[HN Gopher] North American English Dialects
___________________________________________________________________
North American English Dialects
Author : petercooper
Score : 174 points
Date : 2023-08-04 19:29 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (aschmann.net)
(TXT) w3m dump (aschmann.net)
| adamrezich wrote:
| this is still one of my most favorite website on the Internet,
| <map> tag and all.
| zoklet-enjoyer wrote:
| I did always wonder why she sounded like she was from Minnesota.
|
| " Sarah Palin talks like she's from (northern) Minnesota! The
| original link, now dead, was sent in by Annie Wang (thanks!), but
| this search link shows the vast amount of discussion on this
| subject. On another web site it says she talks like she's from
| Fargo, North Dakota (actually, like the people in the movie
| Fargo, actually filmed in Minnesota)! In fact, it turns out that
| the area of Alaska around Wasilla and Palmer is much more like
| the North Central dialect than it is like other Alaska dialects.
| [32] On the web site above linguist
| James Crippen describes this dialect as Mat-Su Valley English,
| after the Matanuska-Susitna Valley where it is spoken. James
| Crippen has now kindly provided me with information that allows
| me to set its borders fairly accurately. He says that it probably
| extends no further west than Willow, no farther northeast than
| Sutton, and is probably dying out in much of the area anyway,
| because of a continued influx of people from other parts of
| Alaska. So why do they talk like this?
| Because this area was almost entirely settled during the Great
| Depression by people from Minnesota, Wisconsin and Michigan as
| part of a federal project. Historical info can be found in this
| Wikipedia article, and on this page sent in by contributor Susan
| Alexander. Thanks!"
| f5ve wrote:
| This is cool. My first thought is the choice of _dialect_ rather
| than _accent_.
|
| I'm from NC and the Lumbee Indians had a way of speaking that was
| unique and endearing. It feels like many places in the US are
| losing that identity and the language of most areas is merging.
| Especially in the west, the differences between peoples'
| idiolects is usually greater than the differences between
| regions' dialects.
| jccooper wrote:
| Dialect can include pronunciation, vocabulary, word choice,
| grammar, semantics, and other ways of speaking where accent
| refers only to ways of pronunciation. Academics almost always
| go with "dialect" for "different ways of speaking" unless
| they're specifically meaning only pronunciation. And sometimes
| not even then.
|
| The differences covered here do seem to be mostly accent
| (though some might consider sound changes to be more than
| accent), but calling it dialect allows for broader
| consideration if warranted.
| CommieBobDole wrote:
| I guess that's a consequence of media, global communication and
| mobility.
|
| Which raises the question, what's up with the UK? Modern
| country with internet access and a good transportation network,
| not to mention a century-old central media establishment with
| basically one accepted dialect, but they've still got almost-
| mutually-unintelligible dialects in places fifty miles apart.
| petercooper wrote:
| I think it's an overstatement to suggest mutual
| unintelligibility but they _can_ be extremely distinctive
| though.
|
| I don't know if this happens in the US, but in the UK it's
| not uncommon to adopt the accent of an area. I had a cockney
| accent as a child but now live in the north with a softer,
| hybrid northern accent. I tend to switch back when I am in
| London.
|
| I am also familiar with people who have moved to places like
| Newcastle and Liverpool and picked up the accent to some
| extent. I even know a guy who has an Australian wife and some
| of his vowels slide into the Australian accent despite having
| never lived there. Not to mention all the young British
| techies who've spent more than 2 seconds in the US and start
| dropping their "t"s to "d"s.
| lordnacho wrote:
| Distinctive for sure. Here's a story about me at uni:
|
| Me: how about that Steve guy, eh? He's somehow overcome his
| speech impediment to become a professor of engineering at
| this world class uni.
|
| Friend: oh yeah he's Brummy
|
| Me: never heard of it, is it some sort of palsy?
|
| Friend: no it means he's from Birmingham
|
| Me: what's that's got to do with how he talks?
|
| Oh.
| OfSanguineFire wrote:
| Perhaps some of it has to do with class rivalries, which are
| more acrid in the UK than in the US? In the UK, the wealthy
| adopted a supraregional standard (Received Pronunciation)
| through their schooling. Therefore, by retaining one's
| regional accent an ordinary person was emphasizing that one
| was not one of that detested class.
|
| This is a pure guess. But I have heard that features of
| London's "Estuary English" are now spreading to other UK
| cities. That accent is not an upper class one.
| zdragnar wrote:
| Received pronunciation is typically spoken by a very small
| percentage of Brits- a quick Google search claims around
| 3%.
|
| There are class differences, but even within classes there
| are very wide variations- thinking Geordie v Yorkshire vs
| West country vs scouse vs South London.
