Tanith Belbin - sounds American...

As an English teacher, I pay very close attention to accents, and YES there is a WIDE variety of accents throughout the United States and Canada. In fact, in my state (Ohio), the accent changes from one end of the state to the other. If you can't tell difference in accent between someone from Ironton and someone from Toledo, you don't have ears!

FreeKatie said:

:think: Just wondering.... I know Tanith was born in Canada, but she has no trace of Canadian in her speech, she sounds very American so I was wondering, was she was raised in the US?

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What exactly do you consider Canadian in speech? Unless, Tanith hails from Quebec and has a French accent or from Newfoundland and has a "newfie" accent there is little to distinguish her from an American. She may have already dropped our famous, "eh" and is now coining the American, "huh." That is likely one of our top giveaways that we are from Canada. Otherwise - pretty much the same.

Ladskater said:

What exactly do you consider Canadian in speech? Unless, Tanith hails from Quebec and has a French accent or from Newfoundland and has a "newfie" accent there is little to distinguish her from an American. She may have already dropped our famous, "eh" and is now coining the American, "huh." That is likely one of our top giveaways that we are from Canada. Otherwise - pretty much the same.

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By Canadian speech I meant the way Kurt, Jamie Sale, the lady designer on "Divine Design" all sound - its different from the "generic" american accent (I don't mean the "eh" at the end of s sentence). There is a distinct accent in many canadians and Tanith doesn't have that accent - as I said and someone else said, she has the "generic american" type of accent. I was trying to think of some other canadians who have the generic american accent and Pam Anderson is one of them. Just wondering where Tanith grew up - it wasn't meant to be an insult but it seems like some people get a little touchy for some reason on the subject of accents!! O well.

We certainly have different accents throughout Canada, and from the U.S. I used to work in a call centre servicing American customers. A lot of them immediately noticed our Canadian accents. We don't actually say "aboot", but we do pronounce certain words differently.

The infamous "eh" is also not universally Canadian. I have a friend from Newfoundland who likes to make fun of everyone else in the office for using "eh".

Our French accent is also very different from that of France. Ours has more of a harsh sound, for lack of a better word.