i make wierd cute noises when im bored. if im really hyper i make a really cute weee noise. ( thats sorta what my face looks like when i make the noise) my hubby seems to enjoy my noises they make him laugh and feel better when he sick. i say okyday alot.

I roll my rs. Although when I am speaking to be heard, as in speeches or important situations, my pitch drops and I stop rolling the r, enunciate my vowels properly and end up sounding distinctly British. Speaking of Britain, myself a a fellow Kiwi used to piss off everyone else in the pharmacy where we worked by referring to everything as "sweet" or "sweet as." It basically means "cool" or "that's fine." But basically we'd just get bewildered looks followed by "...what the HELL is so bloody sweet?!"

My only speech habit is my copious and profound use of profanity.

Thank you, thank you. I know you all envy me now.

Where to begin?

I have a tendancy to stammer AND mumble. As per the Philadelphia accent I pronounce water as "wooder". Im profane as fuck. I could probably say the words "sweet" and "like" 30 times in one sentence. And a ton of things im probably not even aware of.

Yasha wrote:

My only speech habit is my copious and profound use of profanity.

Thank you, thank you. I know you all envy me now.

Profanity makes talking fun, you know.

I say "poop. " I'll gladly say profane things in everyday conversation like a casual thing, but my exclamations of frustration do not tend to go above a PG rating.

I sing before, after and during conversations, be it a message I'm trying to convey or the lyrics to some song that are slightly similar to something that was just said.

I also pretty casually use different "voices" and accents as forms of expression, kinda, though they all lead into a really terrible pseudo-Pakistani accent eventually.

I refer to EVERYONE as "dear," "son," "sir," "mister," "love," "sweetie," "senor," "m'lady," "ma'am..." Regardless of beauty, age, goodness or size. Or gender. It's gotten me into trouble.

And I steal people's speech habits. Their physical ticks, their phrases, their inflections... There was this one girl I absolutely HATED who would scrunch up her nose when she was saying something sarcastic. Augh. It bothered me so much and I was so focused on it that I soon realized I was doing it too. Jah, jah. I unintentionally incorporate any notable forms of expressions into mine own.

Oh, and I say "yessuh" and "bub" and "wicked," like any good Mainer should.

My accent is fairly predictable, I use a lot of contractions and say 'tard' instead of 'tired' and "Whoo-wee!" and use colorful phrases such as:

Like a cow pissin' ona flat rock = heavy, straight downpour.
I'll be a sunuvabitch! = I have been proven wrong.
You don't ride color = Specifically, an ugly, well broken, trustworthy horse is better than a pretty but disobedient one.  I use it in a general sense as well, that quality > appearance.
Last time I checked that fetus was in your uterus, not shoved up your ass =  I love you sis!

Last edited by OnlyInThisLight (05-20-2010 07:53:18 PM)

Oh man, Razara, this is Eliza Doolittle Day!    Must post before midnight!

I'm a lifelong Floridian, yet I get told by fellow Floridians that I have an accent.  British, Australian, French, take your pick.  In reality it's probably just that I try to talk fast and enunciate words clearly at the same time, so my tongue is constantly out of position.  (That's what she said!  )  I tend to trip over myself when I'm very excited or very nervous -- I have trouble thinking and talking at the same time -- but then, at other times, I'm bizarrely articulate.  My verbal tics include using a lot of "ums" to fill space in long utterances when my tongue gets ahead of my brain.

I have been known to wish conversations were more like AIM.

I have what people where I live call a Midwestern Scandinavian-American accent but what others might identify as a Canadian accent. I am not from Canada, sooo....


I often say...


Uff'da-mild Norwegian expletive-basically "well, shit". Freely translated.
Don'cha know

I can't hardly describe it... ask Stormcrow, he's heard my voice.

I've got a ridiculous amount of speech habits, and leave it to my brain to forget them all as I'm trying to remember. I know I've got a tendency to speak with a cross of ebonics/skateboarder slang when I'm around my family; around my friends, it's more 'dude' and 'totally'. If I'm talking to a person that I know is vastly dumber than me (or doesn't know something they should know at their grade level/age) I'll go into what's been dubbed my 'teaching voice' which basically consists of my 'American accent', proper English and grammar and pronunciation, along with my general nurturing soft spokenness. More specifically and usually more constantly, I'll have my general Spanish accent, until I get around my dad. He and I are famous for breaking out into Euro accents, so my accent will be Spanish for about a minute and then become British for maybe ten minutes in which case it'll change to a Scotch or Irish accent. We also will incorporate movie lines in our conversation when referring to something, or just randomly (here lately, it's been the 'fight in the shade' comment in 300, and the 'private thoughts' comment in The Family That Preys). My mom hates that. Speaking of her, I'll speak in an American accent with a good mix of proper English and ebonics.

I also snatch terms of endearment or phrases that I like from other languages, and every now and again if I'm around a person long enough, I'll pick up their habits a bit. Annnnd, I tend to use words that are outside normal slang to mean something else (i.e. 'dude, she werewolfed you': good sir, she bit you.)

