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A New Accent Is Developing in Southwest Kansas

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Re: A New Accent Is Developing in Southwest Kansas

#91

Post by basch »

jdietrich wrote: post #79
ilamont wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The movie "Hot Fuzz" played up variations in regional accents in England. There's a scene (1) where the London cop (Simon Pegg) has to use two rural cops in order to interpret the dialect of an old farmer. 1. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cun-LZvOTdw

That scene is only a slight exaggeration. Rural West Country accents can be almost totally unintelligible to users of standard English. https://youtu.be/WjTIFkWJctY?t=40s

and Robert Newton can be thanked for turning it into the pirate voice.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Newton

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/West_Country_English#Social_st...

Re: A New Accent Is Developing in Southwest Kansas

#93

Post by dghughes »

baxtr wrote: post #6
exabrial wrote: post #5

Ah, an article about my home state. It's worth pointing out how isolated this town is... Interstate doesn't even run through that part of the state, and the nearest 'big city' is hours away.

Isolation is probably an important factor for the development of an accent

Definitely. I live in Atlantic Canada we're quite isolated from Canada plus geographically it's difficult to move between the provinces.

On top of that my province is an island, rural, small population, lots of isolated towns, farms and fishing towns. For an island of only 150,000 and 170km long I can easily spot dialects from other parts of the island.

Broadly speaking west is more French and east is more English. Add in Irish, Scottish, Dutch, Lebanese, First Nations and now more recently Chinese.

At least 50% of the population lives in the capital city region so the remaining rural areas are quite small in population and isolated. Cars have changed a lot of that but in the olden days horse and buggy meant a few days between towns, add more time in the winter.

We have the inhale yes sound which is fairly rare. I'm not sure what other unique terms or patterns are here but out isolation certainly has made this area of Canada unique language-wise.

Re: A New Accent Is Developing in Southwest Kansas

#94

Post by drb91 »

toomanybeersies wrote: post #25

Does anyone else find the whole 'Latinx' thing nonsensical? I understand the reasoning, it's about being gender neutral. But why don't they just knock the vowel off the end and just say 'Latin'?

Probably because people don’t use “Latin” to describe themselves; people use “Latinx”.

Re: A New Accent Is Developing in Southwest Kansas

#95

Post by JoeAltmaier »

corpMaverick wrote: post #82
toomanybeersies wrote: post #25

Does anyone else find the whole 'Latinx' thing nonsensical? I understand the reasoning, it's about being gender neutral. But why don't they just knock the vowel off the end and just say 'Latin'?

It is nonsensical to me. Latino is a Spanish short cut for Latinoamericano or Latinoamericana. The anglicized version would be Latinamerican or just Latin. So they add the gender, Latino or Latina, and then renege it using Latinx. Why adding the gender in the first place?

Because 'sense' and 'language' don't often overlap.

Long ago, 'woman' was 'wifman' which meant something like 'one's wife'. And 'wif' meant 'spouse', gender neutral.

Now try to convince anybody today, that 'woman' can mean either partner in a marriage. Its not used, today, anywhere close to that meaning. Nobody will be on board.

We've got to move ahead from where we are, not where we're 'supposed to be' by anybody's rules.

Re: A New Accent Is Developing in Southwest Kansas

#96

Post by mc32 »

jdietrich wrote: post #86
arethuza wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I grew up in a small fishing village in the north of Scotland - an area notorious for its very strong accents (to the point of some documentaries filmed locally having to be subtitled in English!). However, people who lived on farms spoke with a noticeably different accent (at least to the ears of locals) - even though they might be physically on a kilometer or two from the nearest village. NB This was in the 70s - I…

Communication technology has undoubtedly had an effect on the Scots language, but I think that education is a far bigger factor. For generations, children have been taught exclusively in English and chastised for using Scots. Like Welsh and Cornish, Scots was a victim of linguistic imperialism.

