I was thinking about accents tonight (it's exams.. I think about anything other than what I am actually meant to be studying) and I started wondering how distinct regions / countries developed their own accents.
Why does the deep south have such a different accent to northern US?
Why have Australia and New Zealand have such different accents from England, and yet have developed similar accents to each other? (well, the last I am told. I don't personally believe it. I think the NZ accent is way weirder than ours )
Anyway, one interesting answer to the question (got to love google.)
posted
Lots of Scots/Irish settled in the mountans in the south. And there's more to it than that, but I can't remember now.
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posted
While immigration had a huge role to play, I found the stuff on the island nations (ie us down under) pretty interesting - we had (pretty much) the same migrants, yet the isolation led to the development of different accents.
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It must have been later, as well, wasn't it? The words for things that are new in the last couple of hundred years tend to be different between the U.S. and Britian, yet Australia follows the British names in every case I know of. Is that true across the board?
Thinking about this, I have become curious about other words for things newly invented in the past few hundred years. Are the languages converging again because of information technology? Are all the words for computers and computer parts the same, for instance? Telephones? Stereos? Refrigerators? (Old people in the south at least tend to call these iceboxes, left over from when you kept a big chunk of melting ice in an insulated box to cool things down.)
I also wonder about industrial machinery stuff. I've never done a job in Britain, but are the words for all the other tools different? Needle nosed pliers, for instance? Sockets, Allen wrenches, wire cutters, crescent wrench, wire strippers, screwdrivers (phillips head and flat head), vice, channel locks, vice grips, etc.?
And what about parts of machinery? Chain, sprocket, shaft, cotter pin, cylinder, limit switch, float switch, sail switch, prox switch, photo eye, light curtain, air bag, belt, pulley, crowning, bearing, pillow block, gear reducer, motor?
I've worked on British cars (my brother used to have an MG) but never seen any manuals for other British machinery. Now I'm all curious if it's the same. Surely for technology invented before the split, it must be. But what about after? And which is which? This is very interesting to me. Any British engineers out there?
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posted
I think languages are definitely converging. Even French, which is strictly regulated by l'Academie, is heavily, heavily influenced by English for technological things. It's even adopting English sounds like ch, which don't exist in French for words like match de football and everyone's internet favorite, tchat. You can talk about le web, les mels (email, though courrier éléctronique is Academie standard), le week-end, and le chewing-gum. Other languages - German, Dutch (and how!), and Spanish, are even more permissive in English additions.
I think the sci-fi concept of a common language isn't too far off at all.
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posted
Utah has a distinct accent for several reasons. The Mormons originally came from the northern states, so their accent was what we generally think of as standard English. Then they moved out west through to Ohio and Missouri, so the children who grew up there picked up the local accent. Thus, the Utah accent has a bit of a southern sound to it. Then there were lots of immigrants from England and Scandinavia and the rest of Europe, which mixed things up some more.
In conclusion, I think Utah accents sound funny.
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posted
Years ago, my stepfathers parents visited from Boston. My stepfather has almost no accent, it disappeared slowly over the years, becoming almost Californian. His parents have heavy eastern accents.
When I asked them about our California accent they claimed that we did not have one. They said that most people back east thought so.
This misconception is largely due to Hollywood. The dissemination of the California accent has spread throughout the world because of it. Another example of this is when one of my friends was in boot camp in the Deep South. One of his barracks-mates asked him, in an incredibly slow southern drawl, "How come y'all talk like the teevee news weatherman?"
But I know that, like, we do have an accent, dudes. It's a kind of surfer drawl, a lazyness of pronunciation that, if exaggerated, sounds like "valley girls".
Not that it's bad, but we do, in fact, have a rather pronounced accent.
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posted
Nobody has no accent. Standard American English has often been said to center around Ohio. It starts up around Pennsylvania and stretches across the Midwest. Then it starts to break up into different regions like Northern and Southern California, the Pacific Northwest, the Southwest, and so on.
Mack probably just sounds like she's from the Midwest.
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In exploring the distinctiveness of southern speech, its history and geographical dimensions should be detailed by outlining the principal speech areas within the region. Several historical factors have been proposed to have accounted for the development of a distinctive southern speech, such as the climate and personality of the people, yet these suggestions must be dismissed as invalid. (Montgomery 611.)
