Accents

[TheWinterSnow]

What?? I think anyone who speaks English would notice that difference immediately.

Not really. On the level of phonetics, the west coast in general but hugely California received its accent from Midwestern farmers when they immigrated here as a result of bankruptcy after the 1st world war. Linguists that have studied the divergence of the two regions spent abut 20 year until they could even remotely find anything different. Even now the majority of the differences are the choice of words as vocabulary is the biggest differentiator for the region someone is from if they have the generic "Midwestern" accent that the vast majority of Americans have. If someone from the UK wasn't familiar with out vocabulary, it would probably take them a lot of time to figure out where they might be from.

Don't believe, look it up, I know people that currently live around the great lakes area, family in the Midwest and I go to school with student and instructors from the same areas, plus there are many famous rock and metal bands from those regions that have done interviews, and they sound no different that anyone from ol' Cali.

U have been working around people from the Ft. Worth area. Texan accents stand out like a sore thumb.

Yeah, I'd be willing to bet cash you've mistaken Englishmen for Irishmen, Scotsmen and such before and not even known it.

the terms used are generally never used this side of the pond, nor have I ever heard the term English for someone from England. We are Americans, when are we ever politically correct? When we say British over here we mean English. It may be incorrect but I'd rather not have to explain it to someone every time I say English or Englishmen so I just go with the status quo and at times forget that it is technically incorrect. Again, a regional part of speech.

 

[timislegend]

dudes = brookline/boston, mass. (jfk)

girls = estonian

 

[Terminus]

No British accent. Doesn't exist.



Yeah, I'd be willing to bet cash you've mistaken Englishmen for Irishmen, Scotsmen and such before and not even known it.

for some reason I thought of this scene after your post:

 

[MarcusGHedwig]

brookline/boston, mass. (jfk)

Ah, right, thank you for reminding me of another one I despise

 

[JeffTD]

Not really. On the level of phonetics, the west coast in general but hugely California received its accent from Midwestern farmers when they immigrated here as a result of bankruptcy after the 1st world war. Linguists that have studied the divergence of the two regions spent abut 20 year until they could even remotely find anything different. Even now the majority of the differences are the choice of words as vocabulary is the biggest differentiator for the region someone is from if they have the generic "Midwestern" accent that the vast majority of Americans have. If someone from the UK wasn't familiar with out vocabulary, it would probably take them a lot of time to figure out where they might be from.

Don't believe, look it up, I know people that currently live around the great lakes area, family in the Midwest and I go to school with student and instructors from the same areas, plus there are many famous rock and metal bands from those regions that have done interviews, and they sound no different that anyone from ol' Cali.

Sorry dude, still majorly disagree. Aren't you the one who self-admittedly hasn't traveled outside of CA?

My mom grew up in Chicago, my dad in Milwaukee. I have family in both areas and have spent way more time than I care to around both. When the three sides of the family (California, Chicago, Milwaukee) are all together, like they were for my sisters wedding in March, it was painfully obvious as to who was from where. It's not based on vernacular or vocabulary, but on how they pronounce words. If anything, they'd have a hard time discerning a Milwaukan from a Canuck - are you going to tell me Californians sound exactly like Canadians?

 

[egan.]

Aye yeah, that's just the "dumb Californian slut" accent.

Yeah, that is the upper-middle class white girl accent. As heard in every college, Nordstroms, apple store and Jetta in the US.

 

[Mattayus]

Creole, love it.

 

[TheWinterSnow]

Sorry dude, still majorly disagree. Aren't you the one who self-admittedly hasn't traveled outside of CA?

My mom grew up in Chicago, my dad in Milwaukee. I have family in both areas and have spent way more time than I care to around both. When the three sides of the family (California, Chicago, Milwaukee) are all together, like they were for my sisters wedding in March, it was painfully obvious as to who was from where. It's not based on vernacular or vocabulary, but on how they pronounce words. If anything, they'd have a hard time discerning a Milwaukan from a Canuck - are you going to tell me Californians sound exactly like Canadians?

If you really think that people who grew up and live in that area don't sound different from Californians, you either have terrible ears or questionable discerning skills.

we are talking about eh difference between people picking up an accent vs no picking it up. The main California accent is Chicano, not everyone has it, but some do and the level of thickness changes from person to person. Chicano is very similar to the northern vowel shift which has reached all of the states by now at this point.

http://www.hdrkid.com/great_vowel_shift.htm

The phonology of NCS and Chicano actually shows that the similar vowel shifts are taking place amongst each other, however, as they are shifting, are becoming further off from people that do not have a vowel shift to begin with.

The actual shift itself revolves around the shortening of vowels and compensating other long vowels for the space in the mouth resulting in the shortened vowels.

