Some accents are more equal than others:
As [teacher Guadalupe] Aguayo has struggled, though, something else has changed. Arizona, after almost a decade of sending monitors to classrooms across the state to check on teachers’ articulation, recently made a sharp about-face on the issue. A federal investigation of possible civil rights violations prompted the state to call off its accent police.
“To my knowledge, we have not seen policies like this in other states,” Russlynn H. Ali, the assistant federal secretary of education for civil rights, said in an interview. She called it “good news” that Arizona had altered its policy.
If you wonder if her accent is that bad, just check out the audio accompanying the article. She speaks grammatically correct English with the “ch” issues and accent on the wrong syllable that you’ll hear from Spanish speakers who have learned English as a second language. Her students are mostly Latino, so they probably hear exactly the same kind of accent at home.
I assume teachers in rural Kentucky or Arkansas were monitored to make sure they spoke English like network news anchors, and we’re just not hearing about it because of liberal bias in the media.
WereBear
I think of Arizona suffering an infestation of wingnuts; kind of like termites. THIS is what they are spending taxpayer money on!?!?!?
If only the rubes would realize they are being lied to. But it sounds so good! They’d rather hear the lies.
gene108
I think teachers usually get reviewed on if they speak clearly, i.e. are they loud enough that the students can hear them and do they talk at a pace that is conducive to kids taking notes and learning.
It’s shameful something routine got morphed into the accent police.
I personally want to pass a 1491 Rule. If you cannot document that the majority of your ancestry was in this country prior to 1492 and you cannot provide proof your family legally immigrated here, you need to take a citizenship test or be deported to your country of origin.
I mean sure your family came on the Mayflower, but did the Pilgrims have proper visas? Were their passports stamped? If not tough titties, you take the test or go home.
Linda Featheringill
@gene108: #2
:-)
And several of those early immigrants had police records where they came from. Not respectable, upstanding citizens at all!
And a lot of them weren’t all that respectable while they were here, either.
Southern Beale
Actually, there’s been a lot of “accent policing” of southern African Americans. I imagine back in the day Asian kids were also duly monitored. And you know, Native American kids were basically told it was illegal to speak their native languages. The Okies dealt with the same thing when they moved to California.
This is nothing new, stuff like this has been going on forever. It’s still wrong, of course, but this nativist intolerance is deeply ingrained in the American psyche.
Moving on, I am blogwhoring my Sunday round-up post of interesting items I’m sure will please and annoy many people today. A veritable cornucopia of bloggy goodness.
:-)
Now, where are the cinnamon rolls?
kdaug
@Linda Featheringill: C’mon, Linda – what’s a little “burning at the stake” between friends?
Linda Featheringill
@kdaug:
:-)
Omnes Omnibus
@Linda Featheringill: Now, look here. Just because some of my ancestors came here, carried on “wars” with tribes like the Pequots, and participated in things like in witch trials (in my family, we have accusers, accused, convicted, ministers, and judges) doesn’t mean that they weren’t perfectly respectable people. Look at the Very Serious People these days. Oh, I see your point.
Anya
So which American accent is legitimate or acceptable to the wingnuts? I am guessing any accent, no matter how incomprehensible, spoken by white people. Where these people always this odious or did the election of a black man to the presidency cause a collective brain damage?
It seems as though Arizona is in a campaign to make Mississippi look progressive.
Amir Khalid
For what it’s worth, Guadalupe Aguayo’s English sounds perfectly clear to this foreigner’s ears. She has a strong Mexican accent, yes, but nothing that keeps me from understanding her. I can very easily imagine American accents not as readily intelligible to me.
SiubhanDuinne
@Southern Beale:
That Wayne LaPierre story has had me chuckling for days.
I’ve probably never said, but I always enjoy your comments here at BJ and always look forward to reading your own blog.
Omnes Omnibus
@Anya: Actually, Obama’s accent is pretty much the standard, “acceptable” one. Except, of course, for the fact that it is coming out his mouth.
Dexter
May be the wingnuts will accept the “received pronunciation”. But then none of them can speak in that, so there is that tiny bit of a problem.
Linda Featheringill
In the gardening thread below, a link is given for video of Obama’s speech to the Black Caucus. I went to the end and listened repeatedly to the last few phrases that were quoted without the “g”s.
I do transcription. I am a professional listener, if you will. I heard more g’s than the journalist reported.
Actually, Obama uses the ending g more often than I do.
