No accent at all?

Hi!

Welcome to "Brazilian accent at Stanford"! My name is Nikolas Iubel and I'm from Curitiba, the best city in Brazil! What, have you never heard of Curitiba? So take a look in the following picture and have a taste of the beautiful landscapes my city has to offer:

Botanical Garden in Curitiba. Personal photograph by author. 05 May. 2008.

Now that you have a (brief) idea of where I'm from, let me explain what's the purpose of "Brazilian accent at Stanford". This blog is meant to be a space where I'll share what I'm learning from this very challenging and stimulating Intro Seminar I'm now taking here at Stanford, called "What's your accent?" and conducted by professor Meghan Sumner.

Accents have called my attention since the very beginning of my on-campus Stanford experience. International New Student Orientation was an excellent definition of "diversity of accents". I could here English spoken by native Romanian, Chinese, Tanzanian, Argentinian, Indian, Singaporean, French, German people, and so on. And they could hear my Brazilian accent. By the way, what's this Brazilian accent? I always wondered how my English sounds to Americans. Do they notice I'm from abroad? If so, can they tell I'm from Brazil? In order to figure it out, our professor asked us to fill out a quiz called "What American accent do you have?". My results are as follows:

What American accent do you have? Your Result: The Midland "You have a Midland accent" is just another way of saying "you don't have an accent." You probably are from the Midland (Pennsylvania, southern Ohio, southern Indiana, southern Illinois, and Missouri) but then for all we know you could be from Florida or Charleston or one of those big southern cities like Atlanta or Dallas. You have a good voice for TV and radio.
The Northeast
The Inland North
The West
Boston
The South
Philadelphia
North Central
What American accent do you have? Quiz Created on GoToQuiz

So it seems I have no accent at all. I'd say that it might be due the way I learned English. I've never lived in the USA before and never studied in an American school as well. In other words, I learned English at school and in English courses. Therefore, I've been mostly in touch with what people call "standard English" or English with no regional accent. I guess this "standard English" that's being taught in English courses (at least in Brazil) matches this description of "Midland accent".

Consequently, I'd probably agree with this result, if it wasn't for what happened to me last Thursday. I went to the bookstore and when I was at the checkout the cashier said: "You have a nice accent. Where are you from?".

Well, isn't the quiz so accurate then? I'd argue that this is one of those situations when theory differs from real life (and probably this quiz is not based in any kind of scientific methodology). Anyway, even though the quiz might not be as precise as we wanted it to be, its results are still valuable, since they are not far from reality. My efforts are to speak this standard English I've been learning for years and in this sense the quiz is indeed accurate. Am I ready to achieve this goal or now that I'm living in California I'll start speaking as Californians? By the way, how is the Californian accent?

What's your opinion, dear reader?

All the best,
Nikolas Iubel