Pity really. Because it would come in real handy when you’ve just innocently asked a lady “When are you expecting?”, when she isn’t even pregnant.
Or after you’ve just tripped up that Boss You Hate after a night of drinking, and he’s fallen face first into a smelly pile of black rubbish bags.

Or after you’ve written in your online journal, describing (incorrectly, it transpires) other people’s accents.

It turns out that to compare someone to Princess Di is actually culturally offensive to English people, for some reason. So, Shannon, I take it back. You really sound more like Dawn French. :)
(But I liked Princess Di…!)

And, in other accent-related news, last night I was having this freaky nightmare about Golfwidow shaming me on her site for saying she had an “American-Jewish accent going on”.

Then I woke and my pillow was gone.
And then I visited her site and discovered IT WASN’T A DREAM, she really had Taken Me To Task (but in a humorous way).

Apparently the “Jewish-American accent” I thought she had, has nothing to do with being Jewish-American at all. That’s just how everyone in New York talks, I'm informed. Her accent, she says, is “Connecticut broadcaster with postnasal drip”.

My apologies. :) I blame my Television Upbringing. But I am glad for the accent education, and I was happy to get the chance to speak to a real American. As opposed to all the ones I thought were yanks, but turned out to be Canadian.
(Golf Widow sez that’s OK, cos Canadians are simply Americans “whose money isn’t worth as much”).

*To my many friends in/from "Canadia" – I fiercely deny rumours that I laughed very hard indeed at that comment.*

I, more than anyone, understands the frustration of having people get your accent wrong. Idiots are always confusing my Kiwi accent for Australian, South African or “a drunken retard”.
(D-Man Bites Dog would like to apologise in advance for any drunken retards he might have inadvertently offended).

Now whenever I’m travelling and someone goes “Hey buddy, what’s that accent you got there?”, I simply reply: “Accent?! What accent?! YOU’RE the one with an accent!”.

(At least there was someone I was able to successfully give a vocal compliment to yesterday. Radiogurl put some audio on her site so readers could hear what she sounds like, and she likes that I said she had a great radio voice.)