I think at times it’s difficult to separate imperialism from economic dominance. Sometimes these things are due to economic might (for example Brazilian Portuguese is more influential than peninsular Portuguese, however, Brazil is hardly the imperialist in this scenario)

Is it imperialism or economic influence which might make an edinburger accent more prevalent in Scotland?

Re: A New Accent Is Developing in Southwest Kansas

#97

Post by CodeCube »

KAMSPioneer wrote: post #74

Whoa, I never thought an article about Liberal would be on HN. I'm a Liberal, KS resident since about 2005, and now that I think about it...people here do have a kind of unique accent, but I don't know if it's really as striking as the article makes it out to be. I don't know, maybe I've just gotten used to it. I was shocked when I opened the article and saw our welcome sign. Hahaha

fwiw, I grew up in Miami, and I 100% thought that me and my friends did not have an accent of any kind whatsoever ... because for whatever reason, there weren't really a lot of people born and raised in miami in popular media (at least that I was aware of, days before Pitbull, etc).

Well, I moved away to central florida (very different demographics) at 17 ... and it wasn't until a few years later when I went back to visit, that I realized just how distinct (to my ears at least) my friends sounded. Nowadays, I can hear someone start to speak, and within a few minutes of listening can tell that they were raised in Miami. It's a few subtle clues that thus far have almost always been right

Re: A New Accent Is Developing in Southwest Kansas

#98

Post by oldcynic »

CodeCube wrote: post #97
KAMSPioneer wrote: post #74

Whoa, I never thought an article about Liberal would be on HN. I'm a Liberal, KS resident since about 2005, and now that I think about it...people here do have a kind of unique accent, but I don't know if it's really as striking as the article makes it out to be. I don't know, maybe I've just gotten used to it. I was shocked when I opened the article and saw our welcome sign. Hahaha

fwiw, I grew up in Miami, and I 100% thought that me and my friends did not have an accent of any kind whatsoever ... because for whatever reason, there weren't really a lot of people born and raised in miami in popular media (at least that I was aware of, days before Pitbull, etc). Well, I moved away to central florida (very different demographics) at 17 ... and it wasn't until a few years later when I went back to…

> and I 100% thought that me and my friends did not have an accent of any kind whatsoever

I suspect everyone thinks that. It's all those people from other parts of the world/country that have accents. :)

Re: A New Accent Is Developing in Southwest Kansas

#99

Post by smackay »

arethuza wrote: post #27
baxtr wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isolation is probably an important factor for the development of an accent

I grew up in a small fishing village in the north of Scotland - an area notorious for its very strong accents (to the point of some documentaries filmed locally having to be subtitled in English!). However, people who lived on farms spoke with a noticeably different accent (at least to the ears of locals) - even though they might be physically on a kilometer or two from the nearest village. NB This was in the 70s - I…

Another small, fishing town in the north of Scotland alumni here - Wick, Caithness, this I suspect is "much" further north than arethuza. He lived near the Big City of Aberdeen ;)

Just to give you a sense of how local accents can be. The Caithness accent (mostly Norse origin with a little bit of Gaelic thrown in) is often confused for Irish - even by people who live within 50km of the county. (Personal experience, no references).

Re: A New Accent Is Developing in Southwest Kansas

#100

Post by arethuza »

smackay wrote: post #99
arethuza wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I grew up in a small fishing village in the north of Scotland - an area notorious for its very strong accents (to the point of some documentaries filmed locally having to be subtitled in English!). However, people who lived on farms spoke with a noticeably different accent (at least to the ears of locals) - even though they might be physically on a kilometer or two from the nearest village. NB This was in the 70s - I…

Another small, fishing town in the north of Scotland alumni here - Wick, Caithness, this I suspect is "much" further north than arethuza. He lived near the Big City of Aberdeen ;) Just to give you a sense of how local accents can be. The Caithness accent (mostly Norse origin with a little bit of Gaelic thrown in) is often confused for Irish - even by people who live within 50km of the county. (Personal experience, no…

I'm from Portknockie (an interesting name in itself) not sure I would describe that as "near" Aberdeen.... ;-)

Should have said North East rather than North!

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