| avgcorrection wrote:
| Classic HN to make everything about the UK about hereditary
| class.
| kzrdude wrote:
| Maybe geographical mobility is that much higher in the USA?
| Are there any studies on this, how likely people are to move
| to different regions?
| denton-scratch wrote:
| > with basically one accepted dialect
|
| Oh, I'm not sure what this "one accepted dialect" is. For
| example, Scottish English is widely accepted in Scotland;
| it's a true dialect, not just an accent.
|
| When I was a kid (I was raised speaking RP) I couldn't
| understand a geordie accent _at all_. I lived and went to
| school for some years in Liverpool; I could understand a
| scouse accent, usually, but I certainly couldn 't speak like
| that. And sometimes scousers would put it on strong, so that
| I couldn't understand a word.
|
| Nowadays all the accents have become more restrained;
| geordie, in particular, has become much softer, and is
| nowadays quite acceptable for e.g. TV and radio presenters. I
| never hear a really thick scouse accent.
| JoeAltmaier wrote:
| Hey in graduate school one of my classmates seemed normal
| until her mother called. Then she'd put her feet up on the
| desk, talk much louder and adopt her native Texan accent, so
| thick I could barely understand her.
|
| Hang up, and click! she was back to the local one.
| hcho wrote:
| The century old central media establishment stopped pushing a
| single dialect decades ago. There's no accepted dialect.
| xeromal wrote:
| Just a guess, but UK's accents have been developing for a
| 1000 years while the US has only had a few hundred at the
| most. Probably just less sticky. That said, bums me out
| because I love my region's dialect. I grew up in N. Georgia
| in the boonies and I love coming home to hear the accents.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/shorts/YYx51ZrSn3g
| peterleiser wrote:
| Love that kid! I live just south of Nashville, but I'm
| originally from rural Northern California. When we moved
| here about 10 years ago Southern folks were far more
| comfortable speaking with their local accents around us
| transplants. But there have been tons of people moving in
| from all over our country. Now a lot of folks "cover up"
| their accents. It's a super bummer. I also realized it's
| the same thing I do. I sound different when I go back home
| to rural farm country in California.
| xeromal wrote:
| Yeah, there's a mass of outsiders moving into my hometown
| and while it has been good for the local economy, it has
| really eroded the culture in a big way. It's
| gentrification, but on poor whites. It was gonna happen
| eventually, but I do hate watching it happen for selfish
| reasons.
|
| I used to cover up my accent but I let her rip now. lol.
| Last of the Mohicans.
| [deleted]
| lukas099 wrote:
| I was in the San Francisco area for the first time recently, and
| I noticed that people sounded like they were from the Midwest.
| I'm glad to see this agreeing with me. Does anyone know why this
| is?
| shadowofneptune wrote:
| San Fransisco is the main port of the west coast. The Oregon
| Trail gets all the fame, but ship was usually how newcomers
| came to California and the other western states.
|
| During WW2, that role was naturally even a bigger deal than in
| peacetime. It's also where you got dumped if you were
| dishonorably discharged. That's why the gay community of
| California was so unusually concentrated into one district of
| one city.
| mistrial9 wrote:
| historically lots of mixed-heritage from the Latin lands,
| too.. German-Mexican and such.. San Francisco used to be a
| large Catholic landing pad.
| wizofaus wrote:
| > the other western states
|
| But the midwest is not the western states...?
| cwalv wrote:
| It's not. Not sure what the official boundary is (if there
| even is one), but Midwest is far east of Western. It would
| better be called 'Norcentral' these days, but the name is
| probably left over from times when St Louis was considered
| western
| shadowofneptune wrote:
| Read what I said again. People went from east and mideast
| to west by ship, and SF is the best port.
| jccalhoun wrote:
| I remember when I was an English major in college and I took a
| class on linguistics and on the first day of class we introduced
| ourselves and the prof could tell where we were from and which
| part of the state we were from. I don't remember much about that
| class but I remember that!
| tkgally wrote:
| I was a TA for an introductory linguistics course at UC Santa
| Barbara in the 1970s. On the first day of class, the instructor
| would have the students answer a few questions intended to show
| if they were from northern or southern California. (Few were
| from out of state.)
|
| The two I remember were:
|
| (1) If someone tells you they are going to "the city," where
| are they going?
|
| (2) Name a freeway.
|
| The other TAs and I compiled the results. For (1), the northern
| Californians almost always answered "to San Francisco," while
| the southern Californians gave a variety of answers, including
| "Huh?" For (2), the northerners gave a number, like "the 101,"
| while the southerners usually answered with a name, like "the
| Golden State" or "the Harbor Freeway." (I haven't been to
| California for a while, but my impression is that SoCal usage
| has shifted since the 1970s to numbers, too.)
