Ok, as I posted a while back I’m training to become a voice actor. In a recent class we had a guest instructor, Michael Dobson. You may have heard of him he’s in a lot of various anime etc. (Transformers Energon/Armada for example) and he told us that since the largest audience for North American cartoons and translated anime that we would have to lose our Canadian accents. I have to learn to talk like an American from the midwest. Call me ignorant but I have no idea what a midwestern American sounds like. Care to laugh at my loss of identity/give me any examples of a midwestern accent. (As in actors etc. that have one?)
midwestern accent… we don’t really have one. we are more or less neutral in that regard.
I have no clue what that accent is, maybe like Tom Brokaw (sp)? . <—From midwest.
we tend to speak somewhat slowly, but the main thing about the so called midwest accent is that it is close to being more of less the lack of an accent.
Mid-Westerners sound just like Candians. Except that the further south you go, the less they say “Eh,” “ya,” and “aboot.” I think the way midwesterners pronounce the “a” sound is different too.
depends on whether you want city talk or country talk. City talk has proper use of vowels, country talk tends to turn them in to “uh” sounds.
Wisconsin der eh?
I’m from muhzurruh, and that’s about as midwest as you can get
We have the “Where The Hell Are You From?” accent.
Just devoid your speech of any accents whatsoever, slice down entire sentences into one word (Yeah, No, Maybe, Whatever, etc.), and there you have it. 
lol, Mid-Westerners have an accent, and you don’t even realize it!
pretty much. It’s hard to describe something that’s existance is proven by the absence of common things.
Ehh, accent changes in places due to cultural influence. We don’t have much culture here. 
lol. I’ll have to see if I can record some buddies of mine… the best way to imitate something is to hear the real thing… or something
Heh. We don’t have one. That’s it. To the north, we sound slow. To the south, we sound like we talk fast.
For the most part, the Mid Western American accent is an accent distinctly North American but devoid of any regional identity past that. Everyone knows the Boston, New York, Southern Drawl, and whatnot accents. They can identify the region. But if you meet someone with a Mid Western American accent, you won’t know if that person comes from Indiana, metro Atlanta, Texas, or even California (you Californians that I met really sound like everyone I talk to, minus a couple of distinct Southern pronunciations that I know of). I would say that if you see anyone on television or in the movies, and you cannot place the accent, that person probably has the MWA acccent.
As I recall, in the chat one time, Vorpy was going on and on about that accent. He mentioned something about those with the MWA accent pronounce cot and caught the same way. You might want to ask him about it.
At least, I think those are the characteristics of the MWA. I don’t think the Wiscahnsin accent would be the main American accent.
I know that you pronounce your O’s strangely, like if you say pop it tends to come out as pap.
“I know that you pronounce your O’s strangely, like if you say pop it tends to come out as pap.”
“Those with the MWA accent pronounce cot and caught the same way.”
No, here in the Midwest, pop is not pap and cot is not caught. We pronounce things more or less by the American dictionary, with a couple exceptions. For instance, words like “writing” and “riding” sound different: “ruh-ee-ding” versus “rah-ee-ding”–but that’s not so important. The easy guideline is, a Midwestern accent is what you usually hear on American TV.
yep, turn on the news and youll hear a midwestern accent. however, i’ve never pronounced “riding” like ruh ee ding in my life. infact, i pronounce it as two syllables and im willing to bet the majority of midwesterners on here do as well.
Obviously “riding” is two syllables; and I said it’s pronounced “rah-ee-ding”, not “ruh-ee-ding”. I was showing that the first syllable (which has two vowel sounds, if you listen closely–hence “rah-ee”) is slightly different between “riding” and “writing”.
Only difference I hear between riding and writing is rye-ding versus rye-ting.