[Nice speech, by the way. Full of rhythm and cadence and ..]
Linda Featheringill
@Dexter:
Damn right!
:-)
beltane
Would the wingnuts would oppose having British or Irish teachers in the public schools also? Nah, their lack of pigmentation automatically makes them RealAmericans no matter where they were born and raised.
In my high school in NYC they always tried to make me (and others) take an English proficiency exam for the sole reason that our names ended in vowels. I refused on principle, without any negative consequences, but I imagine that if I lived in one of our more fascist states the consequences would have been horrific.
In the USA, the worst crimes against the English language tend to be committed by the people whose emigrated here first.
geg6
As a person who once taught a lot of adult ESL students (in GED prep classes), I rarely had as much trouble understanding them as I do people from the Deep South. I need a translator for those accents. Not so much for immigrants from Eastern Europe, Latin America, or Southeast Asia. And if I talk about gumbands or redding up or dahntahn, I’m sure those fine Arizonans would not have a clue as to what I’m talking about.
Cat Lady
@Amir Khalid:
I grew up in Boston and I still need to run a lot of what people say here through my interior translation program, eg., did I just hear someone say “he was “shot” or “short”? But the people saying it are generally white so it’s ok.
Kristine
@Dexter: “But then none of them can speak in that, so there is that tiny bit of a problem.”
A great number of them can’t spell, either.
Their Preferred English really is a bit of a mess.
Jewish Steel
Teachers in my native Suburban Chicago are policed to make sure, as Kurt Vonnegut said of the Hoosier accent, they sound like a “bandsaw on sheet metal.”
Mustang Bobby
Here in Miami, you are checked to see if you have the correct accented English. If you don’t speak it with a Cuban accent, you are ostracized from a lot of groups. Also too, if you speak Spanish with anything other than a Cuban or Caribbean accent, you get teased. I learned my Spanish in New Mexico, so I am usually referred to as the guy who sounds like Speedy Gonzalez.
MAJeff
Can we please give Arizona back to Mexico?
Mustang Bobby
@MAJeff: That would be like “The Ransom of Red Chief”. They’d make us pay them to take it back.
Cranky Observer
> I assume teachers in rural Kentucky or Arkansas were
> monitored to make sure they spoke English like network news
> anchors, and we’re just not hearing about it because of
> liberal bias in the media.
In the Chicago Public Schools at least through the 1960s teachers were so monitored. Per both my teachers and family members who had been CPS teachers during the 40s-70s. I have to think that was the case in all the classical big city school districts; it was part of the whole assimilation concept at the time.
Cranky
Not Sure
@WereBear: It’s the heat. It fries your brain.
cathyx
I thought her English pronunciation was very good. I tutor esl native spanish speakers and I know the issues spanish speakers have when learning to speak english. This woman is getting unfairly singled out.
On several shows on the Discovery Channel (aka the southern white male channel), they need to add the written words for some of their conversations even though they are speaking english. And if they didn’t have that, I wouldn’t know what those good old boys were saying.
Amir Khalid
There’s a planetful of different English accents. When Mad Max was released in the US, it was dubbed into American English. I’ve seen it on DVD with two English dialog tracks, that American dub and the original Strine.
nancydarling
Reminds me of a funny conversation between me, my daughter and a Texas high school friend with an accent so thick you could cut it with a knife.
High school friend: “You wouldn’t believe all the warsh I did raising 3 boys.”
Daughter: “All the what?!”
Friend: “Warsh.”
Daughter to me: “What’s warsh?”
Me: “It’s the laundry.”
In SoCal, we “washed clothes” and “did the laundry”.
Did you know they eat “bald peanuts” in North Carolina?
ChrisB
Obviously, the correct way to speak English is the way Jesus did.
As an aside, my cousins moved to Georgia from upstate New York a number of years ago. When their kids were in elementary school, the English teacher called on them to pronounce words like “pin” and “pen” so the other students could tell the difference. The teacher really couldn’t do it herself.
Wag
If you want to hear unintelligible English accent, go to the source. Geordie (from northern England), cockney, liverpool. Glasgow all compete for the most difficult accents to comprehend.
beltane
@Wag: That is very true. Those accents are unintelligible to the point where I can understand several foreign languages better than I can understand them.
Frankensteinbeck
@nancydarling:
I will never let my mother live down the time I caught her spekking.
Anya
@Omnes Omnibus: I wasn’t implying their objection to him was because of his accent. After all they looooooooove Herman Cain, even with all of his blackity black speak.