|
| The instructor of that class was Marc Okrand, who later created
| the Klingon language.
| jccalhoun wrote:
| As I recall my professor didn't have us ask any specific
| questions. He just went off our accents.
| dmckeon wrote:
| > shifted since the 1970s to numbers
|
| Post-2000, SoCal usage is usually with the definite article:
| "the 101 or the 5" NorCal is usually with no article: "101 or
| I-5". The SoCal pattern is rooted in the named freeway usages
| of earlier decades, but while the style of traffic reporting
| may still use "the Golden State freeway", popular usage
| became terser over time, leading to "the 5". The entire topic
| and regional differences can easily produce animated
| discussions, both in-person, and online.
| OfSanguineFire wrote:
| That SoCal people refer, and refer often, to freeways by
| number is the basis of the SNL skit "The Californians"[0].
|
| I always assumed that that skit was a great exaggeration.
| But last winter I cycled from LAX across Southern
| California to Mexico, and the local people I chatted with
| really were like that. "I love doing activity X or eating
| food Y, so sometimes I'll take the [interstate number] to
| [place] and get off at [street name]." No one really
| grasped that as a foreigner on a bike, all those numbers
| were incomprehensible to me.
|
| [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dCer2e0t8r8
| davidw wrote:
| The + freeway name is a southern California thing.
|
| https://www.kcet.org/shows/lost-
| la/the-5-the-101-the-405-why...
|
| IIRC, in the Bay Area, they don't put 'the' before freeway
| names or numbers. We certainly do not here in Oregon. It's a
| dead giveaway that someone is from CA.
| amanaplanacanal wrote:
| I have heard traffic reporting in Portland call 26 "the
| sunset" and 84 "The Banfield" though. So it's not
| completely unheard of.
| davidw wrote:
| Ah, yeah I should have written my comment better. It's
| numbered freeways. No one says "the 5".
| bobthepanda wrote:
| I know in New York this is also common simply because
| it's always the Bruckner Expressway and not I-278, or the
| Long Island Expressway and not I-495.
| linux2647 wrote:
| I'm not sure the pin/pen merger is a thing in the California San
| Joaquin Valley. I've only lived here for a few years and not
| heard the merger, and my wife-born and raised here-says them
| differently
| bsimpson wrote:
| One of the things I've wondered about my whole life:
|
| Does anyone know how to describe the R sound that millennial
| girls from the west coast make? You can hear it in the word
| "either" for the intro to The Button [1]. In my mind, it's
| prominent in the Pacific Northwest and in the speech of Lizzie
| Caplan (she's from L.A.).
|
| It's almost like they swallow the letter.
|
| [1] https://www.youtube.com/@cut/videos
| crazygringo wrote:
| A timestamp link for others, just because I was having trouble
| at first figuring out where you were talking about:
|
| https://youtu.be/Gip8tatY2-w?t=14
|
| I definitely know what you mean, it's exactly how Lizzie Caplan
| speaks. It's different for sure, but for the life of me I can't
| tell if it's placed further backwards or further forwards, or
| if it's a question of elongation/tempo as well? Or possibly
| raising the palate?
| jamespettit wrote:
| Sounds like Valley Gurrrl
| bkazez wrote:
| I think it's just a retroflex R, but when it's preceded by
| tongue-forward th in "either," it comes out almost like a flap.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HcrVeMYnOS4
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voiced_dental_and_alveolar_tap...
| Lammy wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vocal_fry_register ?
| kzrdude wrote:
| Dr Lindsey (british) did a pretty positive video on vocal
| fry: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q0yL2GezneU
| greenbit wrote:
| Not sure they're talking about fry, there. With the vocal
| fry you can hear some serious hang time while the speaker
| grinds out that croaky noise. But this other thing sounds
| almost choked off, definitely not drawn out.
| ddxv wrote:
| I couldn't figure out, what is the difference between "on as in
| dawn" vs "on as in don"? I watched several examples but felt like
| the all sounded the same?
| kaashif wrote:
| I think the examples on this page are clear:
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cot%E2%80%93caught_merger where
| cot/caught is the same difference as don/dawn.
| munificent wrote:
| I love dialects and grew up in New Orleans. It's an absolutely
| fascinating city if you have an ear for accents since there are
| so many distinct ones.
|
| People often tell me that I have "no accent" even though I grew
| up in the South. The answer is that I used to have a very strong
| east Texas accent. When I moved to the New Orleans area at ten, I
| was surrounded by so many distinct accents that I guess my brain
| didn't know which one to latch onto and I ended up with a sort of
| generic American one.
|
| I have a distinct memory of a classmate in fifth grade referring
| to a pen as an "ink pen" (as if there is any other kind) and
| realizing it was because in his accent, "pen" and "pin" are
| otherwise indistinguishable.