The most valid suggestions are the demographic factors, particularly regarding original settlement patterns, migration, and the influence of topography. The majority of the early white settlers in the Lower South were from London and the southern counties of Britain. The competition of languages and dialects in the early days of settlement in the South involved a leveling and an amalgamation, producing a sort of middle ground between dialects differing from region to region. The speech of the coastal areas is similar to the speech of the eastern counties of Britain, the speech of the Lower South in general resembles the speech of London and the southern counties of Britain and speech of the southern hill country is similar to the speech of the north of Britain, Scotland and Northern Ireland. Such gross connections with British speech patterns can be made because far fewer non-English speaking immigrants from continental Europe settled in the South than in other parts of the country. (Montgomery 612.)
The arrival of millions of Africans, who spoke many different languages and were brought against their will, has, however, made the complexity of the situation many times bigger, and their social disparity with the white population compounded it as well. The cauldron of competing speech varieties and languages brought by different speakers was the norm throughout the region, including even the most remote locations. (Montgomery 612.)
It is unclear when the speech of the South became distinctive, although the first half of the 19th century, when the region achieved its fullest expression of regional consciousness, would make the most sense (Montgomery 613).
quote: William Labov, who studied the fluctuating r in New York speech suggested that there is social stratification in New York which is reflected in language: the higher socio-economic groups tend to insert "r" in words such as beard, bear, car, card, while the lower groups tend to omit it. Interestingly, both British and American s peech once had an r in words such as car, card, until it suddenly disappeared by the end of the eighteenth century. The reintroduction of r seem s to have occurred around the time of the Second World War. Why? One possibility is that around this time New Yorkers had a growing awareness of themselves as American, and picked a non-British style of speech on which to model themselves (Geoffrey Hughes 1988).
quote:The background of American English There are certain characteristic vocabulary differences between British and American English and close scrutiny will also reveal some differences in grammatical structure, but maybe the most obvious differences can be seen and heard in pronunciation (Marckwardt and Dillard 1980). What has caused these differences? After all, the history of the English language is rather uniform, having gone through the stages of Old English, Middle English and Early Modern English before entering the era of Present-Day English. It is without any controversy that the Colonalization Period and the American Revolution represent the beginning of the division of English into national dialects that would develop more or less independently and that would come to have their own standards. The European people who settled the new continent got into contact with new cultures and foreign languages and borrowed words from each other to be able to talk about new things, qualities, operations, concepts and ideas. Inevitably the movement of a people to a markedly different environment not only creates a problem of communication but makes it an urgent requirement (Marckwardt and Dillard 1980). So American English was first strongly influenced by the languages of the indiginous Indian tribes, later also by the other Western civilized cultures and langues, such as French, Spanish, Dutch and German. Especially the great immigration waves in the 19th century turned the United States into a multicultural and multilingual Melting Pot , bringing words into the English language that had not been there before at all, and that can still be accounted chiefly in terms of the particular social and linguistic contacts to America. Blacks, Jews, Chicanos and other ethnic groups have brought their own extra touch to the colorful spectrum of Americanisms.
The peculiar use of language characteristics of any one person does largely depend upon his peer relationships, particularly those that existed during the language-acquiring and language-forming years. Home environment, education, occupation and recreatio nal habits, as well as the political, social and religious institutions in which a person participates all share in determining which people identify with and therefore speak most like. Occupational, religious, recreational and other social groups have their own interests and in some sense their own language (Marckwardt and Dillard 1980).
i may not have an accent, but i definitely have my own particular speech pattern. i grew up in pa (where everything is run together: jeet yet?), i went to school in ky ('do you have a pin?' 'a pin?' 'yeah, you know, an inkpin.'), and i now live in uh-HI-uh.
in other people i can distinguish between kentucky, georgia, and alabama, and i can usually call new jersey and michigan. so if nobody has an accent, what do you call being able to recognize where a person is from by the way they pronounce words? (not by the words and phrases they use)
posted
Jon Boy's use of the double negative ("Nobody has no accent") indicates that he means that everyone has an accent.
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And Ana Kate - you're right, we use mostly the British versions. But as Australia gets more 'Americanised', American versions are starting to creep in. And then there's some words that are purely our own.
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posted
crap, thanks for the heads up, saxon. i think it's time for me to go into lurk mode. that isn't the first post i've misread and responded to anyway today.
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posted
One of the most compelling arguments I've heard for the "southern accent" is that it is a legacy of slavery. Slaves coming from africa and the Caribean brought were forced to speak english and punished for speaking their native language. Never the less, they spoke with a strong accent and incorporated many of their native terms into the english they spoke. The children of well to do families, were nursed and often raised by slaves and so picked up the african accent. This was something of an embarassment to rich southern slave owners so they often sent their sons (but not their daughters) to boarding schools in the north to learn proper english. The result after several generations was the evolution of the southern accent.
