During the last week of June, 2009, I took a real vacation. I planned a trip for a specific purpose all for myself. The last time I did something like this was shortly after my divorce, when I went to... Read more >>

When I was in acting school in New York, we were required to take speech classes to perfect our voice and diction skills. Part of the coursework involved learning the “standard American”... Read more >>

If you have a foreign accent, you probably have a love/hate relationship with it. On one hand, you know that your accent is a part of who you are and points back to your country of origin, a place you... Read more >>

She hadn’t noticed him before either, but with all this talking it was hard to see. He seemed younger than her, but it was hard to say for sure. He was rather square and somewhat... Read more >>

America is a big country, and our size, along with our diversity, means a wide variation in our regional accents. That’s a beautiful thing in theory, but the accents themselves aren’t... Read more >>

Most of the time, it takes someone about 0.2 seconds to ask me where I’m from after I open my mouth and say a few words. For some reason, my accent immediately signals that I’m not from... Read more >>

As if dating shows couldn’t get any worse, there’s a new one called Dating in the Dark. Maybe you’ve heard about it. Three men and three women court each other in a pitch-black room... Read more >>