| clbrmbr wrote:
| Is there a quiz somewhere where I can learn what accent I have?
| (Of course it would be epic to do this with EnCodec embeddings,
| but a "does X rhyme with Y" quiz would suffice.)
| munk-a wrote:
| There's a good (but old one) available from the NYTimes[1] - a
| lot of it actually centers on which words you use for certain
| things (i.e. roundabout vs. rotary[2]) and rhyming like if you
| pronounce aunt and aunt as onht or ahnt or pronounce each one
| differently.
|
| 1. https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2014/upshot/dialect-
| quiz...
|
| 2. Guess where I'm from!
| clbrmbr wrote:
| 1. Thanks (but paywalled) 2. Hmm idk I call it a "circle".
| asah wrote:
| really fun: https://www.dialectsarchive.com/globalmap
|
| https://www.dialectsarchive.com/alabama-10
| https://www.dialectsarchive.com/new-york-9
| https://www.dialectsarchive.com/connecticut-8
| https://www.dialectsarchive.com/massachusetts-9
| https://www.dialectsarchive.com/nebraska-3
|
| https://www.dialectsarchive.com/scotland-14
| https://www.dialectsarchive.com/northern-ireland-6
| https://www.dialectsarchive.com/wales-7
|
| https://www.dialectsarchive.com/fiji-3
|
| https://www.dialectsarchive.com/uruguay-1
| azangru wrote:
| I am curious, since there seem to be many linguists in this
| thread, could anyone place Ken Schwaber's (one of the co-creators
| of scrum) accent? The most noticeable characteristic about it is
| that his /ae/ in words like "have", "past", "perhaps", "backlog"
| sounds very narrow/high. The /ei/ in "take" is also more
| narrow/high than usual. Is this something characteristic of any
| of the American dialects?
|
| Google says he was born in 1945 in Wheaton, Illinois. Is this
| typical of that area?
|
| Speech example: https://youtu.be/xm4X7Hv_GOs?t=711
| jmclnx wrote:
| Where I live, it is pretty much gone. No one under 40 knows the
| few common words we used in our youth.
| faut_reflechir wrote:
| yes, it seems clear to me that there is much less dialect
| variation in the US, outside very rural areas, than there was
| 30 years ago. Even then, the adults had much more variation
| than the kids.
| munificent wrote:
| I'm currently reading Steinbeck's "Travels with Charley in
| Search of America". He wrote it in 1960 and even then he
| remarks on how the US is quickly losing local dialects thanks
| to radio, television, and mass media.
| lukas099 wrote:
| I can't possibly remember where but I remember hearing that
| there are actually more new dialects today. It seems like
| something that is in constant flux everywhere.
| xeromal wrote:
| I'm from N. GA which has a flowery dialect and all those
| expressions my grandparents used are dying. I think 1 or 2
| more generations is all that's left.
| clbrmbr wrote:
| There tends to be the most variation in the country where a
| language originated---the "center of diversity". Taiwan is
| the CoD for the Polynesian languages including Indonesian and
| native languages of Madagascar. (As per Guns Germs and Steel)
| pessimizer wrote:
| British people also sound more American than ever. Nearby,
| in Ireland, there are rich (suburban, I think?) Dubliners
| who have never left Europe that, with their normal accents,
| can briefly pass for Americans to Americans.
| rayiner wrote:
| I grew up 20 miles west of DC and now live 20 miles east of DC.
| The difference in accents and dialect was quite surprising, so
| it's interesting to see the clear delineation on the map. My 10
| year old daughter's friends point out she doesn't have a
| "Maryland accent" which I find hilarious. Funnily enough it's
| sensitized me to other mid Atlantic accents and now I can
| immediately pick people out from New Jersey (even DC transplants
| with quite subtle suburban Jersey accents).
| munk-a wrote:
| As a mass-hole I'm always tickled by these examinations
| especially because there's so much local variation within Boston
| due to how varied the individual neighborhoods can be. The non-
| rhotic accent isn't pervasive as a lot of people have trained
| themselves out of it outside really historic urban centers - but
| there is a wide variety of bizarre terms we use.
| nicole_express wrote:
| There's definitely a "suburban Boston accent" where you have
| most of the terminology and vowel inventory of a traditional
| Boston accent, but since it's rhotic the speaker thinks they
| don't have an accent.
| cmrdporcupine wrote:
| Very weird to lump all of Canadian English in together.
|
| I'd argue dialect continuity between parts of the upper midwest
| US and (primarily rural) parts of central Canada.
| zoklet-enjoyer wrote:
| Rural Manitobans sound a bit more Canadian than rural North
| Dakotans
| nvy wrote:
| I'm from SW Ontario and live in BC. Apparently I sound like an
| American because I routinely get asked if I'm from Seattle.
