More on accents

To my ears his American sounds slightly Irish.

When my wife and I visited Ireland a few years back, I found that a lot of people sounded vaguely American to my ears. The effect was pronounced when I couldn’t quite hear what was being said (as in conversation at the next table in a restaurant).

I’ve lived in the eastern U.S. for the past 23 years and assumed that the similarity must have been due to some influence from all the Irish immigrants.

What I want to know is: How do I get rid of my accent?

Since language is a dialect with an army and navy and since American army and navy are the most powerful in the world, the question “is there such a thing as an American accent” is settled. There is no such thing. Englishmen should learn to sound English. Kudos to the Irish.

Hugh Laurie once said, I think when talking to David Letterman, that the hardest word for him to pronounce with an American accent is “murder.” I thought that was interesting, because the mouth movements of that word have made me uncomfortable all my life, and I was born in Minnesota.

But inasmuch as speaking a language with distinct phonetic markers can be considered an accent, there are hundreds of “American” accents. My Minnesota accent is strange here in Oklahoma. Their accents (and there are a number of them here) are odd to me–at least many are.

My husband and I (in Texas) love the British show Spooks (MI-5 here in the States), but almost didn’t make it through the first episode because the actress who was supposed to be from Florida had such a horrendous accent. I honestly didn’t recognize it as English, much less American.

We also noticed on the final episode of Cracker that the supposed American sounded “off.”

There were 30 of us Texans at a semester abroad in London in ’92, and only 2 or 3 would have had accents that gave away our location. The rest of us were generic upper-middle-class suburbanite, which most Londoners guessed was “from California.” I’m guessing this is “an American accent.”

It could have been worse; we could have all sounded like Christian Bale, who sounds like he’s swallowing every overenunciated word right after he says it.

The American pronunciation would be the correct one.

The notion that past usage should (ugh) dictate future development is pretty silly. Here’s an example:

In Old English, the verb “to ask” was pronounced “aksode.” If that were the case, we’d be “wrong” to say “ask” rather than “aks.”

But that changed. Because language changes. Sometimes because of time and other times due to place. “Should” is a largely useless word.

Jason B:

Some U.S. accents do pronounce “ask” as “aks.” Any idea if that is some sort of holdover from older dialects or an independent development?

Every linguist knows–and everyone who’s ever taken a History of the English Language class ought to know–that every speaker has an accent. There’s no such thing as unflavored English.

It has always seemed to me that the Northern Irish accent bears the closest similarity to a US accent.

IME many Americans find it very, very difficult to distinguish NI and Scottish accents.

So you would be okay with ‘nookyular’, I guess.

I wouldn’t encourage it, but I understand it. Communication has happened. I’ll ridicule it, but that doesn’t discount the possibility that it’s legitimate usage.

Winner is still Kevin Costner who as Robin Hood provided a veritable national tour of English accents over the course of the movie—a stellar performance!

I’m no expert, but I couldn’t tell–did he hit a single accent correctly? I’m guessing “no.”

It seems to me that there might be some sense in the idea that accents in English can be a matter of degree of intensity.

Years ago, I walked into a London antiquarian bookshop to inquire after the availability of Alexander Kinglake’s legendary The Invasion of the Crimea: Its Origin and an Account of Its Progress down to the Death of Lord Raglan. (This was long before it came back into print as a paperback — lousy history, but fabulous prose, by the way.) I addressed myself briefly to the proprietor, but another customer answered, at some length. Astonished that I understood scarcely a word coming out of the mouth of a presumably literate man, I thanked him, but stood there dazed until he had left the bookshop. The proprietor confirmed that I had not understood anything said, and “translated”. That was the most intense accent I have ever heard in English, more intense than worst Australian male-bonding banter by an order of magnitude.

Many American accents are pretty light; my Southern Great Lakes accent differs only in the flatness of its tone from a BBC voiceover, except for telltale mispronunciations, like, melk for milk, or gahrantee. I doubt that my accent would trouble any native English-speaker’s understanding.

