131–140 of 175 posts
I always thought that northern New England was the closest to the original English. Why else would we subject ourselves to such ridicule from the rest of the country?
New England was settled by a different group of English than various parts of the South. Therefore the dialects were already different before they came here.
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Speaking with "no accent" is the same like not speaking in a dialect: it means you speak the dialect which has become the "official" one.
No, everyone has an accent. They just think that they have a "neutral" accent, because that's the way they expect everybody should talk. Actually, if you record your voice, you will find that your spoken voice has a slight accent, while your "inner voice" (the one you use to compose emails) has no accent. This is because talking to yourself sounds different, due to the acoustics of your head and ears (or whatever).
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No, everyone has an accent. They just think that they have a "neutral" accent, because that's the way they expect everybody should talk. Actually, if you record your voice, you will find that your spoken voice has a slight accent, while your "inner voice" (the one you use to compose emails) has no accent. This is because talking to yourself sounds different, due to the acoustics of your head and ears (or whatever).
Even southern Californians? We're the only ones I've met who seem to speak 'by the book' as far as I can tell. No noticable, random infections. Every word pronounced like the dictionary says it should be. Not talking about "valley speak," which no one uses anyway now.
I think the fact that Socal has become the defacto American accent via TV may be distracting you.
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Even southern Californians? We're the only ones I've met who seem to speak 'by the book' as far as I can tell. No noticable, random infections. Every word pronounced like the dictionary says it should be. Not talking about "valley speak," which no one uses anyway now.
Southern California definitely has an accent. I live here and I can hear the natives. I think the fact that Socal has become the defacto American accent via TV may be distracting you.
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Try being a Brit without an accent. It's so bloody boring I have to fake the Queens English to get laid. ;)
Enlighten me, what's the the British accent popular in movies like Football Factory, Human Traffic etc. which I find cool; while every Brit I've met in my life had this 'royal' accent I personally don't find understandable (sorry, no offence)? Actors of international-targetted movies use some other accent for a certain effect? Also, once I've met a guy AFAIR south London or sth, he spoke that his wife told me even mo…
They will be London accents; of which there is quite a broad range anyway. It can be a pretty strong accent.
* while every Brit I've met in my life had this 'royal' accent I personally don't find understandable*
Queens English should be pretty understandable; so it might not be what you've heard (the whole point of it is precise pronunciation and erudition). "Normal" baseline English can vary quite a lot; down in the south they tend to clip words (my mother does this) and, if speaking quickly, it can be hard to follow.
We also have a tendancy to mumble :)
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'll' is not equivalent to 'y' in standard Spanish, although the confusion exists in some zones (not in Asturias, from where Villa is) and it's a decent approximation for a non-native speaker. As opposed to nearby romances, Spanish never distinguished between 'b' and 'v'. This is probably a Basque influence. There was a Roman pun[1] on these lines that said "beati Hispani quibus vivere bibere est" (blessed are the Spa…
Check that link, especially post #7 -- the pun is Renaissance era, not Roman. Can you shed more light on 'll' vs 'y'? In Mexico, at least, the two are similar enough that handmade signs frequently contain spelling errors confusing the two.
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'll' is not equivalent to 'y' in standard Spanish, although the confusion exists in some zones (not in Asturias, from where Villa is) and it's a decent approximation for a non-native speaker. As opposed to nearby romances, Spanish never distinguished between 'b' and 'v'. This is probably a Basque influence. There was a Roman pun[1] on these lines that said "beati Hispani quibus vivere bibere est" (blessed are the Spa…
Check that link, especially post #7 -- the pun is Renaissance era, not Roman. Can you shed more light on 'll' vs 'y'? In Mexico, at least, the two are similar enough that handmade signs frequently contain spelling errors confusing the two.
Read the last message in the thread:
(Quinto Horacio Flaco (65-8 B.C.), Latin poet)
Re: the confusion of 'll' and 'y' in Mexico and elsewhere:
Canada too! Their English speakers sound subtly more British than American. The New World-Old World divergence also applies to French speakers in Quebec. If you take their perfect French from Montreal to Paris, to the Parisians much of it sounds like an antiquated form of French. I suppose it's equivalent to the way King James or Shakespearean English sounds antiquated to us now.
That being said, one shouldn't be deceived into thinking that there is a single Canadian English dialect or accent -- we have a number of regional variants. The upper crust of both Ontario and Quebec (the former Upper and Lower Canada) both spoke with an essentially North American vocabulary and a "mid-Atlantic" accent (the sort of halfway meeting between RP and mid-American that, say, Deutche Welle would use for its English-language world news service). The lower classes in the same provinces were, like the American south, far more heavily influenced by Cornish, Kentish, Geordie, Scots and Scottish and Irish gaelic -- but without the black feedback loop. Nova Scotia has several accents, ranging from the heavily Gaelic Cape Breton to the German Lunenberg. Newfoundland "English" is a language of its own -- the accent is a Gaelic-heavy mix, but the grammar is very much Irish Gaelic. British Columbia speaks an odd mix of SoCal and Pacific Northwest with a tiny tinge of RP in the mix. Manitoba and Saskatchewan are essentially indistinguishable from rural Pennsylvania, but for an odd metre that leaked in from the local aboriginal languages. And, well, Alberta is a State at heart -- I don't think an American would have any difficulty picking out the new economic immigrants to that province from the natives in a sentence or two. There is a lot of overlap between political borders, of course, but there are several distinct regional dialects.
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show me the fuckin receipts. fewer linguistic influences? between the french, dutch, spanish, portuguese, central african, west african, native americans, and british there are very few places in the world that have such of an unique stew of languages. safire died but the knowledge of american language did not die with him. upheavels? thats another post. but lets refrain from throwing around ignorant barbs and passin…
angry poster is angry... immigration into the south is much less than the east/west coast, populations are still lower, less immigration, less languages, less influence?
I'd agree with the analysis that English is closer to how its spoken in the US today accent-wise. If you look at how people speak English in British colonies, the pronunciation isn't heavily accented to how its spoken in the UK today. For example, South Asia (India, Pakistan, Bangladesh).
I've heard more than a few Indians speak in an accent that very close to Scottish. Caribbean English accents also remind me of Scottish. I wonder if there were certain areas of the British Empire that had disproportionate Scottish influence.