| There's definitely an Easy-West divergence even north of the
| border.
| bentcorner wrote:
| FWIW (and I may have a bad ear) but I've lived about 20 years
| equally in the PNW and Central Canada and people in both
| places sound identical. (The only blatant difference is that
| I rhyme words like "bag" with "vague").
|
| Otherwise the differences I've experienced most are in word
| choices. Words like toque and chesterfield draw blank looks
| in the PNW.
| cmrdporcupine wrote:
| The differences are accentuated when you get into rural
| areas. A lot of the stereotypes people have of Canadian
| English are based on the speech of people who in e.g rural or
| northern Ontario. The raising, the 'eh, etc. Though in fact
| all Canadians tend towards these things, they're strongest
| there.
|
| One dialect marker that immediately sets someone from
| northern or rural Ontario apart: "I seen" (instead of "I saw"
| or "I've seen") I never heard this growing up in rural
| Alberta, but when I moved here to Ontario it immediately
| stuck out to me.
|
| There also seems to be a particular accent (that I noticed
| more when I was younger) for people who grew up speaking
| English in the Ottawa valley.
| euroderf wrote:
| Canada is vast and undifferentiated. If your research is lazy
| and US-centric.
| lukas099 wrote:
| But it is differentiated on the map.
| euroderf wrote:
| Basically just two zones for English ? Seems improbable in
| reality.
| yellowapple wrote:
| The massive blob called "The West" is just as improbable,
| as is its explanation consisting of "Mormons probably
| lol".
| cmrdporcupine wrote:
| I always find it amusing when maps like this, or for weather,
| etc. have a nice even line at the 49th parallel and it's
| like... "here be dragons" after it :-)
| greenbit wrote:
| Trying to understand the weather from maps that just grey
| out Canada is like trying to figure out what's going on in
| a chess game if you can only see half the board.
| bregma wrote:
| I live maybe 400 km from Toronto and when people from that city
| come by with their "Torontoww" accent they're pretty easy to
| distibguish from the local lads from up the line as soon as
| they open their mouths. My wife's relative from up in the
| valley speak with an almost unintelligible dialect with
| different phrasing and pronunciation than I'm used to.
|
| So I think the analysis is just lazy.
| shagie wrote:
| The bit I find neat is the rhotic 'R'. Most of the US says 'R'...
| not quite as strong as pirates did (I'll get to that) but the 'r'
| is there.
|
| A British woman who I worked (from London) didn't have the 'r'
| sound "car park" sound to my ear like "ca pack".
|
| In England, the rhoticity was found in the poorer and rural parts
| of the country during the age of discovery. The ship builders,
| the people who were on ships, the poor people who got sent to the
| new world... and pirates.
|
| A map of where non-roticity shows up in American English:
| https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Non-RhoticityUSA.png ...
| and you've got a map of where the upper class of England lived in
| the 1700s in the US.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rhoticity_in_English
|
| ----
|
| https://www.waywordradio.org is a podcast on the English language
| and dialectical differences are frequently found as topics.
|
| They also make reference to Dictionary of American Regional
| English - https://dare.wisc.edu - digital version:
| https://www.daredictionary.com (yes, its a subscription service)
| jbjohns wrote:
| Interestingly, at least British and Australian people tend to
| make the 'R' sound when the word ends in a vowel sound (e.g.
| "dater" instead of "data").
| walthamstow wrote:
| Our Aussie data scientist does it at the front of data as
| well, so if comes out 'dartah'
| arrowsmith wrote:
| Only if the next word starts with a vowel.
| [deleted]
| arnsholt wrote:
| That's called an intrusive r:
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linking_and_intrusive_R
|
| Originally comes from a final r being pronounced before a
| word starting with a vowel, and then that cropping up in
| places with no final r.
| denton-scratch wrote:
| French pronunciation has something like this. They can't
| abide a word that ends in a vowel-sound smooshing into a
| following word that starts with a vowel-sound. So, for
| example, the word "suis" is pronounced "swee", unless the
| next word lacks an initial consonant, in which case the
| trailing 's' is sounded.
|
| So "Je suis anglais" is pronounced as "Je sweez anglais".
| Compare "Je suis francais" ("Je swee francais").
| froddd wrote:
| This is called "faire la liaison" ("make the link")
| between the two words. If the first word ends with a
| consonant, and the next word starts with a vowel, then do
| pronounce that last consonant.
| pessimizer wrote:
| Pretty sure that English non-rhoticity started with
| higher-caste London people trying to sound French.