Stanford has done a study on such shifts:

http://www.stanford.edu/~eckert/vowels.html

Tensing

Two phonemes, /ɪ/ and /æ/, have allophones that are fairly widely spread apart from each other: before /ŋ/, /ɪ/ is raised to and, as mentioned above, may even be identified with the phoneme /i/. In other contexts, /ɪ/ has a fairly open pronunciation, as indicated in the vowel chart above. /æ/ is raised and diphthongized to [eə] or [ɪə] before nasal consonants (a shift reminiscent of, but more restricted than, non-phonemic æ-tensing in the Inland North); before /ŋ/ it may be identified with the phoneme /e/.

The first sound change in the shift, which was identified in the Northern states as early as the 1960s by Fasold,[2] was the general raising, tensing, and lengthening of the "short a", that is, the vowel of cat: IPA /æ/. Inland Northern /æ/ comes to be articulated so that the tongue starts from a position that is higher and fronter than it used to be, and then often glides back toward the center of the mouth, thus producing a centering diphthong of the type [ɛə] or [eə] or at its most extreme [ɪə], which is the vowel heard in England in words like pier and beer[citation needed]. Thus cat and that as pronounced by a Rochesterian may sound like "kee-at" and "thee-at" to a visitor.

The raising of /æ/ leaves an empty space in low front position that allows /ɑ/ to be fronted in the direction of [a]. /ɑ/ was the vowel in Great Lakes residents' pronunciation of both cot and father, often called "short o" (or "broad a"). Therefore, /ɑ/ comes to be pronounced farther forward in the mouth, similar to the vowel of car as pronounced in Boston; for some advanced speakers, it may be close or even identical to [æ]—that is, the vowel of cat for speakers without the shift.

The fronting of /ɑ/ leaves a blank space in Northerners' pronunciation that is filled by lowering /ɔ/ (the "aw" vowel, as in saw), which comes to be pronounced with the tongue in a lower position, closer to [ɑ]. As a result, people affected by the shift may pronounce stalk the way speakers without the shift say stock. However, in other regions where such a lowering occurs, it results in the cot-caught merger

It is also worth mentioning that vowel shift are picked up by younger generation, but still not by everyone. Not everyone in California speaks Chicano either and if they all did, I would should myself.

It doesn't take much time to realize that there is a general American accent with some regions having groups of people that cling on to some sort of vowel shift.

because this is a music forum, it would be appropriate to post musician interviews.








and just for thrown in measure, throw in former Cleveland Mayor Dennis Kucinich



I am pretty sure that for all of those guys, that every non American couldn't tell which state they where from if they do not know where any of them were from, as the differences in their speech is while there to a degree, pretty difficult to distinguish.

 

[Skinny Viking]

...and Jetta in the US.

I thought I was alone in noticing this

 

[JeffTD]

derp derp derp derp derp

You're making this entirely too complicated - we're talking about accents, specifically CA vs Chicago - you've just a ton of examples of people without accents; just the general American amalgamation of voices that's ended up with virtually no distinguishable accent besides "American."

People from the midwest pronounce O's and A's completely differently than Californians:

-Chi-cah-go vs Chi-caw-go
-Mil-wah-kee vs Mil-woh-kee
-dat-com vs dot-com
-dah-ler vs daw-ler

etc, etc, etm.

It get's way strong as you go further north - people from Green Bay, WI will have a far more noticeable accent than someone from Springfield, IL.

People from the midwest like to claim that they have no accent, just like people from California. It's the same accent for the most part, but there's that key difference in the O's and A's, and sometimes with Th's.

You can cite all the statistical data about Chicano accents and northern vowel shifts, but CA vs midwest is an obvious difference that anyone who has been to both areas of the country should pick up without any issue at all, and that anyone who is familiar with one and hears the other should notice, as well.

 

[TheDriller]

Hmm, I guess my thing is the Dublin accent, as when I think of cool accent I think of Damien Rice and he grew up about 20km west from Dublin.

Not really a typical Dublin accent at all, more of a Posh Bastard accent.

this taxi driver here is proper Dublin
[ame]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dnfgux7IiyA&feature=related[/ame]

 

[HCL]

WinterSnow, are you seriously telling me that those two videos I posted sound similar to each other, or 'British' as you know it? Fine if you don't like the stereotypical British accent, I personally despise it because it's destroying the accents I grew up with.

Just don't make a sweeping statement that anyone with a British accent sounds like they're fat, lazy and have a mouth full of cock without qualifying it with 'I am willingly ignorant'.