PurpleGirl
@MAJeff: I don’t think Mexico would want it back… too many crazy gringos come with it.
nancydarling
@Frankensteinbeck: Okay, to echo my daughter, What’s spekking?
Frankensteinbeck
@nancydarling:
I spekk you’ll figure it out.
Southern Beale
@SiubhanDuinne:
Why, thank you very much!
I think Wayne LaPierre has to be certifiably nuts. There’s really no other explanation for him.
Southern Beale
@Wag:
I’m embarrassed to say it but I sometimes feel like I need subtitles on British films.
When I was a little kid we went to England and I remember not being able to understand a damn thing anyone said to me.
Silver
@cathyx:
I was watching one of those shows once. I don’t know which one, they all turn into a blur-maybe Swamp Loggers? (As an aside, how can you have that many shows on one channel about monotonous physical labor? I can’t wait for “Meat Processer: Poultry Holocaust!)
My wife came through the room and didn’t look at the TV. She thought it was an episode of Squidbillies.
nancydarling
@Frankensteinbeck: I reckin’ I was posed to be able to figure that out my self.
Dog's Eye View
A joke about talking American:
An Amish farmer is walking through his field when he sees a guy drinking from his pond, scooping it up with his hand.
The farmer says, “Trinken sie nicht das wasser, die kuhe unddie schweine haben in ihm geschissen,” which means, ‘Don’t drink the water, the cows and the pigs shit in it.’
The guy shouts back, “I’m a Teabagger, and this is America. I
don’t understand your gibberish. Speak English, you moron.”
The farmer says, “Use two hands, you’ll get more.”
khead
@Southern Beale:
I went to England in 1990 and no one there could understand my Appalachian English.
Southern Beale
Wow. Saudi King gives women right to vote for the first time! Their first election will be 2015.
Elizabelle
When my sisters and I moved to North Carolina, we thought they spoke French.
Not making that up. We’d been raised in Hawaii and had never encountered a Southern accent before.
MikeJ
@Cat Lady: the first week I lived there I drove up to a building I was going to and the person at the gate kept telling me to go to the god shock. Never did figure out what they wanted, I had to go to the guard shack to find anybody intelligible.
Roger Moore
@gene108:
What about those of us whose ancestors came from more than one country? Would I be deported to the UK, Ireland, or Germany? Would our President be deported to the UK or Kenya? I think you’ll also need to repeal the 14th Amendment before you pass your 1492 rule, but that’s OK; the wingnuts will be happy to help you.
Elizabelle
@ChrisB:
For the win.
Raven (formerly stuckinred)
@Elizabelle: We got married in rural central Virginia and my brother came from LA. He was lost and stopped to ask a fellow for directions and he literally did not understand anything he said.
Slugger
This law is the reason, of course, that Project Trinity was placed in neighboring New Mexico. They could not have people like Fermi or Szilard working in Arizona, or Feynman with his Brooklyn accent.
Southern Beale
@khead:
That’s funny.
I wonder if the Brits and the Aussies have trouble understanding each other? Some real strong Aussie accents and all that weird slang is difficult for me to understand, too.
I understand French people have a hard time understanding Haitian French and some African French … so you know, same as it ever was. Let’s get the one-world currency thing figured out first, then we’ll work on the one-world language. United Nations, you have your work to do.
:-)
MikeJ
@Raven (formerly stuckinred): In college, I had a roomie from the PNW and we knew a guy from the bootheel of Missouri. It was months before roomie learned the other guy was from Sikeston, not Saxton.
Wapiti
When I was learning phonics in 1st Grade, my teacher had an accent from somewhere in the South. She pronounced school without the L; her accent confused things a bit. But that was a phonics class.
Frankensteinbeck
@Southern Beale:
I’m voting for Solresol. I mean, nobody speaks Esperanto anymore.
suzanne
@geg6:
Considering how a huge percentage of the people that live here are those that get sick of New York or L.A., you’re absolutely right.
My husband is a bilingual SLP at a Title 1 elementary school in Scottsdale, and they have a large Latino student population. Probably half the teachers are Latino. Fortunately, this shit never actually got implemented, because all of them would be gone.
But, like many things in Arizona, the politicians make noise to look like badasses, but then nothing actually takes place, because, while the Latino community doesn’t vote in the same numbers as the white population, there are enough of them that nobody actually wants to carry through with pissing them off.