| arrowsmith wrote:
| As in the Beatles song _A Day in the Life_ :
|
| _I saw-r-a film today, oh boooy_
| denton-scratch wrote:
| Yeah, that sounds like classic Scouse to me, but you
| certainly hear it in other UK regional accents.
| arrowsmith wrote:
| Is it a regional thing? I have a very "standard" middle-
| class home counties English accent and I use the
| intrusive r.
| kzrdude wrote:
| I'm extremely underqualified (non-native speaker) but
| first time I heard this and paid attention was from Dave
| Chinner (linux developer) who is australian and he was
| using a very pronounced linking r.
| SilasX wrote:
| Or Oasis's "Champagne Supernova" sounding (to my American
| ear) like "supin' over".
|
| Also, The Lincoln Lawyer has an Australian actor playing
| a character (Cisco) with a gruff, throaty American
| accident, but at one point it slips through and he says
| "Lisa" as "Liser".
| timeon wrote:
| > "car park" sound to my ear like "ca pack"
|
| Why not "ka pak" or "ca pac"? I'm not native English speaker.
| Pronunciation is still mystery for me. Is it like in Dutch or
| Norwegian that two consonants are enclosing short vowel while
| one consonant makes long vowel?
|
| And I'm ashamed to admit that I still do not know what is
| difference between "c" and "k" in English language.
| arrowsmith wrote:
| > what is difference between "c" and "k" in English language
|
| They're the same sound, including when it's written "ck" as
| in "back". Although sometimes the "c" is pronounced like an
| "s", e.g. "face", "celery".
|
| English spelling is highly inconsistent and it's often hard
| to tell how a word should be pronounced based on the spelling
| alone. Don't expect it to make sense.
| trealira wrote:
| It's a common convention for words that end in a "short
| vowel" followed by a hard /k/ (IPA) sound to be spelled with
| ck, e.g., "back," "block," "stick," "truc." It's not a
| convention always followed, though; see "book," "music."
|
| > _Is it like in Dutch or Norwegian that two consonants are
| enclosing short vowel while one consonant makes long vowel?_
|
| Yes, that is generally the rule. Usually, a vowel followed by
| a consonant followed by e (/a_e, e_e, i_e, o_e, u_e) will
| produce the "long" version of that vowel. To signify that
| it's pronounced as a short vowel, many words have doubled
| consonants, e.g., "plate" (long a) vs "platter" (short a).
| When a word ends in a short vowel and a k, a lot of words
| unnecessarily double it to a ck, e.g., "trick," "back," etc.
|
| However, this is more of a guideline than a rule; there are
| many exceptions to it. For example, "paste" has the a, then
| two consonants, then e; due to the doubled consonants, it
| "should" have a short vowel, but it actually has a long
| vowel. And many words with short vowels don't have doubled
| consonants; for example, the a in "magic" is short rather
| than long, and the first a in "Japanese" is short (you would
| expect "Jappanese"). The e in "medical" and the i in
| "amicable" are both tonic, short vowels.
|
| > _I still do not know what is difference between "c" and "k"
| in English language._
|
| "K" always makes a hard /k/ sound. "c" makes a hard /k/ sound
| before a, o, and u (e.g., car, acorn, cute), but makes a soft
| /s/ sound before e, i, and y (celery, peace, cinders,
| cylinder). With Latin and Greek words, ae and oe are both
| treated as e, so Caesar, and coelacanth have soft C sounds.
| However, there are exceptions; sometimes it makes a k sound
| even before an e (e.g., sceptical, Celtic, loci), and
| sometimes it makes a soft c sound where a hard one is
| expected (e.g. facade).
|
| English spelling is very irregular. Much of this irregularity
| is to reflect etymology, i.e., we borrowed the word without
| changing the spelling, or only changed the spelling a little
| bit.
| arrowsmith wrote:
| FYI the stereotypical "pirate accent" is in fact a West Country
| accent - that is, it's from the southwestern region of England
| known as the West Country. And the reason this particular
| accent became associated with pirates is not because historical
| pirates actually spoke like that (although many surely did) -
| it's almost entirely due to a string of popular movies about
| pirates in the 1950s starring the actor Robert Newton:
|
| https://people.howstuffworks.com/one-guy-responsible-for-pir...
|
| > A British woman who I worked (from London) didn't have the
| 'r' sound "car park" sound to my ear like "ca pack".
|
| Most English people don't pronounce the rhotic "r", with the
| main exception being the West Country. It's still widely
| pronounced in Scotland, Ireland, and parts of Wales.
| shagie wrote:
| (For additional on the background on this:
| https://slate.com/human-interest/2014/09/pirate-speech-
| origi... )
|
| Let me rephrase... the less wealthy parts of England had more
| rhoticity in their accent than the upper class parts. These
| poorer parts - either as indentured servants or immigrants to
| the new world (and Australia) had a stronger influence on
| what would become the American English accents.
