The daughter (now an author) of an African American Professor

[mdmc]

was able to tell the color of the skin of any person that her mother (the African American Professor) was speaking to, based on her mother's tone / speech pattern.

[jaysunb]

1. Lots of us can identify with that...

Always been that way. I rarely speak to whites in the same manner as I do other Blacks. Just the way it is in America. :shrug:

[Staph]

2. I do the same thing as the mother.

I'm a white West Virginian, and I have very different speech patterns, different word choices, different pronunciations, when speaking to local friends and family than when speaking to those from outside the Appalachians. I used to tease my mother, who spoke "country" when talking to her family up in the mountains and "city" when she spoke in the college town where I grew up. But now I recognize that I do the same thing. And if most people were capable of objectively listening to themselves, they would hear the same thing in their own voices.

[mdmc]

4. yes

thanks for the reply..

[Odin2005]

3. I speak differently to fellow upper-midwesterners then I to to other people.

When talking to people that are not from around here I switch to a more "conservative Western" accent as opposed to my Northern City Vowel Shift influenced "Fargo" accent.