National TV and radio is killing regional accents. It used to be when a kid grew up in area X 90% of the voices they heard were people from there, with that accent, so that’s how they learned to talk. Now with radio and TV a good 60 or 75% of the voices a kid will hear have that semi-midwestern accent TV heads in the 60 decides was the “generic American” accent.
But we still have regional cooking.
Question: I’m from the New York area but I speak standard “newscaster” American English. (When I travel and tell people where I’m from, I’m asked time and again, “Where’s your accent?”) But there’s one thing I don’t get. What’s the significance of spelling “New” like “Noo” when simulating the New York accent? To me, they sound the same. Folks from elsewhere, what’s your take on this? Do you perhaps say “nyew?”
All those accents sound retarded out here.
Started college in upstate New York in 1971. I met a girl who said she was from Teopawk. Took a while before I realized it was Deer Park.
*ping of interest*
They all moved to Rio Rancho, NM.
Everybody is speaking the “black accent” now, even Obama and Hilary when it suits their needs (although neither of them does it very well, it’s funny when a black guy like Obama, who is actually much more like a nerdy white, tries to do the black lingo, he sounds ridiculous). It’s amusing (or maybe sickening, depending on your point of view) that white people feel the need to imitate the black lingo (as well as the black lifestyle) this seemed to first show itself on shows like Jerry Springer but now has become mainstream. America’s best weapon is not nuclear, it is exporting the black rap gangsta culture to the young people of foreign countries, making them a bunch of mindless idiots. If you want to bring down countries like Iran, North Korea, Cuba, China, etc, just inject the black gangsta rap culture into their young people and they will implode from within.
From the article:
(edit)
The East Coast is referred to as the "R-less corridor" by linguists, and other coastal cities have accents with features in common with New York, like Boston and Charleston, S.C. Those cities "were settled around the same time, and the speakers came from a certain place" — South London — "using a certain type of British English," Becker says.
(edit)
************************
Do you think that dialects and accents in the U.K. have been going through similar changes as what the article refers to as occurring in New York?
I don’t care about a brooklyn accent, to me there is nothing funnier than a Yinzer Yuppie.
And those who know what I’m talking about agree.