|
| Rhoticity can be understood by the further exaggeration that
| pirates displayed which was again exaggerated in popular
| media. Their accent was part of the West Country English
| which was in the poorer parts of the country - ship builders
| and young men with little to lose.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/West_Country_English
|
| > not because historical pirates actually spoke like that
| (although many surely did)
|
| Blackbeard was presumed to have been born in Bristol. Francis
| Drake was born in Tavistock. These locations are both firmly
| in the West Country English dialect.
| canjobear wrote:
| Also the high-status dialect of American English until the
| 1950s was nonrhotic. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mid-
| Atlantic_accent
| [deleted]
| ummonk wrote:
| I've definitely noticed that SF lacks the NorCal accent which I
| grew up with in Walnut Creek, and this map shows that.
| underlipton wrote:
| It does not escape attention that AAVE is relegated to a small
| blurb in the "Special Interest" section, with a number of
| inaccuracies.
|
| _> African American Vernacular English (AAVE), the dialect of
| most African Americans in the United States, is derived from
| Classical Southern, and shares its main features and many other
| features. However, it also has a number of distinctive features.
| I have not generally included AAVE in this study, since its
| geographical distribution tends to be independent of "white"
| dialects, primarily because after the Civil War large numbers of
| former slaves moved to all parts of the U.S., and tended to form
| their own communities, retaining their unique dialect. However,
| in many areas of the Lowland South no such migration occurred,
| and in these areas AAVE and "white" dialects share features and
| clearly have developed together, so in these areas I have
| sometimes included AAVE samples. AAVE tends to retain r-dropping
| more than "white" dialects do, even among younger speakers, and
| throughout the United States in African American communities._
|
| _> I have not generally included AAVE in this study, since its
| geographical distribution tends to be independent of "white"
| dialects_
|
| This is like saying, "I have not included black history in this
| survey of American history, as it tends to be independent of
| "white" history.
|
| _> primarily because after the Civil War large numbers of former
| slaves moved to all parts of the U.S._
|
| Mass movement of American blacks out of the South occurred in the
| early 20th century; the Great Migration was spurred not by the
| Civil War, directly, but instead by mass terror.
|
| _> and tended to form their own communities_
|
| They were forced into small communities, largely into poor
| conditions or predatory housing arrangements, and generally
| barred from entering white communities except as menial labor.
|
| AAVE is one of the most important American dialects. It's had a
| major influence on American cultural output, and has done so for
| more than a one hundred years. It's also itself heavily
| influenced by West African speech patterns, miraculously
| preserved despite centuries of persecution of its speakers. Rick,
| if you're reading this: you need to do better. Your work is
| unfortunately incomplete and inadequate without giving AAVE it's
| just due. I would suggest contacting subject-matter experts for
| guidance and revising this page appropriately. Some suggestions:
|
| https://adwhiteprofessors.cornell.edu/professors-at-large/jo...
| https://coe.arizona.edu/person/sonja-lanehart
| anonacct37 wrote:
| Your comment:
|
| > Rick, if you're reading this: you need to do better.
|
| Front and center of Rick's page.
|
| > This is just a hobby of mine, that I thought might be
| interesting to a lot of people. Some people collect stamps.
| Others collect coins. I collect dialects. - Rick Aschmann.
| (Page last updated: May 2, 2018.
|
| In fact Rick is apparently a professional linguist who's day
| job involves researching "amerindian" or indigenous languages
| so he's devoted his career to studying the dialects of people
| of color. Consider cutting him some slack on his hobby.
| pessimizer wrote:
| This is a bit simple, too. AAVE is not a single thing. All
| black people do not have the same accent, and some don't have
| similar accents to each other. There is also no an ur-accent
| floating around that is perturbing all black people in a
| uniform way from the local accents that surround them.
|
| And while people can theorize that some notably common Black
| speech patterns arose from West Africa because they can find
| similar things in some contemporary West African speech - this
| is a comparison that people were biased to make (black people
| imported from West Africa talk funny, must be West African
| influence.) Black people's accents _as you quote here_ are
| generally the same archaic Scottish /Irish/English accents that
| everyone else they lived near had, but didn't continue
| identically because black people were physically separated from
| white people socially, and often living under enforced
| illiteracy.
|
| Black people were brought here speaking a huge number of
| languages, and forced to live with other black people who
| didn't speak the languages they spoke, and forced to live under
| white people who demanded that they speak in a subservient
| manner and remain illiterate.
|
| AAVE is honestly a joke. It's another way to designate black
| people as a designated foreign underclass. Black West Texans or
| Hill Country Mississippians don't sound like black New Yorkers.
