I have always believed that it's the other guy who has the accent...
I lived most of my life in the NYC area and definitely have a Long Island accent. It's not quite the same as a NYC accent, but is recognized as a unique regional accent by many linguists. Since moving to Texas almost 7 years ago, my speech patterns have been the occasional source of amusement among the locals for reasons I don't understand - after all, they're the ones who talk funny...
Spanish and Italian are both fairly easy to learn since they're so similar. I took both when I was in high school and college, but that's a long time ago. Can still read both to a certain extent, but no longer try to speak them anymore. I'm using Duolingo to brush up on my Spanish, because it's a useful skill to have here. |