Oh, I forgot: flatten your modulation.

Lots of rising tones, intended to make compound-complex sentence structure intelligible to the listener, is not requires among Americans, who do not employ compound-complex sentences structure, at least in spoke English.
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I wouldn’t encourage it, but I understand it. Communication has happened. I’ll ridicule it, but that doesn’t discount the possibility that it’s legitimate usage.

Sorry, ‘nookyular’ isn’t legitimate usage. It’s mispronunciation; it’s a mistake; it’s risible. (Though you could ask me again in 2108.)

Even better. West Texas, South Texas, central Texas, small town Texas — there are definitely a stereotypical accent.

Far West Texas, lots of English as a second language, and lots of a nondescript accent that is nothing like the stereotype except for making use of the English language. West Texas (e.g., midland) — closer to the stereotype. Small town Texas is the stereotype. Houston, a real mish mash, what with so many people being from so many different countries. The Panhandle, I have absolutely no idea.

Though you could ask me again in 2108.

I’ll commit to the meeting, if you can guarantee its eventuality.

My wife and I are from Texas, military brats both so we have some but not much Texas accent I think. We live outside of Philadelphia though, so our son has grown up with regionalisms from there (especially the very short and terse “yeh!” affirmative response to simple questions). Luckily he hasn’t turned up with the “youse guys” that is heard in South Philly and in parts of suburbs populated from there. I’m told by a reliable source that “youse” is Irish 2nd person plural, like “ya’ll” in Texas.

“”Aks” …I think it’s independent development”

Of course it’s an independent development. Coming from popular culture. As in “you gotta axe somebody”.

“in England people generally don’t have a clue what their fellow man is talking about unless he was born in the same fifty mile radius”

Yeah, I don’t believe that at all. In all honesty, putting aside Hungarian, Finnish, Basque, Gaelic and probably something I’m forgetting about, there really are just three languages in Europe. Germanic, Latin and Slavic. An Englishman can make himself understandable to a Dutchman, provided s/he speaks slowly, clearly and uses only “common” words. The same thing is true for a Spaniard/Italian and Russian/Pole/Czech/Serb. French throws a bit of a wrench into this (including partly into English) but it’s not that far off.

To get a bit postmodern on this, because (Western) Europeans (particularly the English) once used to rule the world they tend to be, well, Western-Euro-centric and engage in a lot of navel gazing. This leads to folks seeing small differences as bigger differences and the proliferation of accents, dialects, and even languages where in different circumstances these things would get all lumped in together. But a lot of these boundaries – these accents, dialects, and even languages – are just human constructs.

And I’m with the above commentators – as long as communication happens (and the communication can be “if you’re having trouble understanding the way I talk, that’s your problem not mine”) there is no such thing as “improper” usage of language.

”Aks” …I think it’s independent development”

Actually, linguists incline toward the view that African-American Vernacular English retained the Old English pronunciation. See here for some discussion.

To speak like an American, one must normally not pronounce the “t” sound in the middle of a word — e.g., “And now, from CNN headquarders in Adlanna, uh innerview with uh ennerprising dennist who is doing his uddermost to save wadder.”

1. do not pronouce all your vowels (which saves you the trouble of thinking about them). Americans generally pronounce only the vowels that fall in stressed syllables, with others turning into the ‘uh’ sound.

At least on the East Coast, many vowels reduce to the Dead I, something akin to “roses” as RO-ziz, but with the Short I sound more reduced.

3. shift your consonants one step to the left: as in Mexican Spanish, t’s turn to d’s, d’s turn to th’s, b’s often turn to v’s, etc. Most Americans have no idea that they do this, but a work like “category” turns into “caduhgoree” in American English.

