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English is weird
Morituri:
With the people in the 50-states vid, the accents are at the level where you could just interpret them as some particular speaker's pronunciation and cadence. It's within "normal" and understood without thought. And this is a pretty accurate rendition of the way it's spoken in major cities. Which, at this point, means by well over 80% of the US population.
The further you get from big cities - the more you're among those who've lived generations in those places instead of a decade or so - the stronger accents tend to be.
The 'Redneck Liberal' guy is demonstrating an accent found mainly in rural areas of southwestern Louisiana. eastern Texas, or southern Arkansas. I can be pretty specific because I used to live fairly close to there. Urban people who live within a hundred miles of him have a barely-noticeable 'twang' but that's about it.
Case:
@Morituri: Sorry, didn't you mention something about growing up with 'Pennsylvania Dutch'? (which isn't actually Dutch, btw, but German with a heavy Palatine dialect - it's just that the German word for 'German' is 'Deutsch')
cesium133:
--- Quote from: Gyrre on 26 Nov 2020, 09:17 ---
--- Quote from: oddtail on 25 Nov 2020, 11:15 ---As a non-native speaker of English, Americans who say they "don't have an accent" infuriate me. THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS "not having an accent". In any language.
There's some kind of metaphor about American culture in there: it's all extremely varied, but for some reason a LOT of people think anyone similar to them is basically the default, and it's other people that differ and stand out.
--- End quote ---
Apparently I have a 'cosmopolitan accent'. Most people can't really tell where I'm from, just that I grew up in a 'big city'. I've had guesses for New York New York [1] and 'California'. Though, I'm told that I have a little bit of a Wisconsin undertone even though I've never been and my grandfather from Kenosha hadn't lived there for 30 years by the time I came around.
[1]Nebraska, one of the hickest of hick states. Sorry, but it's true. And I'm not just saying that as a Kansan.
--- End quote ---
According to the New York Times dialect quiz, I'm from Tennessee (my top matches were Knoxville and Nashville). A grad student in my old lab (in Wisconsin, but he was from California) insisted that I sounded like I was from upstate New York. And in Pennsylvania they made fun of my "southern accent". :psyduck:
Gyrre:
--- Quote from: Case on 26 Nov 2020, 06:42 ---Truth be told, if the 50 accents in the vid Morituri linked are realistic samples ... I hardly hear the differences, I have to admit. Except for the southern "drawly" (?) ones, that is. They're very noticably not British accents, but that's about it.
A few years back, the "Liberal Redneck" guy (love him, btw) would have been beyond my capacity to parse - but apparently, my English-ears have become better. I have to focus a bit, but it's nowhere near an Australian "Bogan" accent (POIDAAAH!), for example, or some of the British ones.
P.S.: I should point out that as a non-native speaker, I approach English accents as a challenge - I couldn't care less about where the people come from (I'm a foreigner to whatever place they come from), or whatever nitwit thinks about their social class: To me, it matters how much mental resources I have to expend to enable communication (In my experience, conversation in my second language will always tire me out faster than convos in my native one - and accents add to the amount of 'brain-fuel' I have to expend), whether there's a polite way to ask the speaker if they could switch to a more standard pronounciation etc.
--- End quote ---
Which is hilarious because the Southern accent and dialect of the U.S.A. is derived from the pre-Received Pronunciation British upper-class accent.
--- Quote from: Case on 26 Nov 2020, 09:31 ---
--- Quote from: Gyrre on 26 Nov 2020, 09:17 ---Apparently I have a 'cosmopolitan accent'. Most people can't really tell where I'm from, just that I grew up in a 'big city'.
--- End quote ---
Is that 'most people in the US can't tell which part of the US I'm coming from' or 'most English speakers can't tell which continent I live on'?
Bcs if you sound remotely like the compatriots of yours that I've met, pretty much anyone on the planet knows where you're coming from the second you open your mouth, if you know where I'm coming from? :wink: :-D
--- End quote ---
Ja.....it's country level as opposed to international. :roll: But I can do a fairly decent imitation of a southern central Canadian English dialect.
Morituri:
Yes, my Grandma Kate and Grandpa Sam were Amish/Pennsylvania Dutch. They lived in Yoder, Kansas, which was part of the Amish community around Hutchinson. (I would have to check to see if Yoder is still on maps. There were only about 25 people when we visited them decades ago. The town may be no more.) We spent a few days to a week with them several times a year. They spoke an antique, crazily beautiful, variety of English that got stuck somewhere around the turn of the 18th century.
It was my grandparents on the other side - Grandpa Charlie and Grandma Beryl - who came originally from Southern Arkansas. They had moved north (near Lake of the Ozarks) before I was born but we still had cousins south of that area and went to see them too.
And I worked for a few summers on custom harvesting crews and got to live for a few weeks, each time, in East Texas, Oklahoma, Central Kansas, Northern Nebraska, South Dakota, and North Dakota, dealing the whole time with co-workers from everywhere else along the way.
I don't know if you're aware of the tradition but we had "custom harvest" as summer employment. Custom Harvesters start somewhere in Texas, work a few weeks there until the wheat is in, then pack up their camp and move a few hundred miles north to where wheat harvest is just starting, rinse and repeat until by the end of summer they're finishing up at their last station somewhere in North Dakota. It's pretty crazy; on those crews you work hundred-hour weeks sometimes. When I was doing it, it was almost the only way to earn enough money for a year's college tuition during a single summer.
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