my accent?

I talked in a really high, whispery voice all growing up. In college, I was friends with a psychology major who diagnosed this as a some kind of weird coping mechanism from childhood trauma. Who knows. I grew out of it. I met Roger, got more confident and happy, and started talking in my "real" voice.


Living in Bahrain, when I go to Toys R Us, they profile you with your nationality, age, etc. They always enter European instead of American. (They also think I am ancient- so maybe I shouldn't put too much weight on this).  I've been asked where I'm from frequently and the first guess is always Canadian or "somewhere in Europe?"


I think it is because a lot of the Americans here are oil workers from Texas, Navy personnel from the South or bankers from the East Coast. I have a West Coast accent for sure- which I like to think of as a non-accent. It is more relaxed, more open and friendly, more like Canada without the weird about and eh.


My daughter was starting to get a slangy country accent before we moved here. She said things like her bike got jacked, or somebody "stolled" it. With a little Spanglish thrown in for good measure- thanks to her amigas.


Now that we have been here three years, my son is coming home asking for help buttoning his trousers, asking for ta-MAH-to soup and coloring ZEB-ras for the letter "zed". He is four and this is adorable!


In the meantime, my daughter cannot speak a sentence without a "yanni" which is like a Bahraini- "you know", "kind of", "like" or "so" speech filler as far as I can tell? It is also pretty cute.


We had friends from Texas that sent their kids to a British school here and they had the cutest mixed up accents I ever did hear!