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I actually have always been more curious about how our American english sounds to someone who does not speak or understand english. Like just hearing the sound of german, or russian, or italian. I have no idea what the words mean, and sometimes can't even distiguish any words...chinese is a good example also. Of course it would be very difficult to have someone try to explain it to me I think, but I have always wondered how we sound.
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Crefloors, you have an advantage over most other English-speakers. Americans (New Yorkers and some others excepted) tend to speak deliberately and fairly clearly. An Englishperson using BBC English may have a slight edge on you, but not by much. Hey, fahgeddaboudid!
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I've always loved any kind of british-style accent (i.e., british, scottish, welsh, irish, australian, nz). But then, as an incurable Anglophile, I would, wouldn't I?
I am also, as someone else mentioned, an accent chameleon. I unconsciously pick up the accents of those around me. My Australian (Perth) friend visited and I started saying 'helloi' around her, etc. When I was in Ireland, I started talking with a lilt, and using phrases I heard. Again, I didn't INTEND to copy, but it just seemed natural to me to sound like those around me. I'm originally from the midwest (Detroit, MI), and lived in Miami for 20 years (an odd place with many accents, including Cuban!). As I've moved to north Florida, I'm adopting some southern phrases, like y'all... against my wishes! I think enunciation is the biggest, most general difference between English and American. Another is, of course, the slang. The vowels are usually shorter and the mouth opens less with the English, I've noticed. The 'upper' accents tend to purse their lips more when they speak then the 'lower' accents. I do wonder how brits felt about Katherine Hepburn's portrayal of Eleanor of Acquitaine in The Lion in Winter. Granted, they would all be speaking French in 1186, but she did speak with an English accent in that movie. I can't answer the original question, but I can answer the opposite -- how Brit accents sound to American ears. To me, the 'Queen's English' sounds similar (vaguely!) to the New England educated accent -- think Winchester in MASH. Again, that clipped, short-voweled, high-vocabularied sound. London English is broader, a little rougher, but usually easily understood. Highland Scottish sounds rough and ready, filled with colorful phrases and gaelic aspirations. Lowland Scottish is a closer mesh to English. Northern English sounds like a mix between London and Scottish. Welsh I haven't quite been able to distinguish yet, but has a 'rounder' feel than English. Irish sounds musical and lilting, a little magical. 'donchoo know?' Australian is similar to Scottish in that it's rough and broad in it's sound, but is easier to understand. I usually equate it to London English with the relationship between Texan and Bostonian. New Zealand accents are more broad and rounded (still don't know how better to describe than this) than Australian. I love all accents, they offer variety and exoticness to everyone in the world :D |
I'm not understanding the use of the term "BBC English" I sometimes watch the BBC World News on PBS and there are a whole range of accents.
I have wondered at time how my lovely southern accent would work with Hawaiin words. |
ncgrrl
"BBC English" is a common term in the UK for describing the, sort of, 'ideal' english accent - not as posh and affected as, say, The Queen, but without a hint of a regional accent. It comes from a time when all BBC announcers (old term for presenters) were literally trained to speak 'correct' pronounciation. (I had a friend who had a right old rough Derbyshire accent, until she became a reporter for local BBC radio, where she was reprogrammed to talk properly!) Regional accents are much more in vogue these days, so standards at the BBC are slipping LOL. |
The easiest way to distinguish a New Zealander from an Australian is the vowels - the most-cited example being Kiwis' tendency to say "fush and chups", and "fearly" for "fairly". That aside their accent is to my ear "milder" (and their sense of humour even drier) than Australians'.
Australian accents are affected by education/social class, regional variations being few and hard to pick. So-called "educated" Australian is closer to southern English, "broad" Australian just that, broader and flatter. But GreenDragon ... "helloi"? |
I'm quite surprised that anyone would say they don't like an American accent when there are so many different ones, and they are so varied in the way they sound. Which one is it they don't like?
