners in England just because we share the same Language, and saw some objecting to being channelled through the "Other nationalities" section at the airport as opposed to the UK/EU controls.

**it a different situation to that of a Californian in Scotland**

this is superfluous crap...ignore.

Accents are foreign when they are perceived as such. However, in the hope of pinning things down a bit more, one can say that a foreign accent is one heard typically in the speech of non-native speakers. Thus, Scots and Irish and British and American and Indian "accents" are not foreign in English, but Spanish and French and German accents are.

If you are from Scotland and you speak in California, people will assume you are foreign in the sense of not American, but native in the sense of a native English speaker.

I hear English spoken by French and German people with native fluency more often than by Indians and Scots. The only thing that might indicate otherwise but only superficially is their foreign accents. One would have a hard time determining who among them speak English nonnatively.

But as a Scot my accent WOULD be foreign!

Native English speaker yes..sure...undoubted...but outside Scotland I maintain that my accent IS foreign wherever I happen to be...even in Carlisle or Berwick-upon-Tweed.

To those who don't know these are towns just over the border in England..even though Berwick has switched between Scotland and England about eight times over the centuries so that even now in the 21st century the streets of Berwick ring more with Scottish accents than English ones even though technically and geographically it's English territory...until we reclaim it back one day after storming the town walls and ramparts!

They must be expecting us one day as they still have the old guns in position on the walls pointing north! LOL

It's not quite the same in Carlisle...the general accent there is definitely Cumbrian even though Gretna Green is just up the road. Any Scottish accents are obviously those of "invaders"....over the border doing nothing more lethal than raiding the stores of Carlisle.

My accent is "dead foreign" in Carlisle.

I don´t know how to get an accent , It´s too difficult for me to hear the real sounds , what can I do about it?

>I've met two Americans who took offence at being called foreigners

Had they not heard of their country's rather emphatic decision to leave the empire?

I would say that any accent in the UK is foreign. Given the patchwork of languages that is English, its the single currency of the language world, I mean southeners think us northerners speak strangley.

What is "Eofforwic".

Eofforwic, Eboracum, Jorvik, are all the names for York, where I live.

One thing I noticed while in California (I'm from Chicago), is that at the end of a sentence, their voice would rise, like they were asking a question.

<<One thing I noticed while in California (I'm from Chicago), is that at the end of a sentence, their voice would rise, like they were asking a question.>>

Yeah, rising intonation (known in linguistics as "high rise terminals" or "uptalk") is fairly widespread in California, tho it's not the only place it's turned up.

<>I've met two Americans who took offence at being called foreigners

Had they not heard of their country's rather emphatic decision to leave the empire?>


HAHAHAHA IMAO jeez such ideas still exist among the older generations of the English? LOL bravo bravo

Well they are foreign, they're no longer British, so what else can you call them? Answers on a postcard please!

<Well they are foreign, they're no longer British, so what else can you call them? Answers on a postcard please!>

Fricking obvious don't you think? I don't see them stuffing themselves with scones and tea with the picture of the Queen on the mantlepiece.

Strangely I met an interesting Turk who thinks Americans and the British are the same people but on different land masses. Such sense of understanding his point of view was acceptance considering we speak the same language.