Posted on 08/24/2012 2:10:57 PM PDT by JerseyanExile
On July 4, 1960, the Eugene (Ore.) Register-Guard rang in Independence Day with a dire Associated Press report by one Norma Gauhn headlined “American Dialects Disappearing.” The problem, according to “speech experts,” was the homogenizing effect of “mass communications, compulsory education, [and] the mobility of restless Americans.” These conformist pressures have only intensified in the half-century since the AP warned “that within four generations virtually all regional U.S. speech differences will be gone.” And so as we enter the predicted twilight of regional American English, it’s no surprise that publications as venerable as the Economist now confirm what our collective intuition tells us: “Television and the Internet are definitely doing something to our regional accents: A Boston accent that would have seemed weak in the John F. Kennedy years now sounds thick by comparison.”
Before you start weeping into your chowdah, though, I have some news: All these people are wrong. Not about the Boston accent, necessarily; that one might really be receding. But American linguistic diversity as a whole isn’t dying—it’s thriving. Despite our gut-level hunch about the direction of the language; despite the fact that 70-cent, three-minute, off-peak, coast-to-coast long-distance calls that cost four inflation-adjusted dollars in 1970 are now free; despite cheap travel, YouTube, and the globalization of film and television, American dialects are actually diverging.
There are multiple examples of such divergence. But none is as dramatic, as baffling to linguists, and as mysteriously under the collective radar as what’s happening in the cities that ring the Great Lakes. From Syracuse, N.Y., in the east to Milwaukee in the west, 34 million Americans are revolutionizing the sound of English. Linguists first noted aspects of the change in the late 1960s.
(Excerpt) Read more at slate.com ...
That’s funny. My dad says “winder” too, and he lived in Chicago his whole life, except for a stint in the army. I’ve never heard anyone else around here use it but him, so I don’t know where he got it from. He did have some relatives from Michigan, so maybe that was the source.
Screwed it up again LoL “Neh Vay Dah”
and that is final!
And what is the difference between a couch,sofa, a davenport and a divan?
LoL!
I guess there is just no pleasing us Michiganders.
We still have friends and family back in Monroe County.
I’m feeling the need to return soon for a visit to Lake Erie where I grew up.
I'm from Winzerr.
My sister says “winder” instead of “window”. My dad always said “zink” instead of “sink”. He also called the living room the front room. We are from Ohio.
I can tell we’re moving toowahd autumn. It’s dahk in heah, and it’s not quite seven o’clock.
Funny, I first heard the strange sounding “Nah-vah-da” pronounciation back in the ‘80s when a guy from New York moved to our small town on the California/Nevada border. He was ribbed constantly for saying it that way. Heck, half of the actors on CSI Las Vegas say it wrong too.
“In one experiment, shifters were asked to write down a series of words, some affected by the NCS, some not, but all dictated by someone with an NCS accent. The expectation is obvious: Shifters should ace this test. But, amazingly, NCS speakers frequently did not understand their own speech.”
I think the conclusion is all wrong. I’m from the region, and I CAN speak with this accent, or I can speak with a more vanilla American accent. Most people learn both growing up, since we are exposed to the more standard one in schools, and through television, movies, music, etc, even if all of our family and friends use the local accent. So, when we are put in a formal setting, like taking a test, we will naturally tend to talk, and listen, more in the standard accent. That’s probably why the test results were skewed: just putting people in a test is going to change how they perceive the spoken word. Those same people, talking to each other informally, have no problem at all interpreting the words correctly.
Also, if the test involved simply reading single words, then there is a lack of context clues as to which accent is being spoken. That would definitely lead to some guesswork on the part of the listener.
I can stand in water up to my chest and see my feet.
Perch, Walleye, Steelhead Trout, Coho Salmon.
Too many vowels!
I’ve been to the Winzerr Ballet.
Out here on the borders with the world (Orange County, Lost Angeles metro) the accents I contend with are from far outside, not inside America.
Combining immigration, international mobility, and tourism it requires patience, good sense of humor, etc.
When I was in high school, the advice was to study German for the sciences and French for international diplomacy. Now I imagine the advice is to study English for both.
Haven’t we all.
Hey Hey hey!
Keep it classy would yuz?
Lake Erie is beautiful now, especially on moonlit nights. Shoot now I want to go for a drive...They make people pay to park just to walk out on the dock now—Luna Pier. Dummies.
Wish I could retire there, too. Lake Erie shore line is one place where the property values have NOT decreased.
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