In Europe, I notice the same thing when traveling in any of the countries. There are always regional differences in the way people speak. Its not that one sounds better than another, they're just different. At the same time, if you asked most people, they would say they don't have an accent, other people do. Compared to those around me, a Boston accent sounds as foreign to me as an English accent. To me, most Canadians sound like Americans except when they get to "oot" and "aboot" for "out" and "about." However, in no case does this make a person's accent unpleasant. Seems to me that saying that you dislike any particular accent is really making an unfortunate value judgement about the person who is speaking rather than the way they are speaking. |
Neil, I recently worked with an Australian who told me her father once had to meet a New Zealander at the airport. 'Let's meet at the check-in counter' said the Kiwi. So her father spent half an hour at the KFC stand....
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On a more libellous note, Patrick, I heard of an Australian tourist in NZ who came across a guy leading a sheep down a country road. "Well," he said, "shearing, then?" The local looked indignant. "Certainly not! Find yer own sheep!"
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Anyone in UK/Ireland watch the American wife swap last night. My partner really noticed the accents and could tell they were from a different part of the U.S. than he had visited. It was a dairy farmer wife and a sort of well to do suburban wife with the most incredibly TACKY clothes I have seen in years. God help her in the Gold Lame dress and freaky feather earrings. It sounded close to Minnesota but not quite as strong. To me it sounded odd to hear as I am not really in touch with any American over here0
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For a quick reference to dialects of American English, see
<b>http://www.geocities.com/Broadway/1906/dialects.html</b> For England, see <b>http://www.peak.org/~jeremy/dictionary/figures/dialectsUK.gif</b> I couldn't find any corresponding maps for Ireland, Scotland, and Wales. |
Helloi:
My friend from Australia (her name was Kiri) said hello with a 'ee' sound at the end. Thus, 'Hell-oi', or 'Hell-oy'. Perhaps this was just her area -- her parents ran a sheep station in the country near Perth. She said that, in order to sound more American, she just clipped off the 'ee' sound to say 'hello'. |
I can't describe the differences in american and british accents all that well but I can help you find some info on different dialects and just how and why there different. American accents are different from one another, because the came from differnt parts of the UK and were colored by the immigrants from different countries that those regions had in unequal amounts. Interesting to note Englishmen in the 16-17 hundreds sounded like american hicks. If you go to wikipedia.com you can find a number of good articles that describe the basic differnces and origins of the dialects.
Heres a little on my native tongue. Appalachian English From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. Appalachian English is a regional dialect of American English. Similar to Southern American English, Appalachian English nevertheless has many uniquely distinctive features. One cannot properly understand Appalachian English without understanding the culture of its native region, but that is not within the scope of this article. To the ears of non-Appalachian English speakers, the dialect shares many phonological features with the dialect of the deep South. Both dialects broaden the vowels, and both feature similar rhythym. Also, both dialects have contributed to the devlopment of African-American Vernacular English, with particular respect to the grammar and syntax, as well as the basal pronunciation. However, Appalachian English is a much more localized and specific set of dialectical behaviors. Its peculiarities have a true reciprocity with its people and their culture. Contents [hide] 1 Appalachia 2 Pronunciation 3 Grammar 4 Word Use [edit] Appalachia Appalachia refers to the region of the Appalachian Mountains. Portions of the mountain range are found in the states of Pennsylvania, Virginia, North Carolina, Kentucky, Ohio, Georgia, Alabama, and Tennessee. The only state which lies entirely within the boundaries of the Appalachian mountains is West Virginia. The residents of this last state have largely shaped the core of the regional dialect. Much of the syntactical variation of Appalachian English is derived from the Scots-Irish dialect. This is due to the fact that many of the settlers of this region were of that ancestry. [edit] Pronunciation Alteration to the pronunciation of extant English words Wash is pronounced as "warsh", creek is pronounced "crick", hollow, as it refers to a valley or landform depression is pronounced "holler", hills sounds, to speakers of standard English, like heels. Words and phrases which are linguistically distinct in standard English are commonly compounded. "Did you eat yet?" is pronounced as, "Jeet yet?" "Would have", "Could have", "Should have" are pronounced as "Woulda", "Coulda", and "Shoulda" respectively. the word figure in Appalachian English is pronounced as "figger". Appalachian dialect is rhotic, as it was derived from Scotch-Irish dialect. [edit] Grammar Grammatical variation which would otherwise be considered improper is standard in Appalachian English. The construction, "Me and him" is common. "Is you?" (Or "You is?"), and "You was?" are used instead of, "You are?", and "You were?". "Them" may be substituted for "those." For example: "Give me one of them apples," instead of "Give me one of those apples." Irregular past tenses of English words are "improperly" regulated in Appalachian English. Drank, gave, and knew, which become "drinked", "gived", and "knowed" respectively. Ran becomes "run", as in, "I done run down th' store already". This is also the equivalent case for the standard English went. The inflection of various verbs may not agree with the plurality, or lack thereof, of the subject. "They was down on the street" is used, as opposed to, "They were down on the street." The double negative, a taboo within the confines of standard English, is commonplace in Appalachian English. "He hasn't done anything!" becomes, "He ain't done nothing!". "I will not go to that funeral", becomes "I won't be goin' to no funeral." [edit] Word Use A shopping cart is called a "buggy" a frying pan is called a "skillet". In Northern Appalachia, "pop" is substituted for the more common "soda", while in southern Appalachia, the whole class of beverages is commonly referred to as "Coke", reflecting that product's long association with the region. The terms for the phrase, "you all" vary, from, "y'all" in the southern regions to "y'ins" in the northern regions. The latter is also a feature of the Pittsburgh, PA dialect, which is influenced in part by the dialect of Appalachia. Done is used in an alternative manner, for emphasis, as in, "I already done went to the store". Kin is commonly used, to indicate familial relationships. Reckon is used in Appalachian English to refer to the act or condition of conjecture, as opposed to the words guess or figure in standard English. The use of the contraction "ain't", in place of "are not" or "am not" is not considered incorrect in Appalachian English. Berm refers to the edge of the pavement on a road. This word is most common in central West Virginia. while "y'all" is southern American, "y'uns" is southern Appalachian, close to the above Pittsburg reference. However it is pronounced "you-uhns" and Pittsburg's is more like "yinz" (from what I saw on a PBS documentary) polecat = skunk poke = paper bag blinked = slightly spoiled, as in milk strumpet = harlot |
ttt: Fascinating thread
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bob_brown's old post said:
As for the Southern accent, I bet darned few of you outside the south could tell a Tennessee mountain accent from Savannah and Charleston, or a south Alabama soft drawl from Texas. I can spot a phony Southern accent by hearing about 4 words, like Atchafalaya, Tennessee, Cairo (Georgia)and syrup. --Why, it's pronounced sirrrrup, honey. :-) |
"I can spot a phony Southern accent..."
Only the ones that aren't done well, sweetie. |
Most are done terribly. Like bob_brown said, there's a lot of variation between the different areas of the South. In movies/tv, actors usually do this weird hybrid that sounds like nothing real. And it's not just the sounds, it's the rhythm that makes the accent(s). Yeah, I agree with bob_brown, it's not hard to catch a phony.
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I would like to reply to one English woman who commented on the loudness of Americans. As an American, yes, I definitely agree with you. I don't know why it is, but Americans in general can never seem to open their mouths without shouting. I absolutely hate it, and at work I will NOT get into an elevator with a crowd of people. They gab about everything under the sun, even all manner of personal concerns, and apparently couldn't care less that every Tom, Dick and Harry within 100 miles can hear them. To me, it is truly embarrassing and off-putting. When I was in London on vacation, I found that people in general were so well-behaved and quiet in public, whether on the underground, in shops, or in elevators, etc. It was truly wonderful not to be bombarded by loud, obnoxious and intrusive talk that assaults my senses. Some Americans poke fun at the English for sounding hoity and prissy, but this one area in which I wish more Americans would take a lesson.
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"Most are done terribly."
Sorry, but you can't know that. Because if an accent is done well, it's undetectable. |
My husband, a Mississippian by birth, feels uncomfortable in a situation where a group of people (small or large) are relatively quiet. He seems to think that the "reserve" is negative in some way & does his best to bring some levity into the situation. At first, this was embarrassing to me & I'm also from the South but, by nature, more quiet & less out-going. Then I began to notice that wherever we travelled, people reacted to him very positively & before we left their company, he had everybody laughing - even in "Merry Olde England." Through my husband's sense of humor, I have learned to appreciate the wonderful English charm & wit.
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