Posted on 02/28/2007 10:50:51 PM PST by Muentzer2005
It's started. Rising inflection at the end of the sentence. Sometimes several times in a sentence. Very. Short. Staccato. Statements. As yet no use of "like" four or five times in a sentence, but occasionally once or twice.
Meike, once the vocalisation of Laura Ashley prints and the only girl at her inner-London primary school who never dropped any consonant, let alone an aitch, is starting to speak with an American accent. Perhaps not quite an accent, yet, but the rhythm of her speech has changed in a decidedly US direction. The rest can't be far behind.
We have been on "accent watch" ever since we arrived - monitoring our children's utterances for early signs of infestation ...
I caught our son, Joe, using "awesome" last night - without permission or prior consultation - to describe a Matchbox car.
Still, this was an unusual lapse from him. In London, Joe used to like to drop his aitches in grand style but now he has reversed roles with his sister and set himself up as the defender of the old faith.
He continually asks his mother in a worried tone if he's getting an American accent. He wants to go to an English school where he can be taught in English, he says. Quite where he gets this British snobbery from is beyond us.
(Excerpt) Read more at telegraph.co.uk ...
LOL
zing!!!
I was born and spent my first five years in the Midwest, then got transplanted to Washington State. As an adult, visiting my MI relatives, I found no difference in the sound of our speech and theirs. There were a few regional expressions I'd carried to Washington that people here weren't used to, but beyond that, there was no difference.
I spent a day talking with a young Dutch man some years ago on one of his stopovers while traveling the US and Canada. He was absolutely amazed -- shocked -- to discover that everyone sounded the same in America (I don't know if he'd gotten to the SE or NE, but he began his journey in Eastern Canada). He said wherever he went, no matter how many thousands of miles apart, we all were clearly understandable to him. English is his first language, as it is with many Dutch people, as he explained: they are a tiny country, but they have so many dialects they can't understand one another and so they adopted English as the universal language for the school texts.
So as diverse as we think we sound, even when considering the NE and South, we aren't all that different from one another in the sound of our speech.
lol; but @TEOTD, can only say. . .
2B or not 2B; is the question. . .
Wouldn't Dutch be his first language?
Technically some dialect of Dutch is his first language, but not in general conversation, only among those in a small radius from where he lived. He said Dutch people have to speak English to understand each other if they are out of their own little area. This is going to sound unbelievable but he said they have hundreds of dialects in Holland and you don't have to travel very far before you can't understand what the residents are saying. That is why he was so astonished, and marveled exceedingly, at our ability to travel a thousand miles and never have any difficulty communicating with other Americans.
If you've studied the Low Countries, how difficult it has been to get the people to agree on many issues, and how staunchly set they are in many ways, it isn't difficult to see how this situation developed.
India and the Philippines seem similar to the Netherlands in that English is the unifying, working language of the nation as a whole, although there are a bunch of local dialects or languages. South Africa could also be the same.
Well considering that Brits sing words just like we do and our standard American accent sounds essentially the way we sing, it must sound like singing to the Brits...
Quite where he gets this British snobbery from is beyond us.
Hopefully in jest - from his earlier statement: “We have been on "accent watch" ever since we arrived - monitoring our children's utterances for early signs of infestation ...”
Reads more like a Frenchman than an Englishman.
I believe children should be bilingual, and English English is nearly a second language. Thanks to Ivan I have been learning some English English words over the years.
LOL
Good grief, here I am reflecting on the thought that I know very few people who don't have an accent from my perspective. OTOH, I know TONS of folks here in SoFlo that have accents from literally everywhere else who attempt to produce a facsimile of proper "American" English. Note that I'm not about to claim I can speak properly myself. I've chosen to commit the random slaughter of the Portuguese and Spanish language myself, but it can't be helping my English any.
Many younger folks can't hear themselves doing it. I was at a meeting recently where a wonderful and smart young lady was presenting some results from her research. The audience was primarly older engineers and PhDs. She Valley Girl'd her way through the whole thing. The tragic, but understandable result, was that she failed to establish any credibility for herself and her work.
When I was teaching, I would occasionally parrot the way the girls would talk. The lesson was that it sounds ridiculous no matter who is doing it and if a young person wants me to take her seriously, she'll stop it.
This author is an idiot on American regional accents. To call the Bronx honk a "twang" reveals all I need to know about his knowledge of the U.S.
... eh?
Interesting-as opposed to the UK or Japan where the standard accent is that of the largest city.
What a nightmare that would be if standard American English was New Yorkish ;-)
That sounds odd. Even though people generally speak english in Holland their first language is still Dutch.
"Like, what-EVERRR.'
Oh, man, that's like so 2005! Try, like, what-EVZZZZ!
A few years back I was in Germany, and, not speaking the language myself, I noted to the German guys I was working with that one of the guys seemed to speak quite differently that the rest.
They all laughed and said that I was detecting his "country accent." He was a rural type German, apparently.
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