WereBear
I ruthlessly expunged “warsh” and modulated my tone down so I wouldn’t have so much of the Hoosier accent, and while I do say “ya’ll” because it’s such a useful word, I don’t have a Southern accent at all despite spending 10 of my formative years there. Even though my mother adopting it almost instantly meant I was exposed at home.
This was all part of my intention of speaking clearly and in ways that does not distract from my message. Yet I never tried to sound like someone from somewhere else, so to speak. This particular emphasis in schools is utterly misplaced.
Origuy
I agree with the British regional accents; I had a lot of trouble with Geordie in Newcastle this summer. I heard the mayor of Glasgow on the radio and couldn’t understand a word. I think that’s how they pick the mayor.
Davis X. Machina
I’ve got teacher evaluations from my rookie days that are glowing except for my accent — I was bawn in Dawchesta, and was teaching in the Golden Ghetto of NE Atlanta. You know they wanted to write “Boy sounds like one of them damned Kennedys…”
Linda Featheringill
@Southern Beale:
British shows and films:
Absolutely need the subtitles. My TV thinks I’m deaf because I usually have the subtitles on.
piratedan
ty all for the Arizona bashing, I can’t defend my state’s politics as it currently stands despite that I do vote blue and work for blue candidates like Ms. Giffords and have plans to be joining in the local legislative districts’ organization as soon as some personal stuff clears up; but really guys…. it has to be nice to live someplace that doesn’t engage in outright political lunacy these days… I assume the rest of ya are all from Vermont, right?
Arizona ia a microcosm of what is wrong in the US as a whole. Low information voters and oldsters, scared into voting against their own self interests thanks to the big lie and politics of distraction. Minorities actively persecuted and used as the whipping boy for outright political theocracy. You fight back with facts and evidence and its drowned out moneyed messaging and politics by fear.
Scary thing is, I’ve already signed the Baja Arizona petitions and would love to see the saner part of the state rejoin the union but even here in the “liberal bastion” of the state its hard to keep working hard with the eyes on the prize when so many people that I supposedly share a political sympathy with are so willing to write us off so casually. I don’t see a plethora of posts offering to kick Michigan off to Canada to deal with Snyder, but give Arizona to the Mexicans, hey that sure sounds spiffy but what are YOU really saying? We’re not worth the trouble? Hispanics aren’t the same as us REAL liberals? Funny, I don’t see many folks saying said same about Texas and look at who is THEIR governor!!!!
I guess what I am saying, is to please cease and desist with this “giving” away of certain parts of the country as if they aren’t worth your time and that all the people living there “deserve what they get”. There are a goodly number of folks living here that share the same political beliefs as yourselves and dismissing us so cavalierly so often hurts after a while, especially so after toiling on the front lines to change things for the better.
My solemn apologies to all about having my tender fee fees twonked, but after a while, you just have to say something to remind everyone that its about the country and the problems are everywhere.
Roger Moore
@Origuy:
Was that because of the accent or because he was speaking Scotts?
Comrade Dread
@gene108: It wouldn’t work. I’m pretty sure the UK would blockade their own shores to keep them out.
Elizabelle
Theme of these two BJ threads:
Some people born in this country say outrageous things. Lies and obfuscations. Their right to say it, though.
Some people better learn to speak like the “average American.” Never mind the content of their speech; it’s delivery that matters.
Different standards.
Is it worse to use standard American pronunciation to lie and slander, or to lilt and burr and roll Rs while trying to educate?
beltane
I once had a Jewish boyfriend who was subjected to constant haranguing by an ultra-orthodox co-worker who insisted that he had to learn Hebrew so that he could talk to God. Boyfriend finally asked the co-worker “Doesn’t God understand English?” The answer: “God understand all languages but he chooses to only listen to Hebrew.”
Does God live in Arizona by any chance?
a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)
@MAJeff: I think Mexico has more sense than to take it, if the wingnut residents are part of the deal. If they would, I’d throw Texas in as well. :)
Anya
@Linda Featheringill: Thanks for bringing the speech to my attention. I just listened to it and it was all kinds of awesome! I loved it! It highlights why the Republicans are so stuck with the lame teleprompter jokes.
It was nice to listen to the speech because the President is on my shitlist for his stand on the Palestinian State. His UN speech was such a disappointment to me. He sounds like a wingnut (minus the jeesus freak stuff) when it comes to the I/P stuff. It’s really disheartening that his campaign email to Jewish voters is touting Netanyahu’s praise of the President. WTF! What did all this Israel first got him?
