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North American English Dialects

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Re: North American English Dialects

#81

Post by bityard »

JKCalhoun wrote: post #41

My daughter (grew up in California) wondered what the "Kansas accent" was (I grew up in Kansas). I often called it a drawl. She goes to college in Kansas now and is still confused. Perhaps growing up with me it just sounds "normal". I'll point her to the band, "The Embarrassment" in various interviews: [1] https://youtu.be/0gyChDSjrXc [2] https://youtu.be/kJBDRdDjgWY

I grew up in a poor rural part of Michigan. Day to day, you didn't meet many people who lived there by choice so the demographic (and Midwestern accent) was pretty homogenous. In high school, our class had a new kid who moved up from Kansas and to us, he sounded _extremely_ southern. His first week at school was pretty much everybody asking him to say stuff in his funny accent.

Re: North American English Dialects

#82

Post by bityard »

pessimizer wrote: post #37
999900000999 wrote: post #19

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…

[flagged]

> Also, black Americans don't call themselves "African-American" unless they were raised in a white environment. Never have.

I'm guessing you either don't remember or weren't alive in the 1990's. It was a whole grassroots movement and pretending it didn't exist is extremely insensitive, to put it mildly.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/African_Americans#Terminology

Re: North American English Dialects

#83

Post by Steltek »

nephihaha wrote: post #4

I feel that the Maritimes are somewhat simplified here, especially Newfoundland and Labrador which has some of the most distinctive accents on the continent, at least among older people.

And right next door, the Maine accent is lumped in with Boston. The differences aren't worth correcting anybody unless you're talking about a project like this.

I'm not an expert on accents or anything but I think you can hear it in "dinner". Boston is the typical "R's don't exist" thing. Maine is more like "dinnyah" - your jaw kicks back a bit.

Re: North American English Dialects

#84

Post by bityard »

zabzonk wrote: post #11
DeathArrow wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Now it depends who has good spoken british english. My favorites are David Attenborough and BBC in general.

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…

Oh, we have a TON of placenames in Michigan that are pronounced much differently than they are spelled. A lot of these are just Native American and French names/words that most people don't know how to pronounce anyway, but a few are just special for no apparent reason.

Examples:

Orion = "or-ee-un", Ionia = "eye-ON-nee-ah", Charlotte = "shar-lot", Milan = "MILE-an", Saline = "suh-LEEN"

Re: North American English Dialects

#85

Post by nephihaha »

Steltek wrote: post #83
nephihaha wrote: post #4

I feel that the Maritimes are somewhat simplified here, especially Newfoundland and Labrador which has some of the most distinctive accents on the continent, at least among older people.

And right next door, the Maine accent is lumped in with Boston. The differences aren't worth correcting anybody unless you're talking about a project like this. I'm not an expert on accents or anything but I think you can hear it in "dinner". Boston is the typical "R's don't exist" thing. Maine is more like "dinnyah" - your jaw kicks back a bit.

I am not American but can hear slight differences between Maine and Boston. Urban accents are often different to their hinterland, let alone those with different formative influences.

Re: North American English Dialects

#86

Post by saltcured »

engeljohnb wrote: post #72
tralarpa wrote: post #52

The title says "dialects" but most comments here are only about accents. Can people here give examples of non-standard grammar or vocabulary (that goes beyond some temporary slang or subculture words)?

I'm from Indiana. I'm not an expert, but I do travel across the US for work, and here's a few things that are normal to me but weird to others. "Your car needs washed" instead of "you need to wash your car" Replying "You're good" after someone apologizes. Adding an S to the end of brand names, especially grocery stores. I don't do this one, but my extended family in Ohio just says "please" when they mean "could you r…

More directly, "Your car needs washed" is "Your car needs [to be] washed" dropping the passive infinitive "to be".

Another very close variant would be "Your car needs washing".

Re: North American English Dialects

#87

Post by 1-more »

ludicrousdispla wrote: post #62
tralarpa wrote: post #52

The title says "dialects" but most comments here are only about accents. Can people here give examples of non-standard grammar or vocabulary (that goes beyond some temporary slang or subculture words)?

'mensch' and 'schmuck' are commonly used words in NYC that are not known to people in the South, unless they have studied German (and yes I had to fight capitalizing them.) Another example... 'they're all' is shorthand for 'they're all gone' in Pennsylvania.

schlep too. To a much lesser extent mishegas and tsuris. There's a continuum for knowing Yiddish words where at one end it's "lived in NYC" and then passes through "had playdates with a Jewish friend" through sequentially "have 1/2/3/4 Jewish grandparents." All of these things possible anywhere in the world, but I agree very much an NYC thing.

Re: North American English Dialects

#88

Post by unsupp0rted »

WalterBright wrote: post #74
walthamstow wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Great show. There were some series which were a bit sad and just became about who was the poorest and most desperate to stick it out for 500k.

Being cold, miserable, lonely, wet, dirty, uncomfortable, and hungry for 60 days just seems hellish. And then, as #2, you came away with nothing. The curious thing is they all claim to be survival experts, but they don't know how to build a proper fireplace (either burning down their shelter or asphyxiating themselves). None of them who used a fish net would take it out of the river during a storm, so it isn't destro…

I suspect the showrunners intentionally put in people who are bad at survival or mentally/emotionally weak (which comes out during internal testing), so that they can eliminate a few people in the early episodes.

You want at least one or two people to hear a bear and tap out in ep 1 or 2. And it has to be guys tapping out: if you include women, they have to be the hardiest contestants, so they don't tap out too early.

Re: North American English Dialects

#89

Post by throwway120385 »

bityard wrote: post #81
JKCalhoun wrote: post #41

My daughter (grew up in California) wondered what the "Kansas accent" was (I grew up in Kansas). I often called it a drawl. She goes to college in Kansas now and is still confused. Perhaps growing up with me it just sounds "normal". I'll point her to the band, "The Embarrassment" in various interviews: [1] https://youtu.be/0gyChDSjrXc [2] https://youtu.be/kJBDRdDjgWY

I grew up in a poor rural part of Michigan. Day to day, you didn't meet many people who lived there by choice so the demographic (and Midwestern accent) was pretty homogenous. In high school, our class had a new kid who moved up from Kansas and to us, he sounded _extremely_ southern. His first week at school was pretty much everybody asking him to say stuff in his funny accent.

There's variations on the southern accent. My dad was from South Carolina and he could tell which southern state someone was from by their accent.
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