| Black West Texans sound a lot like white West Texans, and black
| New Yorkers sound a lot like white New Yorkers. That they don't
| sound identical is due to segregation, past and current, not
| some foreign origin.
|
| The reason they don't track black people's accents, or even
| recognize them, is because no one cares about black people.
| It's easy to see how the recognition of "AAVE" seems like a
| victory if one thinks that all black people are fungible.
|
| edit: and of course, if you're white, talking "black" is a
| single thing, and white people can do it. It involves holding
| your hands in weird ways, pushing your chest out, making a mean
| face, and can only be used (and will almost always be used)
| when talking about partying, violence, or having sex. Pop music
| is minstrelsy.
| woodruffw wrote:
| Linguists seem to disagree, but I swear that I can tell the
| difference between a Manhattan/Bronx accent and a Brooklyn/Queens
| one (to the extent that they exist anymore, which is barely).
| MaciejR wrote:
| You're absolutely right, it is distinguishable as a person
| who's grown up in the area.
| imbnwa wrote:
| Trump and Christopher Walken have Queens accents, they sound
| very different from Bronx or Brooklyn.
| arrowsmith wrote:
| Bernie Sanders grew up in Brooklyn and has a distinctive
| accent (possibly influenced by his Jewish heritage?), see
| e.g. this video:
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=waeXBCUkuL8
| Lamad123 wrote:
| The map is atrocious.. Too much detail at that scale!! And I
| think I might've heard of the existence of an Appalachian
| category in Places like WV and parts of Tennessee. I'm a
| foreigner and even when I could barely tell the difference
| between dialects, I could very clearly see the huge difference
| between how people in WV and Eastern PA accents vs NJ and NY on
| the coast. Also, it seems odd that the "Canadian" dialect-s are
| so neatly aligned with the border!! I feel like people in much of
| Alberta speak some generic North American English and not a lot
| of "aboat". North of Ottawa in Quebec, Hull specifically, almost
| nobody speaks English!!! I lived there and everything was in
| French. Some people couldn't and did care to speak English even
| as a second language. The English that people speak in Quebec and
| particularly Montreal seems to also differ from the generic
| Canadian accent you know!
| davidw wrote:
| Silver City having its own subdialect seems odd. It's a town of
| like 10K people in SW New Mexico.
| yellowapple wrote:
| There's some random town in Texas with its own German dialect,
| so I'd believe it.
| tejohnso wrote:
| Unfortunately 4/5 video links I clicked on were bad.
|
| Original title is better.
| sudosteph wrote:
| Yeah, I don't buy that Boone, NC has the same dialect as Odessa
| TX. The Western NC / E. TN Appalachian accent is quite a distinct
| one.
| kcplate wrote:
| Definitely. I can generally tell the difference between Texas,
| Louisiana/Mississippi, Arkansas, Tennessee/Alabama/Georgia, NC,
| and SC accents, but I can see how some damned Yankees might
| not.
| wcedmisten wrote:
| Does anyone know if this data is available in a structured format
| for the regions? E.g. geojson? It would be really cool to
| transform this into an interactive map on top of an OSM base map
| to make it easier to use.
|
| It looks like all the boundaries are part of an <area> tag, so I
| could reverse-engineer them back into coordinates, but that seems
| a bit awkward.
| YossarianFrPrez wrote:
| If you are interested in this, there are two related books --
| American Nations [1] which was inspired by The Nine Nations of
| North America [2] as well as the data presented in the link above
| -- that explore geographic variation in American subcultures.
| There is also some recent work in personality psychology that
| aims to get at regional variation in culture (see [3], for
| example.)
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Nations
|
| [2]
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Nine_Nations_of_North_Amer...
|
| [3] Geographical Psychology, Peter J. Rentfrow. Current Opinion
| in Psychology.
| https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2352250X1...
| cecida wrote:
| I haven't been to Boston in 15 years, but I remember it having
| two very distinct accents when I was there.
|
| There was the very Bostonian Irish accent with rolling R and very
| soft H. My mother always said Kennedy had it, but I can't pick
| that up in recordings apart from the use of lots of adverbs and a
| general flair for speaking.
|
| The other is distinctly WASPish. It's the New England received
| pronunciation style. It's more Yankee.
| aristus wrote:
| Archie Bunker and Thurston Howell. You don't encounter them as
| much today in the wild, possibly because of how they were
| caricatured on TV.
| yuppie_scum wrote:
| I think you're much more likely to hear a foreign accent than a
| waspy one these days. Charles Emerson Winchester III isn't
| walking thru that door.
| schwartzworld wrote:
| That's a Brahmin accent, and it's completely dead. Maybe a
| couple of old ladies at the Athenaeum talk like that.
| imbnwa wrote:
| Where does Bill Burr fit in there
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