John
@Southern Beale:
I didn’t know that men had the right to vote in Saudi Arabia. What do they vote about?
nancydarling
@piratedan: aargh! No sympathy here in hillbilly land, and I say that as someone who lived 42 years in the land of fruits and nuts with everyone east of the Mojave waiting gleefully for us to fall into the ocean. The political situation here in Arkansas is as bad as Arizona. Just keep on truckin.
Linda Featheringill
@piratedan: #58
Point taken.
We frequently forget how politically diverse places are.
In the days of Katrina and again during the oil spill, I haunted several southern newspaper discussion threads. I was reminded that several of the commenting people didn’t fit into any preconceived notions.
And yes, we who toil on the side of the truth, have brothers and sisters everywhere.
khead
@Southern Beale:
Went to UCL for 6 weeks that summer. I was often asked to “speak faster”. ???
I think part of the problem may have been too many nights @ Piccadilly Circus.
mellowjohn
@ChrisB: my ex was from arkansas, and for her tan, ten, and tin were all the same word.
khead
@mellowjohn:
Pen=Pin. Drives my wife nuts.
Amir Khalid
@Dog’s Eye View:
Would an Amish farmer really say “geschissen”? My dictionary lists the verb scheißen as a vulgarity.
Also, too, you forgot the initial cap for Sie and all nouns, not to mention the umlaut in Kühe.
/grammar and spelling fussbudget
@all:
I’ve heard that George Walker Bush’s Texas accent is really an affectation, acquired for political reasons. Is it true?
Origuy
@Roger Moore: No, I’d recognize Scots, but the announcers were speaking English. He was probably a Scots speaker, though.
Anitamurie
@Anya: And I’ll bet Aguayo’s much easier to understand than whatever it was that came out of Rick Perry’s southern drawl the other night,(before before and support Pakistan uh and India blah blah blah).
nancydarling
@Amir Khalid: Yes.
cmorenc
I have a life-long friend who unfortunately is a hard-core winger and forwards me some of the “jokes” in circulation on right-wing email lists. Here’s one he passed on just this morning:
*SIGH*. This is the kind of deeply ingrained crap too much of the citizenry still finds funny. Though I might just pay for a dog that would maul the folk, regardless of ethnic description, who blas me from their cars with 200db sound systems powerful enough to shake my car with vibrations when we’re stuck in line at a traffic light.
schrodinger's cat
@Amir Khalid: How many languages do you speak? I learned a little German in college but not good enough to speak.
Omnes Omnibus
@Anya: I know; I just find it a bit ironic, that’s all.
PurpleGirl
@khead: I had a co-worker who pronounced pen as pin and I couldn’t understand what she was talking about until she picked up a pen and showed it to me one time. She also pronounced ask as axe and that drives me crazy. I was often tempted to ignore her when she said she wanted to axe me something.
WaterGirl
True story. Embarrassing, but true.
Years ago I attended 48 hours of training for “crisis line”, a suicide hotline and hotline for anyone who was in any kind of crisis. There was an interview process before we were accepted to training, so I was really surprised to find that they had accepted the fellow with the speech impediment into the suicide hotline program.
I mentioned that to the new friend I had made at training, who laughed and told me that wasn’t a speech impediment, that was a Texas accent. I grew up in Chicago and i had never heard anything like it.
Mike in NC
@Amir Khalid:
Of course, as was his deep religious convictions. All part of the act.
My family from Boston visited Washington, DC in the early 70s. At a restaurant on Capitol Hill, the waitress at our table asked, “So, what country are y’all from?”.
Amir Khalid
@schrodinger’s cat:
Malay and English, of course. I’m self-taught in German and French, but haven’t had much speaking or listening practice in either language. I’m also trying to learn Arabic.
Scott P.
Obligatory Hot Fuzz clip:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sM45TACI4H4
Linnaeus
@gene108:
Which one? :)
@Amir Khalid:
Reminds me of the time I watched Sexy Beast, and the lower-class British English accents the characters spoke were so hard for me to understand, I had to turn on the subtitles.
suzanne
@cmorenc: That’s fucking disgusting.
