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[Clansgian AT wmconnect.com]

In a message dated 9/18/2008 9:01:06 AM Eastern Daylight Time, 
waltonrp AT gmail.com writes:


> >That his parents speak like they do
> and he speaks with such a strong Texas accent seemed strange to me.
> Maybe it's just what it is, but someone that is doing the things he
> did in life is not normally going to pick up such a country accent.
> 
> 

It is a well received point that both Obama and Bush are affecting the 
accents they are using.  In both cases they come by it honestly, it isn't 
like H. 
Clinton affecting a NY accent that is totally fake.

An aunt from very rural Lee Co. Va went to live in Chicago for fifteen years 
and when she came back her voice was like nails on a chalkboard.  She's lived 
here now some ten years and her speech is largely back to normal, so accents 
do change as adults.

And the notion that one's speech patterns come primarily from their parents 
is not so.  Immigrant parents with thick accents almost never pass that along 
to the next generation who end up talking like their peers.   Bush grew up as 
a 
child in Houston and so looking into his box of linguistic tools, it is an 
honest accent for him.  He may indeed affect if for political reasons, but he 
comes by it honestly.  Bush speaks fluent Spanish and although there is a bit 
of 
a Texas twang to it, it is pretty good standard pronunciation.  I much 
misdoubt that someone with those linguistic skills is helpless to affect 
whatever 
accent he might choose.

Likewise Obama doesn't really speak Yankee, nor even midwestern.  He speaks 
standard Tom Brokaw six o'clock news accent.  It is as close to neutral as 
you 
can come and is a good choice.  Most of us even with outrageous regional 
accents can pull that off.  It's a sort of lingua franca of American English. 
  
Obama's snootiness does not come from his choice of accents, but the arrogant 
tone of his voice.  That is the regional factor.  Here that is the tone 
adopted 
when one is annoyed with the listener and is talking down to them although 
most 
of us well recognize that is not the case in most of the country.

As to it being a "country" accent, recall Fred Thompson's accent.  That's a 
normal businessman's accent here in Tennessee.  Here in the South those 
aren't 
'country' accents, they are the normal common mode of speech.   </HTML>