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North American English Dialects

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Re: North American English Dialects

#91

Post by prescriptivist »

nephihaha wrote: post #85
Steltek wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Maine has multiple distinct accents, though like the parent said, it's not worth making the distinction unless it's for a project like this.

In southern Maine, the accent is moderate and is more of a general northern New England accent. Yahd = yard, that kind of thing.

The iconic Maine accent is the Downeast accent and is still kicking up/down there. It's kind of nasally and has a lilt to it. You have to dig through a morass of influencer content on youtube to find an authentic example of it, but this is a good one: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FZDpx1aLovc

But there are a number of different accents throughout Maine. My favorite without a doubt is the accent in way northern Maine, from the Allagash Valley. It's just a pleasant accent. This is a good example: https://soundcloud.com/mpbn/troy-jackson-allagash-logging

Re: North American English Dialects

#92

Post by ludicrousdispla »

lief79 wrote: post #64
ludicrousdispla wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

'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.

Never heard that second one, which part of PA? I'm Philly burbs.

between Pittsburgh and Altoona

Re: North American English Dialects

#93

Post by radarsat1 »

tptacek wrote: post #43
pessimizer wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

This doesn't look like John McWhorter to me. Does it look like McWhorter to you? It looks like Geoffrey Pullum. You know, that Geoffrey Pullum? https://web.stanford.edu/~zwicky/aave-is-not-se-with-mistake...

That was a fascinating read! Thanks for the link.

Re: North American English Dialects

#94

Post by prescriptivist »

prescriptivist wrote: post #91
nephihaha wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Maine has multiple distinct accents, though like the parent said, it's not worth making the distinction unless it's for a project like this. In southern Maine, the accent is moderate and is more of a general northern New England accent. Yahd = yard, that kind of thing. The iconic Maine accent is the Downeast accent and is still kicking up/down there. It's kind of nasally and has a lilt to it. You have to dig through…

Just an update to this. I realize I misspoke and misnamed where that last accent comes from. It's too late for me to edit the original comment, so I'm just going to drop it in here. There's no such thing as the Allagash Valley, only the St. John Valley.

Re: North American English Dialects

#95

Post by gumboshoes »

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…

Yes, this is being done, and has been done. A variety of linguistic atlas projects record audio and make written phonetic transcriptions: https://www.linguisticatlasproject.org/ There are also many dialect and accent arechives, such as https://www.dialectsarchive.com/ and https://accent.gmu.edu/.

Re: North American English Dialects

#98

Post by stasomatic »

shevy-java wrote: post #6

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…

One on my favorite podcasters is Mike Hurley (London) from Relay.fm. He is a very eloquent gent, at least compared to me.

He says “whivf” instead of ”with” “teevf” instead of “teeth”, things like that, and some other idiosyncrasies that I can’t exactly remember but it was like adding to or replacing the last letter of the word with an “r”.

Is that a London thing or a person thing?

Re: North American English Dialects

#99

Post by AngryData »

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…

That is my biggest problem with these survival shows. So many claim to be skilled survivalists but then make elementary mistakes on the regular. And then people with a year in boyscouts worth of knowledge are touted as survival geniuses as they starve.

That said I haven't watched the newer Alone seasons so maybe they got a few better people. They definitely do throw a few people in that they expect to fail though.

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