Are you sure this is someone you want to maintain a friendship with?
schrodinger's cat
I had a student with a true blue Down East Maine accent, he was impossible to understand. Easy way to cultivate a Yankee accent, drop r’s where they belong and insert them where there don’t.
example 1: This is my dog, Marly (for Molly)
example 2: This is a bumpah stickah foh my cah
PurpleGirl
@WaterGirl: I stutter. I took a speech therapy program developed at Hollins College in Virginia. When I speak at the slow-fast speed that is the goal of the program, I sound like I come from Virginia. (Slow-fast speed is 32 syllables a second whereas normal speech is 64 and ending and starting vowels sounds are blended so that their sounds flow together.)
GregB
@schrodinger’s cat:
Wicked pissah!
WaterGirl
@PurpleGirl: I’m curious… does speaking more slowly help with stuttering? (Everything I think I know about stuttering is probably wrong.)
mellowjohn
@Amir Khalid: old joke:
Q: if a person who speaks two languages is bilingual, and a person who speaks 3 or more languages is multilingual, what do you call someone who only speaks one language?
A:
Davis X. Machina
@schrodinger’s cat: I can spot Mainers, as opposed to Bostonians, in a heartbeat — and so can Mainers. They make fun of my accent…
Have a Mainer say ‘elementary’ — in Maine profonde, away from the coast and the tail of the BosNyWash megalopolis, it’s a five-syllable word. ‘El•e•men•tar•y’, with stress on the ‘el’ and a second stress on the ‘tar’. Elsewhere, it’s four: ‘el•e•men•try’, stressed on the ‘men’
Raven (formerly stuckinred)
@WaterGirl: Have you seen “The Kings Speech”?
Not Sure
@Anya: With the exception, of course, of any accent common in places like New England and the New York City metropolitan area. Those are clearly not ‘murkan accents. That spoken by Jeff Foxworthy, on the other hand…
Not Sure
@Davis X. Machina: In Upstate NY, it’s five syllables, with the main stress on MEN, and secondary stresses on the remainder of the word. As in “eleMENtary“.
WaterGirl
@Raven (formerly stuckinred): Nope. I know people have said it was good, but I have no idea what the movie is actually about.
Amir Khalid
@mellowjohn:
Did you hit Submit before you typed the punchline?
Mino
@piratedan:
@a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q):
I think the US has a right to defend itself and I live in Texas.
PurpleGirl
@WaterGirl: It isn’t so much just speaking slowing, but how you speak more slowly. In the Precision Speech Fluency Shaping program, you are taught how to change how you produce speech. At the beginning of the program you slow down to each syllable taking a full 2-seconds to say and that is sped up over the course of the program. It isn’t just the slowing down but also learning how to restructure pronounciation and learning the difference in the beginning sounds and ending sounds in a syllable and then how to link them. The foundation premise is that stuttering is a neuro-physiological problem involving a feedback loop between the ears, the throat and the brain, although there are psychological aspects to it. So you are taught how to remake your speech. It takes a lot of concentration to learn and you do need to monitor yourself to make it feel “normal”.
ericblair
My wife moved here from overseas and had some issues with some Southern accents:
“Wow, that couple from Tennessee has strange first names, don’t they?”
“Who?”
“Alayne and Stayf, those are funny names.”
“Elaine and Steve?”
“Oh.”
Then there was the Aussie teacher who occasionally got kids who watched so many American TV programs they spoke with a midwestern American accent. So globally, maybe it all balances out.
mellowjohn
@Amir Khalid:
nope. just wanted to see if anybody’d bite.
the answer is “an american.”
nancydarling
@mellowjohn: Reminds me of Hightower’s remark when he heard George W. Bush was able to speak Spanish. “Oh good! Now we can say he is bi-ignorant.”
Zagloba
@Dog’s Eye View: Ganked.
Raven (formerly stuckinred)
What the fuck is with the spam filter? I’m trying to comment on the movie I mentioned.
PurpleGirl
@Raven (formerly stuckinred): Yes, how can we help you?
ETA: Okay, the “hello” has been deleted. I hope you are able to post your comment on The King’s Speech. I didn’t see the movie.
Raven (formerly stuckinred)
@PurpleGirl: See above!
Davis X. Machina
@Not Sure: I teach in rural Maine, and people from across the Far Northeast — roughly Odgensburg NY east to Machias, ME — often migrate from one part of it to another.