Alright, so now those oddball phrases or mine:

You doin' too much- Self explanatory, though I usually use that phrase when someone's acting particularly idiotic or actually going above and beyond their task.
Spiff- The answer I give when someone asks me how my day was; 'spiffy'='good'
Flippin- PG version of 'fuckin'; also prevents me from getting smacked to the floor by my mom.
Shite- Forgot what dialect that comes from, but it allows me to say 'shit' without my parents jumping on me for it.
Thisssss duuuude....- Used when someone has done something totally outrageous or stupid and I'm just thinking 'wtf', or if someone took a lame crack at me.
Really?/Really though guys, like really?- Also used for those 'wtf' moments.
Ehpick Phaiyle/Tantamount ehpick phaiyle- Spelled in such a way to denote a really, really, REALLY extreme fail.
Mami/Mamita/Nena/Chica/Chiquita/Sheila/Amor/Love/Shawdy (used sparingly)- Any of the million and one ways I refer to a girl endearingly.
You jackarsy- Bastardization of 'jackass', but also acceptable in the house.
Toasted/Blazed/Crushed/Nicked- Drunk or high
You're two kinds of dumb and three shades of stupid- Self explanatory
Crisps my bacon- Used to mean 'you know what really pisses me off?' or 'that really bothers me'.
Aye- A word I've currently been using to agree with someone.
Jagger- Word I use for my blade, which I always have.

...............and that's it until I catch myself doing something else.

I love this thread! As someone who has a little side hobby of doing cartoon voices, I LOVE hearing different dialects and accents. As for me, I've been known to talk exactly like Coraline at my most pronounced, in this sort of weird Portland drawl. I'm serious when I say it sounds weird. People from Ireland can't identify me as American. At its worst...

"I have to go back!"

"I heayfe tah go beeayack!"

Yeah that comes out especially weird typed out.

Bluesky wrote:

See, I say 'sweet' a lot, I reckon it's an Americanism or something I've picked up from the media, but it's not something you hear often.

Kiwis would tend to see it as something we say a lot -- we even have t-shirts explaining the concept to tourists. One thing I did notice Oop North that drove me bonkers while I lived there was the tendency to add random endearments to sentences while speaking to complete strangers. The first time a bus driver said: "You right, love?" I thought he was a creepy sex offender. Then a little later I got: "That's two pound fifty, love" from a teenaged checkout operator and things...got both more and less weird from there on in. I noticed "love" a lot around Donny and Sheffield, and then those weirdos from Barnsley said "duck" a bit, and then there was "pet" in Newcastle, so...yeah. Good times.

You know, I flicked through my dictionary of New Zealand slang to see if there's anything in there that I say that's apparently a Kiwi-ism, and...apparently my usual salutation of "How's tricks?" is one. I will occasionally say "chur, bro!" but given I'm not actually a North Islander or a Maori, I'm usually being at least mildly sarcastic when I do it. I'll end sentences with the Maori "ae?" which is more or less the equivalent of the Japanese "ne" (as in, a spoken question mark, though as New Zealanders often end statements with rising intonation sometimes we just do it for the hell of it). There's also the Maori sentence ending of "ow," but again if I use it I'm just being ironic as that really Rotorua-based Maori accent isn't my natural one; I have the Scottish-influenced Southland accent normally. It's very close to a normal Kiwi accent, we just roll our rs and use Scottish slang, like referring to everything small as "wee" and talking about "going to do the messages" for doing the shopping. But yeah, that Maori accent is here. If you wonder what a Pākehā is, that's basically my ethnicity; it means any non-Maori in general, but in practice it mainly refers to New Zealanders of white European ancestry. Whether or not it's an insult depends on who you speak to; on census forms some people will put their ethnicity as "white European," while people like me pick "pākehā" every time.

Here's some more random Kiwi slang, according to my dictionary (most of which I can and do use):

pack a sad -- someone looks miserable, i.e. "why are you packing a sad?"
knock off -- to finish something, e.g. Edmund Hillary climbed up Everest and reported back: "We knocked the bastard off!"
kia ora -- salutation, used in the sense of "hello" but it literally means something like "be well."
kia kaha -- friendly admonition, means "be strong!" A little like the Japanese "ganbatte!"
kapai -- sort of like "very good" or "that's right!" It's Maori, but it is occasionally bastardised into another form with English in "half-pai," which means "half-assed."
hard case -- kind of means something's cool, like "she's a hard case" or "that was massively hard case, man!"
she'll be right, mate -- I doubt there's a Kiwi alive who's never used this one. It means "it'll be okay."
across the ditch -- a way of referring to Australia.
dob in -- turn someone over to the authorities.
ya' reckon? Sentence ending, could be both good and bad.
yonks -- a long time, as in "I haven't seen that programme in yonks!"
whanau -- family; used in the general sense of the extended family, and not necessarily requiring actual blood relation (it's not quite like the Japanese sense of the word "nakama," because nakama implies a close connection without familial links; whanau is more like blood relations and nakama blended together; whakapapa is more the word you'd want for a proper geneological connection, but it refers more to ancestors than the immediate living family...and can also include non-blood relatives. Er.).
throw a wobbly -- to throw a fit over something, particularly something unimportant.
puku -- stomach, belly, tummy. For example, I regularly poke my small nephew in the belly and say "Look at your huge puku!"
whare -- it means "house," but to be honest if I ever use it, it's in a silly context; we have a local K-Mart-type store called "The Warehouse," and it's not uncommon to hear someone say "I'm off to the wharehare, wanna go with?" XD

Also, while looking for that bro'town video, I found another with Flight of the Conchords here. As Jemaine and Bret's accents never fail to crack me up, if you want to hear a fairly typical New Zealand accent, they're the way to go. And though Jemaine's accent IS slightly exaggerated, as Kiwis we do love it so.

...actually, I just realised that this is not only a perfect example of the Kiwi attitude towards Aussies, but actually has a bit of the slang above in it anyway. And yes, "mate, ya dreamin'!" has become a standard expression ever since.

Last edited by Clarice (05-21-2010 05:37:55 PM)