It is, in this context, interesting to note that the southern accent is exclusive to former slave states. For example, native Texans commonly speak with a drawl, while natives of neighboring states that were never slave territory generally do not.
Accents in New York and New Jersey often reflect the original dutch settlers. Accents in Pennsylvania are still reminiscent of the early German settlers.
In southern Utah, they have a distinctlly different accent than is common in northern Utah, it is often reminiscent of the southern drawl which is of note because Brigham Yound sent many former southerners there to try to grow cotton in the desert.
I have noted that Utah valley has a different accent than Salt Lake city, its fairly subtle yet very consistent. The southern part of the Salt Lake Valley has yet another accent (I can pick out students at the University who grew up in Jordan). I am very curious as to the origin of these accents in areas that are separated by less than 30 miles.
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posted
They needed cotton to be self-sufficient and don't you think it would be wise to send those with actual cotton farming experience?
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*nods* It makes sense, when you put it that way. I don't know...for some reason the "try to grow cotton in the desert" thing sounded like some self-defeating, impossible task. Clearly I was misreading between the lines.
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posted
I can kind of tell Deep South from Not-Deep South, but I've never heard a Utahn speak.
I can, however, tell a Minnesotan from a Michiganian (AND distinguish UP from LP, mind) from a FIB (sorry, sorry, Illinoisian), from a Wisconsinite, and I've even begun to separate those crazy Ohioans out of the mix. People tend to lump the Midwest together as a dialect, but heck, there's a lot of weird-talking people here.
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posted
We moved to Arkansas from California when I was eight, so I was always noted for having a "California accent." My little brother was three, and he picked up the lingo easily enough. I never thought I picked up a southern twang except for the occasional "ya'll," which is just a shorter from of the Californian "you guys." But, on the phone once, someone asked me my opinion on something, and I said, "Oh, that's faahn." I totally did not know where that came from. Whatever it was has lain dormant ever since.
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Actually, I was on the phone the other day with an English woman who sounded like she had an Austrailian accent. I asked her about it, and she said that in the part of England she was from the accent was very close to the Austrailian accent. I asked her if a large percentage of the convicts shipped off to Austrailia were from her area. She said no, but I suspect that she's wrong.
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Pajeba, don't forget that Utahns also pronounce "pillow" as "pellow" That's one of my favorites.
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posted
Heh, just had to input a slightly funny story relating to accents.
My mom, despite being raised near Fort Worth (Texas of course), likes to think she doesn't have that pronounced of an accent. She's mostly right I suppose. But about a year after my parents moved to Arizona, she went to Sonic. The first thing the guy on the intercom said was "So what part of Texas are you from?" Yeah, that still bothers her, about too years later.
Tucson has become an interesting place thanks to Raytheon. Not only are there the varied accents from Californians, Hispanics, and Native Americans, Raytheon performed a forced relocation (go here, or you will retire early) for people from Dallas and Boston as well. But it's so fun to tease Bostonians... "Who's car should we take?" "We'll take my cah." "No no, who's CAR?" and so on...
I of course, don't have any sort of accent, having lived in Texas for 23 years (5 of those in what can only be consiered partially-rural Texas. I never said or typed "y'all" until I came here. Now's it's become part of my vocabulary.) Well, at the very least, I don't have enough of a Texas drawl to fit most people's mental image of me. Just ask anyone who's done the teamspeak thing. The only time I've been told flat out I sound like a Texan was when I was in Germany, speaking German. Appearantly I pick up some drawn out vowels or something when I'm speaking other languages...
Oh well, I'm sure a few decades in another state will help remove those quirks, and make some whole new ones.
Alright, the prof is looking at me like I'm typing entirely too much to be doing anything class related, so I'm gone.
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I love meeting those people who can automatically guess your accent. A lady in a store once said to my grandma, "What part of Green Bay, Wisconsin are you from?"
My Dad is a native Texan, but I never thought he had much of an accent (compared to his brothers and parents, at least). He taught French in my high school as a sub for awhile, though, and everyone would constantly tell me how funny my Dad talked. *shrug* These are all Montana kids who say things like "sleepeen bayg," though.
I am intrigued by the Southern Utah accent, though. I had a roommate from St. George, and she would say the funniest things, in pronunciation and vocabulary. Things were always "un-eee-maginably" one way or another, and apparently, being "ign'rent" is being purposely rude. Very odd stuff.
