51–60 of 100 posts
Reminds me of the awesome (old) New York Times dialect quiz, which was weirdly accurate: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2014/upshot/dialect-quiz...
Can people here give examples of non-standard grammar or vocabulary (that goes beyond some temporary slang or subculture words)?
New Orleans drops mic... I'm from River Ridge in the Jefferson Parish suburbs ( within the city area ) and if I meet a stranger somewhere else in the country they, after one or two sentences, usually think I'm from New York. But slipping into one of the many dialects we have here is never far away, depending on who you are conversing with. Only locals will understand, but my wife used to tell me that after 2 sentence…
There are so many unique dialects hyperlocal to New Orleans, it's amazing.
Is anyone archiving these accents ? As much as I’m happy that kids now have access to YouTube, and thus can use the neutral influencer dialect, something about our culture is being erased. I grew up speaking both a neutral California accent and bits of AAVE. AAVE itself is drastically different depending on the part of the US you’re in. I can barely understand southern AAVE. NYC AAVE is much faster, but I think NYC p…
> And hop on a zoom 30 minutes later to chat. This would be unimaginable 50 years ago. It was pretty easy to imagine 50 years ago. For example, Star Trek started airing 60 years ago. The Jetsons started airing a few years before that.
Goose language? Or yankee doodels? I was taught British English. I think America English is in many ways simpler, but my brain is wired to british spelling as well as pronounciation for the most part. Now it depends who has good spoken british english. One of my all-time favourites is Rowan Atkinson, but his english is kind of more theater-trained really; if you compare it to the Monty Python guys for instance. War c…
Firstly, there's regional dialects of Canadian English, and I don't just mean Newfoundland vs rest of Canada. The Ottawa Valley for example has some strong dialect markers. There's marked differences between central and southern Alberta (often not noticed by people living there, but there). Between coastal BC and Ontario, etc. etc.
Secondly because in fact the upper midwest of the US is contiguous and overlapping with much of various Canadian dialect markers. In fact many of the things people consider to be stereotypical Canadian are even more pronounced in upper midwest US dialects than they are here.
TLDR he could pay more attention to Canada :-) There's 40m of us after all.
This has missed the Atlantic Canadian Cape Breton dialect, which if you listen to some age 70+ people who've lived their whole lives in the Sydney, NS area is significantly distinct from Halifax or other areas in the south/southwest of Nova Scotia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Industrial_Cape_Breton
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The BBC actually has an official "Pronunciation Unit", which tells people like newsreaders the "proper" way to pronounce words and placenames. Unfortunately, particularly in the latter case they often get it wrong. For example, my late Dad was born in a small West Yorkshire town called Sowerby Bridge, which the unit insists should be said Sourbee Bridge. Everyone, without exception, who lives there knows it is Sorebe…
Local pronunciations of place names are often different from what's expected, and whether intended to be such or not, are often used as shibboleths to distinguish locals from outsiders. The examples of Couch Street (/ˈkutʃ/) in Portland, Oregon and Tchoupitoulas Street (/ˌtʃɑp.ə.ˈtuː.ləs/) in New Orleans, Louisiana come to mind in American place names.
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And it would be basically free and accessible to anyone? Two 50$ cell phones can Zoom using library WiFi across the globe
I think the conflict is on the term unimaginable. People back then definitely imagined the equivalent of Zoom and it being free even if they didn't know technically how it could happen.
It was for serious business, not small talk. If you somehow knew Zoom would happen you could have created Zoom and you’d be very rich.
TBF, unimaginable is a strong word. Impractical would be better.
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Local pronunciations of place names are often different from what's expected, and whether intended to be such or not, are often used as shibboleths to distinguish locals from outsiders. The examples of Couch Street (/ˈkutʃ/) in Portland, Oregon and Tchoupitoulas Street (/ˌtʃɑp.ə.ˈtuː.ləs/) in New Orleans, Louisiana come to mind in American place names.
Tchoup is just unpronounceable to most outsiders; the shibboleths are the streets that are pronounced very differently from what it would be anywhere else. Like Calliope (rhymes with TALLY-hope) or Burgundy (emphasis on second syllable).
Ooh, thought of another good place name like that: Quincy (/ˈkwɪn.zi/), Massachusetts! Massachusetts has a fair number of those, owing to its English settlement heritage.