Deborah Tannen Quotes

I was born and raised in New York, so I was blessed - or some say cursed - with a strong New York accent.

Apparently when I went to school, I had a Glasgow accent.

Something I realized when I moved to America: people get these general American accents, but when they get angry or upset or excited, their original accents come out. It's something I noticed with my manager, because he's from New York, and the first time he got angry, he suddenly had this accent.

I still keep my accent.

I wouldn't have been able to move to L.A. if I felt I was going to lose my identity as a New Jerseyian. My accent has gotten thicker since I've lived here.

I know that Philadelphians hate New York actors passing off New York accents as Philadelphian when they are quite different.

It's quite telling that the really big comedians - like John Bishop from Liverpool, Kevin Bridges from Glasgow, Peter Kay from Bolton - stand out with their strong regional accents.

When I was very little, I had an Essex accent.

I personally am not conscious of my accent.

The accent in England can change literally from street to street, and people have this sort of feudal tribalism whereby you can identify somebody's provenance by their voice.

I love the Midwest accent.

I'm sort of a Southerner because those are my roots, but my parents are from Iowa.

I'm from New York. I have a non, neutral accent. It can go any way you want.

The accent of one's birthplace remains in the mind and in the heart as in one's speech.

I'm not against accents - my husband's from Lancashire and has a rural Lancs accent. We've just got back from Scotland yesterday, and I love that Highland burr.

I grew up in the Middle East. My folks have a very thick, kind of Oklahoma accent; that's where I was born. But we moved to the Middle East right after I was born, so I guess we were surrounded by English people and French people.

People say how come I'm from Scotland yet I sound like the Queen?! I went to boarding school in Somerset, which has probably got something to do with it.

I love boys with English accents.

Some accents people - internationally - can't understand, also they come with baggage. London means a certain thing, Liverpool means a certain thing. Whereas with Welsh, he can be a middle-class man with working-class roots and still have an accent and it not be an issue.

St. Louis is a very interesting city in terms of accents.

Today, actors aren't forced to ditch their regional accents like they used to. The best example's Tom Baker, a Scouser who went to great lengths to change his accent and ended up with something alien - and fantastic. It's sad that when the likes of him go, there won't be those sorts of accents any more.

I grew up in Detroit. So my mother always loved big band music.

I was like the only diverse kid in my high school, and I'm half-Puerto Rican. But yeah, I have a huge family and tons of cousins in Puerto Rico. We actually hung out with them last summer, and it was awesome. But I wish my grandfather had taught my dad Spanish when he was younger so he could've taught me when I was younger, and sometimes he does, too. It's a shame.

Weirdly, when I was in drama school my accent probably got stronger because of that sense of identity when you leave home and go to somewhere where there are loads of people from different places. Holding on to being Welsh and where I was from was a real crutch for me.

If you think about portraying Americans, for example, in a Russian film, it all depends on where the American is from, if they went to school or not, and if they're well-educated or not. Is it an American from Texas, or an American from Brooklyn? Things would change with the vocabulary and the accent.