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posted
Jon Boy and pajeba, Those are Utah county isms. You almost never hear them north of point of the mountain.
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I know tons of Idaho people and I've never noticed them sounding weird...hey! wait a minute.... Posts: 196 | Registered: May 2003
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I'm from New Hampshire (yep, I'm a real Yankee I guess) but right now I'm studying in Florence, Italy. Its been really interesting observing myself and the other American students here... not just the pronounciation of words, but the sentence structure changed almost immediately when we were emerged in Italian culture. Also I've noticed that my English has deteriorated, espcialy my spelling abilities and my roomates' reading (which have always been our weak spots).
Another funny thing was that when we visited London on our mid-term break we all picked up accents while talking to the locals immediatly, and after about four days we were talking to eachother in slight accents.
It will be interesting when I go home in December to see if my family notices if I have an Italian accent now.
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posted
"Pellow" isn't very common (not in my experience, anyway), but I know many, many Salt Lakers (and other Utahns north of Point of the Mountain) who do the eel->il thing.
[ November 12, 2003, 04:09 PM: Message edited by: Jon Boy ]
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A film interview of the lady who gives the time over the telephone. Or at least used to in the old days. Was that part of the centralized phone company experience? She thought she had no accident but either the film or our prof afterward explained that she did.
In addition to pellow, there's pool tab (the pull tab on your soda, pop, or coke) and-uh, what was the other one? Oh, there's a boat in my neighborhood with a "for sell" sign on it. I lie not.
So there may be one current pulling languages together, but language is also used for group identity. A northern Utahn may identify "happy valley" language features and avoid them or exagerrate what they perceive to be the opposite of them. Or there is the lisping speech of... people who lisp.
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posted
Actually, I think that in the Utah dialect, ul->ol. Thus, "bull" becomes "bowl." And pooka, I've also seen signs that say "Must Sale." I guess when "sell" and "sale" sound the same, it's hard to know which to use. I also once saw a sign that said "Field dirt wanted." It took me a while to figure out that what they actually wanted was fill dirt.
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posted
I was going to but then I remembered that I have mispelled things when making signs. I left the letter r out of "spring" and "university" before. I think there is something about writing really big or in a certain style (in both instances I was using calligraphy) that bypasses the normal spelling circuitry that serves us when writing or typing. You know, like people who can't write either cursive or print? My Ling profs always insisted that orthography was a silly thing to consider, but I think it is just too complicated to think about.
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posted
There's quite a bit of regionalism to the Southern accent, even within a state there can be huge differences.
In North Carolina, you've got the peculiar accent of the Blue Ridge (the accent I have) which shares similarities with old style English and Scottish accents, speech patterns also feature a fair about of hyperbole. A few miles east and you run into the Piedmont accents which are a bit twangier to the ear. Along the coastline, it gets, for lack of a better word, mushier and more drawn out. Even then, there are smaller accent patterns; for example, the area surrounding Tarboro has a very distinct accent that, strangely enough, sounds quite a bit like baby talk. "Hi, I'm from Tarboro and we all talk like this," comes out sounding "Hah, Ahm from Tahbuhrwo, an' we ahl tahk liek dis."
Still, there's nothing funnier sounding than a Yankee trying to do a Southern accent.
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posted
I'm an Army Brat. As a defense (or blending) mechanism, I tend to adapt to the speech patterns of the area I am in or the people I am around. I don't do it on purpose, it just happens.
We settled in East Tennessee when my father retired, and I had a hard time understanding people for a while. A 'pillar' was something you laid your head on at night, and such like. It was surreal. I even ended up going steady with a guy, because he asked me to go stead with him and, not understanding him in the slightest, I just nodded politely and smiled. Sheesh.
But that accent will shatter glass. It's horrible. I actually think it's largely a Scotch-Irish thing, too. Very similar to many Appalachian accents, and nothing at all like the melodious, cultured drawl more common in Georgia and Alabama. I mean DEVELOPED Georgia and Alabama. The hubby's extended family talk so pretty it's almost like singing, but that's as much social class as it is southern.
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but then I remembered that I have mispelled things when making signs. I left the letter r out of "spring" and "university" before. I think there is something about writing really big or in a certain style (in both instances I was using calligraphy) that bypasses the normal spelling circuitry that serves us when writing or typing. You know, like people who can't write either cursive or print? My Ling profs always insisted that orthography was a silly thing to consider, but I think it is just too complicated to think about.