 

[TheWinterSnow]

WinterSnow, are you seriously telling me that those two videos I posted sound similar to each other, or 'British' as you know it? Fine if you don't like the stereotypical British accent, I personally despise it because it's destroying the accents I grew up with.

sound similar? Yes. The same? Not quite. Like I said the more you move around england the more the accent changes, but from ears that aren't native to the UK, there are a lot of vowels and other parts of speech that are difficult to distinguish from one part of the england to the next and if you aren't used to hearing the general accent frequently, you aren't as sensitive to the differences.

you've just a ton of examples of people without accents; just the general American amalgamation of voices that's ended up with virtually no distinguishable accent besides "American."

People without accents when most of them are native to the great lakes area and grew up there for either most if not all of their lives. The only thing distinguishable is the general American accent.

People from the midwest pronounce O's and A's completely differently than Californians:

It get's way strong as you go further north - people from Green Bay, WI will have a far more noticeable accent than someone from Springfield, IL.

It works just like California, there is a standard regional accent, but not everyone talks that way. I won't deny the way O's and A's are pronounced by some people of every region of this country. The percentage of people that speak that way is usually for the most part majority and the thickness of those accents vary from everything in between. All i was saying that for the average person in any region in the US, that it would take some time (if at all) for a European to detect exactly where that person is from unless they are saying some shit like, "pahk the cah oveh there around the 'black'", (and you still have to ask, is this person from Boston or Chicago) then it would be obvious, but not everyone in those regions have overbearingly thick accents like that. Usually they are more mild and subtle, which like I said, to untrained ears would sound either close to identical or indistinguishable.

People from the midwest like to claim that they have no accent, just like people from California. It's the same accent for the most part, but there's that key difference in the O's and A's, and sometimes with Th's.

Not "no accent", just either a subtle to no deviation on the generalized American accent. Small differences here and there, and then some regions having thicker deviations. Historically speaking though, the modern generalized american accent is the result of the form of speech regional to the Midwest, so for the most part, that is the reference point to most other regional accents relative to the "American" accent.

anyone who has been to both areas of the country should pick up without any issue at all, and that anyone who is familiar with one and hears the other should notice, as well.

I couldn't agree more, I was referring to any English speaker that hasn't been directly exposed to the regional speech of any state (foreigners) would have difficulty distinguishing accents unless the accent was extreme.

 

[narcossintese]

Where is Milla Jovovich accent from? She doesn´t answer on the video... I know she´s from Ukraine, but I´m not sure if this is the "russian accent"
[ame]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=biDEI8j9pCg&feature=channel[/ame]

Anyway, I love it.

 

[ratsapprentice]

/Thread

The most irritating accent I have ever heard.
Thick Irish accent mixed with southern American (dunno which state/city, just southern) accent
Horrendous

 

[Uros]

Where is Milla Jovovich accent from? She doesn´t answer on the video... I know she´s from Ukraine, but I´m not sure if this is the "russian accent"

She is born in Ukraine, but her father is from Serbia, and mother is from Russia. She speaks both languages, Serbian and Russian, along with English. She spent the biggest part of her childhood in USA, in California. That's all I know.

 

[colonel kurtz]

i'm totally with jeff on this one. as someone who grew up in cali, and lives in indiana, i can tell you that there tends to be a huge difference in the way people from the different areas sound. now, while many people from the midwest will have the same sort of just "regular" american english accents, there's tons of people around who have come up from KY/TN and sport disgusting-ass redneck accents - way more than you would think for a place that's about 200 mi. from canada.

then of course there's the chicago/NW IN accent, which sounds like nothing else...and as you get up into wisconsin/minnesota/etc., damn near everyone gets that sort of canadian sounding, hokey ass thing going on. the company i work for is based out of wisconsin, and you can hear this in every person who comes down from our corporate office, or in any kind of training video and the such.

not that any of this really matters...but yea. there's definitely differences between the way most people in the midwest and people in CA will sound...but on that end, norcal peeps can sometimes sound totally different from those in socal

 

[roy22341]

I've been told after moving to Louisiana that I have a Pennsylvania accent, didn't know there was such a thing.

 

[colonel kurtz]

...and a rastafarian in london once told me i had a canadian accent =/

 

[JeffTD]

I couldn't agree more, I was referring to any English speaker that hasn't been directly exposed to the regional speech of any state (foreigners) would have difficulty distinguishing accents unless the accent was extreme.

The problem is that 90% of English-speaking foreigners will be familiar with what is more or less the Californian version of the American accent as a result of the TV and movies we export - I really think they could tell the difference. I definitely remember my partner in the German exchange program I did in HS commenting on how retarded my grandparents sounded, and they were born/raised in Milwaukee and still live there.

norcal peeps can sometimes sound totally different from those in socal

Yeah bro they sound hella sav, all day just finna get hyphy!