They have a remarkable number of ever-so- slightly-different accents. The Northwest Kingdom of Vermont is distinguishable from the Champlain Valley only a few score miles away if you know what to listen for, or The County (Aroostoook County, the northern tip of Maine) from the Mid-coast (Camden, Rockport, Lincolnville, the islands). It’s dying off, but the century and a half, or more, of isolation left its mark
contessakitty (AKA Karen)
I lived in the NY metropolitan area until I was 23. When I went to college at age 18, I went to a SUNY outside of Rochester and between being there for four years and listening to Canadian radio because it was only 2 hours away or so, I developed a hybrid Western NY and Canadian accent. It was a good thing because I wanted to be a broadcaster so learning the “Midwestern” accent that was necessary to be a disk jockey or reporter was easier for me and dropping the downstate New Yorkisms like “wawter” and “chawklit” wasn’t the problem it could have been.
I’ve been living in Maryland since 1988 and over the years, my NY accent has been replaced by the Maryland accent with words like my name “Care-in” instead of “Kahren” and my “o” sounds pronounced more like “ao.
If accents should be removed then so should all accents, US regional or otherwise.
And let’s not stop at banning accents…
It’s a pocketbook not purse.
It’s soda not pop.
It’s a sliding pond not a slide.
If it’s outside it’s a stoop not stairs
You stand “on line” not “in line”
It’s a faucet not a spigot
It’s a frying pan not a skillet
And it’s a sidewalk not pavement.
Raven (formerly stuckinred)
@Davis X. Machina: Central Virginian’s can almost sound like the northeast. Hoooose instead of house, things are “right” good, “ayre” instead of our. It’s sure not what we think of as southern.
Raven (formerly stuckinred)
@contessakitty (AKA Karen): There is a commonality among upstate NY, Chicago and the Pacific NW. Nawlins and NYC too.
Davis X. Machina
On the “When I hit the Powerball” list;
Atlas of North American English Phonetics
A mere $771, but worth every penny. Labov rules.
Linnaeus
@contessakitty (AKA Karen):
Born and raised Michigander here. It’s pop.
Davis X. Machina
@Linnaeus:You mean ‘tonic’ — pronounced ‘tawnic’, of course.
JasonF
@contessakitty (AKA Karen):
Do you live near Bawlmer, hon?
I grew up outside of DC, which I’ve always maintained is the best place to learn unaccented American English because people from all over the country wind up in the DC area so you get exposed to everything. On the other hand, if everyone else has an accent, then in a way, unaccented speech is also an accent. Besides, both my parents are from the Bronx, so I do have a hint of a Bronx accent.
Linnaeus
@Davis X. Machina:
I didn’t know people still said that.
contessakitty (AKA Karen)
@JasonF:
Actually I’ve lived in Takoma Park and different parts of Silver Spring but maybe the newscasters and the people I picked up the accent from were from Baltimore.
And to anyone who knows, why do they say “hon?” anyway?
Yutsano
@contessakitty (AKA Karen):
The Baltimore hon? Who knows really?
Jennyjinx
@contessakitty (AKA Karen):
Why “on line”? That just doesn’t make sense to my SE Appalachian Ohio ears. Because you’re in a line of people, not standing on them. Also, ’round these parts, it’s outside steps. The stairs are inside. A stoop is what we call the steps outside of an apartment building.
I say “soda” to be different, but most of my family and neighbors say “pop”. The first time I was down South, though, I asked for a pop at some store or ‘nother and the lady said to me “Pot? We don’t sell that.” (True story.) That’s about the time I adopted “soda” as my word for pop.
Skillets are what we fry stuff in– I think everyone I know has at least one cast iron skillet. Pans are for baking– roasting pans, dripping pans and the like. Pots are for boiling and steaming.
Supposedly, Midwesterners don’t have accents, but I think in my neck of Ohio we developed a kind of mix of Midwestern/Appalachian. When I drive north to Cleveland, for instance, folks will ask me where I’m from because they like my “accent”.
Jennyjinx
By the way, when I pronounce “different” it sounds more like “diff-ERnt”. Canton is “Can’-un”. There is “thar”. This thread just made me concentrate on some of the things (“theengs”) I say and how they sound coming out of my mouth. :-)
MAJeff
@Jennyjinx:
And casseroles are the cooking dishes in which hotdishes are made.
khead
@contessakitty (AKA Karen):
The People’s Republic of MoCo? You should just call it DC. :)
Dog's Eye View
@Amir Khalid:
Comedy is not pretty.
RE GWB accent: not sure. Think a lot of it is affectation. There’s a rumored videotape from his pre-presidential campaign days in which he speaks clearly and articulately, like an educated man from Yale and Harvard Business School might.
