posted on September 19, 2000 02:58:36 PM new
Whilst the principle language of communication on these boards is English the diversity of accents used when speaking English is staggering.
Your vocalisation of the language will often identify you to others as to where you hail from and even more unfortunately, tag you with some sort of "social" status.
Within England itself one persons accent can be very different to anothers from localities within a few miles of each other.
In America a Southern gal's accent is totally different from say a New Yorker!
Although the language has an essentially common thread, how has this immense diversity of accent and idiom come about?
Also, are there accents of spoken English that you enjoy hearing and conversely others that make you cringe?
posted on September 19, 2000 03:04:43 PM new
Hi bitsandbobs--isn't that the absolute kick of this board and others like it? Our thoughts and ideas are not sullied by a local dialect or inflection. It is words--pure words and ideas--that we convey and read. There can be no inflection read into the words unless some colloquial usage slips in--yunz agree?
posted on September 19, 2000 03:09:41 PM new
While this doesn't answer the question, I've been told more than once that I have an unidentifiable accent. I attribute that lack to absorbing the local accents of wherever we lived at the time and incorporating all of them into my everyday speech.
As for annoying accents, the flat, nasal Boston accent is like fingernails on a chalkboard for me.
posted on September 19, 2000 03:21:03 PM new
bitsandbobs: When I went thru Yorkshire in the UK, there was mutual incomprehension. My favorite idioms and accents in English are West Indies, especially Dominica and Montserrat.
In Spanish, Castilian Spanish sometimes has me ROTFL. Cinzano, por favor. Some Portenos of Buenos Aires have a strange idiom where syllables of words are reversed- cafe is feca.
My accent in German was unspeakable. ROTFLAO is putting it kindly.
[ edited by snowyegret on Sep 19, 2000 03:36 PM ]
posted on September 19, 2000 03:40:34 PM new
The first week after I moved from Jersey to California, I was calling around to some temp agencies to get a line on a job. One of the women I spoke with asked me what part of Jersey I was from and all I had told her was my name and what I was looking for! I have since gradually lost most of my accent (except for a few choice words), but it has been fun talking to people who are now new out here and being able to figure out where they hail from. And it only takes a week or so vacation back home in order to get that accent back!
That question about accents that make you cringe reminds me of an old NY joke. A man is interviewing a native New Yorker and asking him about Southern accents and how he felt about them. The New Yorker replied (in his own thick dialect), "Geesh, I hate doze accents. It makes dem sound so stoopid."
posted on September 19, 2000 04:27:12 PM new
When I first moved to Boston (grew up in Buffalo, spent 7 years in VT), I actually couldn't understand my blue-collar coworkers for a couple months.
Boston's unusual too in that it also has an accent hierarchy and area-to-area accent changes: there's a huge difference between, say, Dorchester, Chelsea and Brookline (all within 6 subway stops of each other), and you get pegged accordingly. (Chelsea is a major consumer of Final Net Super Ultra Hold hairspray. I'm not making that up. There really is a "super extra ultra hold" formula. For you Brits, Chelsea is the Bostonian equivalent of Essex in every conceivable manner.)
bitsandbobs, I think the regional difference in language outside England is a result of what other cultures it rubbed against. Buffalo is mostly Polish and German, and is right on the Canadian border; accents there are not unlike that of both Toronto and Minneapolis (think Jesse Ventura) - long, round "o", flayaht "a", and in older folks, a sort of Lawrence Welkian sing-songiness. Most of the South was originally populated by Scots-Irish, and not surprisingly the cadence of language here in Dixie isn't dissimilar to Maine and New Hampshire, which areas were first settled by people from Dorset/Devon/Cornwall (who themselves sound like pirates to me).
I wince at the screeching flat vowels of Chicagoans (sound like a piece of sheet metal being dragged on a gravel driveway) and at the tortured acrobatics of Australian English, and despite my understanding of the accent's history, sigh inwardly whenever anybody here in Pensacola says "aynk pin" (that's "ink pen" - you have to say "aynk" to differentiate from any other kind of "pin" adn "pen" including safety and pig). My best friend in Dorchester, who's got several years of Latin, persists in calling members of the equine family "husses" (horses). But I'm sure they sound as fine to themselves as I do to me.
Favorite accent? Welsh, which is funny because at least in the north English isn't even the official language
[ edited by HartCottageQuilts on Sep 19, 2000 04:28 PM ]
posted on September 19, 2000 06:07:28 PM new
Accents never make me wince, though grammar has I was born in Southern California & have never lived anyplace else. Oddly enough, I am often asked if I am from New York! This strikes me as very strange as I sound nothing at all like a New Yorker. I have been a heavy reader all my life and have especially enjoyed English literature & novels which have added odd bits & pieces to my vocabulary which sometimes get me startled looks In grade school I had a heated argument with my 5th grade teacher one day over spelling--British spellings of some words seemed natural to me as I had been reading a lot of British authors even at that age
Accents I especially like are British accents of *all* kinds, and Southern.
posted on September 19, 2000 06:14:19 PM new
I am told I have an accent but I just don't hear it. I used to have a job where I talked to people from all over USA. Man in MA once put me on speaker so the other's in the office could hear my accent (go figure)
But I also called a man who I knew would not be there so we could listen to his answering machine. He was Australian!
I guess my all time fav is Cajun! It is just mesmerising but don't know why!
posted on September 19, 2000 06:57:13 PM new
Well, herrre in NooYawk, we rrrrroll our rrr's a lot. And then on Lawn Guyland (Geez, I hate that!), if you are from the South Shore, you sound a little (maybe a lot)like Billy Joel. If you come from the North Shore, especially the North Fork, you have mild-Kennedy-like Mass. accent.
Out east in the Hamptons, you are either a displaced summer-time resident-only-Manhattan-ite, who tawks hi-falutin', or else you are a "Bonaker", who is an original Hamptonite, and lives off the sea. (Think Down East Alexa.)
Then there is Queens and Brooklyn....sigh!
posted on September 19, 2000 11:49:41 PM new
There is a part of the country where it's not so much the accent but the grammar and phrases that just drive me crazy. It makes them sound so illiterate.
I'm not going to say what part of the country because I really don't want to offend anyone. After all it's normal to them and some people actually think it's cute.
posted on September 20, 2000 12:12:37 AM newI wince at the screeching flat vowels of Chicagoans (sound like a piece of sheet metal being dragged on a gravel driveway)
HCQ, I resemble that remark!
I grew up just north of Chicago.
Speaking of sheet metal, the first day on the job after we moved to Oklahoma, I stared blankly at my boss for quite some time until I realized she was not talking about sheet metal, but was saying the number that comes after nine.
posted on September 20, 2000 04:12:09 PM new
HCQ - I grew up in the next town over from Chelsea!!! That whole area suffers from Aqua Net abuse, I know. Even though I can now say that I've kicked that habit, I had big hair for years!!! As for that whole 6 "T" stops and 6 different accents concept, you are 100% on the money. I went to Boston College for Grad School and sitting on the green line from Hay-MAH-ket all the way to Riverside was quite the treat!!! Now I'm homesick.
posted on September 20, 2000 04:54:11 PM new
Accents can be very sexy. I'll never be able to go to Scotland because I'd have to sleep with every Scottish man who spoke to me... LOL just kidding!
posted on September 20, 2000 06:34:36 PM newRainy Bear: I know what you mean. I was ankling in to Popeye's for a healthy meal of grease when a British soldier scurried ahead of me, grabbed the door, and said, "Let me get that for you, luv."
