Fun Stuff > CHATTER
There oughta be a law!
Barmymoo:
--- Quote from: LTK on 20 Oct 2012, 16:33 ---
--- Quote from: Barmymoo on 20 Oct 2012, 15:16 ---TOBAL also against leaving pubic hairs on the toilet seat.
--- End quote ---
I wouldn't make a law against that specifically because there are a LOT of worse things you can leave on a toilet seat, and almost all of them are worse than little strands of lifeless keratin.
--- End quote ---
That is a good point. Let me alter it.
TOBAL that you clean the toilet seat after use if you leave anything on it.
nekowafer:
I don't really have an accent at this point. My mom and sister have sort of a Bawlmer (Baltimore) accent, but I've actually tried hard not to pick that up. I was also in speech therapy as a child which changed how I say things.
Akima:
--- Quote from: Carl-E on 20 Oct 2012, 10:24 ---Generally, UK and former colonies use "maths", while US (and Canada, it rubs off) use "math"
--- End quote ---
Both the USA (or at least parts of it) and Canada are former colonies. I say "maths".
Everyone has an accent. I speak English with what I am sure an American would regard as an Australian accent, and Chinese with a Shanghai accent, both modified by deliberate training towards "standard educated" pronunciation. In China, strangers in Beijing think I come from Shanghai, while in Shanghai they often think I come from Beijing (my mother is a Beijinger, and Beijing dialect is the basis of Standard Chinese pronunciation), or sometimes Wuhan for some strange reason.
Like some latter-day Eliza Doolittle, I went to what were called "accent reduction" lessons as part of my ESL education. How far a hypothetical Henry Higgins would be able to identify any remaining Chinese influence on my English speech, I do not know. I have travelled to a number of regions of the USA (though not Baltimore as yet :-)), and nobody seems to have any trouble understanding me, which is the main thing.
--- Quote from: VonKleist on 19 Oct 2012, 04:31 ---Sometimes teenagers hang out on the stairs between the tram station and the train station.
--- End quote ---
TOBAL against riding up an escalator, stepping off, and then stopping dead to hold a discussion.
nekowafer:
Yes, I guess I should say that I do not have a strong accent - someone might be able to place me as coming from the east coast of the US, but they couldn't get much more specific.
Papersatan:
Re: accent reduction
I originally met my friend Huiming as her English tutor. She could read and write English quite well, we worked on some grammar things, and some vocabulary, mostly nonstandard, but common words and uses (I taught her gonna, and Ima, for example). But a large part of what we did was reducing her very strong accent so that more people could easily understand her. I was a bit self-conscience of that task. I was helping her to change her accent to mirror mine, and while that was fine for the big tasks, like helping her hear the difference between 's' and 'th' and enunciate them better, there were some words and sounds that I don't have standard pronunciation on. As I have said I have a nasal AAAHH sound for many 'o' sounds and 'a' sounds get pushed back in the mouth as well. When she said my name it sounded a bit like 'Keht' to me, but I was aware that my hearing of an pronunciation of that sound differed, in the opposite direction from hers, from standard American pronunciation. I never corrected her because she was still easy enough to understand, and I would have to standardize my own accent before I would really be any help.
Related, my father had a coworker who learned Russian in college. He had a professor who was a major stickler for pronunciation and did lots of drills in class to help them speak well. There was a situation at work where they needed someone who spoke Russian to help someone, and he volunteered. At the end of the conversation he was so happy when the person asked "how long have you lived in the US?" until when he explained he was born here and took Russian in college she replied, shocked "but you have such a strong Polish accent!" :psyduck:
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