Posted on 06/05/2013 3:10:55 PM PDT by SMGFan
Everyone knows that Americans don't exactly agree on pronunciations. Regional accents are a major part of what makes American English so interesting as a dialect. Joshua Katz, a Ph. D student in statistics at North Carolina State University, just published a group of awesome visualizations of Professor Bert Voux's linguistic survey that looked at how Americans pronounce words. (via) detsl on /r/Linguistics His results were first published on Abstract, the N.C. State research blog.
(Excerpt) Read more at businessinsider.com ...
There is an island in the Chesapeake, Tilghman Island, where they say the English dialect remains much as it was from the first English settlers in the 1656, due to the Island's relative isolation for the first 300 years. The phenomenon has probably faded in my lifetime, tho, due to television.
One of my elderly relatives who was born in Maryland had a very strange accent. When I went on my roots tour in Ireland, where his father had migrated from, I heard that strange accent again, which was quite localized in a small area of two towns, and not at all like the "Bells of St. Mary's" stereotypes used by Hollywood.
My wife is from Norwich, and like other parts of Britain, has its own accent. I can barely understand my brother-in-law who grew up in Norwich. My wife has lost a lot of her accent after living in the U.S. for about thirty years. The official name of the “posh” accent is The Received Pronunciation. There are far more regional accents in Britain than in the U.S. or any other English-speaking country. For instance, Australians have basically one pronunciation/accent from one end of the country to the other. According to sources I’ve heard tell me.
Philadelphia working-class folks like to add extra syllables. Two of my favorites: the Acme Supermarket is "da AC-a-me"; and masonry is "masonary."
The upper crust accent is called The Received Pronunciation or the “posh” accent as most average Brits call it. Most average Brits snicker at other average/non-nobility Brits who put on the “posh” accent.
When I was down in the Norfolk-Williamsburg area in Eastern Virginia, I certainly heard the Southern accent.
Good point. There would be aspects of what we now call a "Southern drawl" and of British English, but trying to get at the sound of it would be difficult. Chesapeake accents were quite different from what we now call a Southern accent.
How about Vienna? In Virginia, it's VeeENna. In Georgia, it's VahEENna.
My hometown was actually a weird case. There’s a more detailed version of that map that I’ve seen, and running up the Illinois River Valley from Missouri into Central Illinois is a finger of area where it’s “sody,” I remember being at a Cubs game when I was a kid and the looks we got when my cousin yelled “HEY, SODY MAN!” at the vendor.
Ugh! I didn't say they didn't have a Southern accent, I said they didn't have a Southern drawl. Perhaps you think one is identical to the other?
Upper Southerners (and residents of the top halves of Deep South states) do not drawl. They twang.
I am merely pointing out that George Washington, a Virginian, would not have sounded like someone from south Mississippi.
You don’t really hit the drawl till you’re halfway down Mississippi, Alabama, or Georgia. The northern halves of those states have the same twang as their neighbors to the north.
I believe Texans also speak with the twang rather than the drawl. Has to do with the origin of most Texas settlers.
The Pennsylvania Dutch, or Amish people, are actually of German descent. Calling German-Americans "Dutch" came from the German word for "German" -- "Deutch", pronounced "doyitch."
Exactly. Virginia isn't Alabama. And it always amuses me when actors portraying Robert E. Lee always give him a Gulf Coast Deep South drawl.
The few times I have heard someone from Virginia, Maryland, or West Virginia, they have all seemed to have a very prominent "R," unlike the stereotypical Deep South dropped "R." The Upper South is rhotic, the Deep South is non-rhotic (except for American Blacks, who appear to be almost universally non-rhotic wherever they are).
Kind of like how Dan Rather is from Texas, but got rid of his "icky" accent that made him unemployable nationally unless he talked like Walter Cronkite.
Personally I love accents.
I told my GF how much her accent turned me on, and she scolded me because it was "ridiculous".
You Americans! WHY do you like the way we speak? It's the PROPER way to do so.
To her ears, Americans are rubes. And she would mock my midwestern accent all the time.
Bless their hearts!
If you rent the recent version of Hairspray, John Travolta had it down! "I got to do mah arnin!" (do my ironing)
Bless their hearts!
__________
Rofl!!!
Very nice!
;-)
In Tin Men, Danny Devito does a HORRENDOUS job of imitating a Bawl'mor accent.
It actually bothered me because he obviously didn't do the work in getting it right.
You nailed it! And did you say, "Look at the Mewn! How many mahls is it from Earth to the Mewn?"
The best Bal-T-moor accent ever is in the radio commercials by Don DiMarchio, "Mister Tire." "Oin di rim an owt di dewr! Ah'm Mistuwr Tahr!"
Are Erin and AAron said the same?
Uh oh, you just gave me an excuse to post this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dd7FixvoKBw
Warning: language in a few spots
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