Ts and Ds in the middle of American English words are reduced to the dental flap – “latter” and “ladder” are identical, but the middle sound is not a full D. I have never heard an American pronounce a B like a V. The closest thing is when we make a labiodental nasal before a labiodental fricative. That is, the M in “comfort” is made with the teeth on the lips instead of the lips together. The only thing I can figure about the B -> V comment is that our Bs may turn from bilabial plosives to bilabial fricatives (the difference between D and Z, except on the lips). But if so, I’ve never heard it.

I still confuse South Africans with Australians, even though I used to have an Australian sister-in-law.

That’s just….odd. From my Australian perspective, of course! I’ll pop some standout words below to help you distinguish in future.

Australian: Aaaahrse; M’i’ddle; K’i’ds. (with ‘i’ being the short, knife-sharp “i”)
South African: Orse; Muiddl; Kuidz. (with “ui” being the steamrollered “i”)

Again wishing I’d taken the time to learn IPA…

Fascinating, so much parochialism and ignorance. I only hope it is all tongue-in-cheek. Personally I’m always puzzled by people who claim not to be able to understand other regions’ accents. Are they just not listening properly, or something?

But, to add my own amusing anecdote, on a trip to the States a couple of years ago, I did smile when I heard the very-proper CNN newsreader/anchor carefully enunciate the rap-person Fifty-cent’s name as “fiddy-cent”… A sweet gesture of cross-ethnic solidarity, I thought.

It has always seemed to me that the Northern Irish accent bears the closest similarity to a US accent.

IME many Americans find it very, very difficult to distinguish NI and Scottish accents.

These can’t both be true, since many Americans consider the Scottish accent to be somewhere between comical (think of Groundskeeper Willie: “The noozel! The noozel at the end of the hoose!”) and incomprehensible (think of Mel Gibson’s American rooster in Chicken Run asking if the Scottish hen was in fact speaking English). These are exaggerations, of course, but I did watch Trainspotting on DVD with the captions turned on.

I could never understand half of what Benny Hill was saying, either, but I guess he often had his face planted in some woman’s chest as he talked.

This is quite funny: 21 accents in 2 1/2 minutes.

I haven’t read all the comments, but I suspect no one else has had the experience I had in Ireland ca. 1972 of regularly being identified as English by my accent? (Grew up in California, but strongest influence on my accent is probably my mother, from rural Illinois — last outpost of the ancient pronounciation “hwat.”)

For what it’s worth my midwestern relatives, perhaps due to the great-whatever mother from Rochedale, use words in everyday speech that are glossed as regional or archaic in the works of Elizabeth Gaskell.

Dave: Fascinating, so much parochialism and ignorance. I only hope it is all tongue-in-cheek. Personally I’m always puzzled by people who claim not to be able to understand other regions’ accents. Are they just not listening properly, or something?

Understanding accents different from your own is an acquired skill, and often taken for granted. Typically, those lacking interaction with diverse groups have a lot of difficulty understanding linguistic patterns different from their own. I am sure you can recall an instance when you have witnessed a misunderstanding between a local and an outsider who speaks lightly accented English.

Do different American accents sound alike to British ears?

Based on my parents’ recognition, I’d say that there are a few distinctions: ‘Bugs Bunny’, ‘Foghorn Leghorn’, ‘Yosemite Sam’, and ‘None of the above’, based upon exposure to film and television. That’s to say, they can tell a New Yorker from a Deep Southerner from a Cowboy Westerner, but throw them a Minnesotan or a Kentuckian or a Californian or a Canadian and they’ll file it under ‘Unidentified American’.

The KU audio database is a really good resource, in part because of standard texts that are designed to accentuate the idiosyncracies of, um, accents.

As for my accent (like those of the general locale) it seems to be one of the least subject to attrition, given the number of people who seem to have retained most of theirs after several decades living in the US. An inexact example is Ridley Scott, whose accent is noticeably thicker now than it was in the 1980s.

(One thing that has changed for me: Radio 4 play “Americans” now sound like fingernails across a blackboard.)

I was born in “Trahno”

Toronto, Ontario, Canada

We don’t use all our consonants, but we don’t sound American :)