Again, I have read of this tape on teh internets. Have never seen it linked.
contessakitty (AKA Karen)
@Jennyjinx:
Because you are on the line itself. I guess it’s a New Yorkism I never shook.
Do you pronounce “roof” as “ruff?”
I’ve managed to “Un-NY” most of my accent but there are those words like “drawer” that I pronounce as “draw.” And all I have to do is go home and spend time around my family and friends for a week and that accent comes right back.
Elizabelle
@Raven (formerly stuckinred):
WRT Central Virginia “hoose”, etc. That’s true. Wonder if it’s a Scots-Irish dialect of sorts that arrived and stayed.
Frankensteinbeck
@Amir Khalid:
It’s a rumor that may or may not be true and is unconfirmed. However, he’s not a cowboy, bought the ranch solely when he went into Texas politics, never actually lived there, and sold it again as soon as the Presidency was over. All that brush clearing cowboy crap was blatant fakery with no connection to his life.
nancydarling
@Frankensteinbeck: There is a video out there of Bush in debate with Anne Richards. The subject is education and he had his facts, spoke in complete grammatical sentences and had very few Texanisms. I don’t know what happened to him. I guess he was just scared shitless his whole presidency because he knew how deeply he was in over his head.
I say “soft drinks”. My brother who lived in South Texas called them “soda water”.
Tehanu
@Southern Beale:
You’re not alone. I only watch British films on TV now so I can have captions, and that’s for ANY British accent, posh or not.
Also, was I the only one who noticed last night that the Arizona Diamondbacks’ jerseys read “Los Dbacks”? At least they know who their fan base is.
Jennyjinx
@MAJeff:
Casseroles are dishes though, not pans. Makes sense, huh? But here we call the food that comes out of the dishes “casseroles”, i.e. “Tuna Noodle casserole” and “Cheese Macaroni casserole”. Also, around here if it’s a casserole it’s probably got mushroom soup in it somewhere. Eww.
@contessakitty (AKA Karen):
No, I say “roof”. Some folks say “ruff” though. They also say “warsh”, though I’ve made myself get out of that particular habit. I do have a bad habit of saying “6 foot” instead of “feet” though. My husband makes fun of me for that. “You need a rope about 6 foot long”; “Isn’t plural for foot ‘feet’?”
The on line thing makes sense when said like that, but only if you’re actually standing on a line.
Linnaeus
@Jennyjinx:
Of course, Midwesterners do have accents, and they even vary within the region. Someone like me, who grew up in SE Michigan, is going to sound like someone from Chicago or Cleveland, but different from someone from Minnesota or Iowa.
vickijean
For true southerners it is neither pop nor soda. It is Coke. As in:
You want a Coke?
Sure.
What kind?
A Sprite.
Coke is generic. Then you move to the specific.
The Spy Who Loved Me
My son is taking a required Economics class right now. His teacher is Asian and English is not his first language. My son can’t understand a damn word his teacher is saying. I have a feeling he’ll be taking this class over.
Triassic Sands
I listened to the audio and I couldn’t understand a word she said. Unless someone speaks like William F. Buckley, I have no idea what they’re saying. I think she needs to leave this country…now.
@The Spy Who Loved Me:
I’ve seen that be a major problem in college math classes, where many of the graduate students are from other countries. For a true mathematician, numbers, letters, and symbols may suffice, but for a struggling math-averse student trying to understand an explanation delivered in a heavy accent (and possibly with grammatical problems as well) that is already difficult to understand is daunting. Unfortunately, we simply don’t have enough native English speakers who are qualified to take graduate level courses in a wide range of subjects. It’s a problem without an easy solution.
(In public schools, foreign students have also become more attractive because they pay full tuition.)
Triassic Sands
If I had a choice of listening to Ms. Aguayo or a teacher somewhere deep in the Bible Belt, I’m guessing I’d go with Ms. Aguayo.
Darkrose
@Wag: I can parse Geordies and Scousers…however, Manchester is another issue. I had to watch Billy Elliot with the subtitles on.
Glasgow? Forget it.
Darkrose
@GregB: I actually said that once, non-ironically. It just kind of slipped out. My native CA wife still mocks me for that.
No one of importance
It’s a wallet
It’s soft drink
It’s a slippery dip
Steps
We queue
It’s a tap
Actually, it’s a footpath
[/ausssie english lesson]
Redleg
We’re a bit slow here in Kentucky but it sounds like yer dissin us.