[0157988944]

Originally Posted by Dakarʒ 

Unless they're latino and they suddenly hit a spanish name. Then the fun begins.

Or Middle-Eastern...

YouTube - Mad TV - All English-Speaking Al Jazeera Network

[finboy]

Originally Posted by Doofy 

Doof's local:

speech accent archive: browse

Give me any kind of any other accent any time. Except Brummie.

That archive is fooked. The Southern US ones, at least, are not representative that I hear. Or should I say he-ahh.

[SpaceMonkey]

Originally Posted by Dork. 

There are a few pet peeves I've found with the Rochester-area accent that I'm actively trying to teach out of my daughter:

- The word "crayon" ought to be two syllables, but people around here pronounce it more like "cran".

- The words "Mary", "merry", and "marry" are distinct and should not sound the same.

- What people do here is the opposite of macintologist's first complaint: short "a" sounds sound more like "ea", and are almost elongated into a second syllable. Think "pe-ants" for "pants", "gle-ass" for "glass".

I say that stuff all the time (upstate NY native). Anyone else say "melk" for "milk"?

[SpaceMonkey]

Originally Posted by macintologist 

I like the way newscasters talk. They don't have stupid accents and weird ways of saying things. Why can't everyone talk like them?

They mostly train themselves to do that. It's supposed to make them sound ambiguously "heartland"-ish. Stephen Colbert trained himself out of his South Carolina accent, too, when he was a kid.

[powerbook867]

We are on page 2 and no one has mentioned the word....

uhmmm.

I speak in front of clients regularly and when I hear a sales guy saying uhmmm every forth word, I want to hit them a large dictionary..

That and "irreragdless" make me want to... Well you can imagine.

[Chuckit]

Originally Posted by finboy 

That archive is fooked. The Southern US ones, at least, are not representative that I hear. Or should I say he-ahh.

You live in Georgia? The soft R has died out in most of the South. Which is a shame, because I really like the sound of the old upper-class accent.

[Sherman Homan]

powerbook867, language changes. For all intensive porpoises, the word "irregardless" is now a word.

[Uriel]

We are on page 2 and no one has mentioned the word....

uhmmm.

I speak in front of clients regularly and when I hear a sales guy saying uhmmm every forth word, I want to hit them a large dictionary..

That and "irreragdless" make me want to... Well you can imagine.

I used to have a little bit of trouble saying this when talking to large groups of people. I think a lot of it is many times people want to constantly be speaking, so when they forget, they vocalize while they are still processing. Once I realized this and began to realize this, I just began to speak a little slower and allow some pauses, even if a little longer than normal to catch my thoughts. Sadly, I think many people just want to spew what they are saying out so fast that they say "Hi my name is Bob and I'll ...uhh be uhhhh... talking to you about....uhhh...." Much better to say "Hi, my name is Bob.......I'll be talking to you about..."

I have grown up in Arkansas, yet I am devoid of any real southern accent. I've been all over the country and everyone seems to think I have a "normal" accent. Just newcaster english. I lucked out though, some of the southern accents here are like nails on a chalk board. "HEEEEY YA'LLLLL I jeust drooove oveer heeree oon mah pikuup triuck!". I'm really going to be culture shocking myself moving to Michigan next year.

[powerbook867]

Stewie disagrees...

1.) all the nation’s milk will come from Hilary Swank
2.) anyone who sees Peter Griffin must throw apples at him
3.) anyone using the words “irregardless,” “a whole nother,” or “all of the sudden” will be taken to work camps.

[Chuckit]

Originally Posted by Sherman Homan 

powerbook867, language changes. For all intensive porpoises, the word "irregardless" is now a word.

I'm not convinced "irregardless" and "between you and I" are actually examples of language change. I don't think most people's internal lexicons actually flag these as normal English — they represent a failed attempt at affecting a more prestigious dialect than the speaker's own.

[nonhuman]

From: "Dr. Richard Laurent" <laurent28hotmail.com>

This wouldn't be the first time such a misdivision has taken place.
It can go either way, with the mobile n (apologies to Hellenists)
becoming attached either to the indefinite article or to a
vowel-initial noun. In the past 1000 years English has developed:

an ekename 'also-name' > a nickname
a napron > an apron (cf. napkin; napery)
a nadder > an adder (cf. German Nader or something like that).

Thus, a whole nother forms part of a long tradition that will no
doubt continue until an loses its final -n.

LINGUIST List 14.2909: 'A Whole Nother Thing'

[jonasmac]

What really gets my goat is when people (mostly women in my experience) say "itch" in the place of "scratch." Aaaaaargh!

"I was itching my back..." - "....itching my leg" - "......'itching' my @$$"!

I think it might be a mid-western US thing. No one where I'm from talks like that. We have our own English issues.

[Hendrix]

Originally Posted by Kevin 

Yeah I was gonna say the same thing. I've heard ALL KINDS of accents in this country. Each "part" has it's different accents.

Anyone remember when MTV used to interview the band Oasis and they'd have to display what they were actually saying below at the bottom even though they were speaking in English?

That's pretty pitiful, good thing they work in the music business.

[nonhuman]

Originally Posted by jonasmac 

What really gets my goat is when people (mostly women in my experience) say "itch" in the place of "scratch." Aaaaaargh!

"I was itching my back..." - "....itching my leg" - "......'itching' my @$$"!

I think it might be a mid-western US thing. No one where I'm from talks like that. We have our own English issues.

Yeah, that annoys me too... How hard is it to distinguish between a sensation and an action?

[Atheist]

Originally Posted by jonasmac 

What really gets my goat is when people (mostly women in my experience) say "itch" in the place of "scratch." Aaaaaargh!

"I was itching my back..." - "....itching my leg" - "......'itching' my @$$"!

I think it might be a mid-western US thing. No one where I'm from talks like that. We have our own English issues.

Come on now... that's very common. I hear it all the time. Seems to be a natural evolution of the language to turn nouns into verbs.

[nonhuman]

Originally Posted by Atheist 

Come on now... that's very common. I hear it all the time. Seems to be a natural evolution of the language to turn nouns into verbs.

But 'itch' was already a verb. Something that caused an itching sensation was itching you. Scratching you is an entirely different thing.

[Chuckit]

Originally Posted by Atheist 

Come on now... that's very common. I hear it all the time. Seems to be a natural evolution of the language to turn nouns into verbs.

Yes, but "itch" already is a verb with the opposite meaning.

[RAILhead]

Not when the idiot says "I was itching my back." No, they were scratching theirback -- something else was making it itch.

[PaperNotes]

They got some random Bruce Lee from San Francisco to do the accent from Osaka, Japan. He even pronounces all the Ls

[BadKosh]

Back on topic, it's not only the women who can't communicate, anybody under 25 doesn't

[Kevin]

Originally Posted by BadKosh 

Back on topic, it's not only the women who can't communicate, anybody under 25 doesn't

You under 25 BadKosh?

[PaperNotes]

Originally Posted by BadKosh 

Back on topic, it's not only the women who can't communicate, anybody under 25 doesn't

Communicating with women? Beyond physical exertion there is no need for a man to have communication with a woman. The less they say the better

[villalobos]

I thought that speech accent archive site was pretty cool.

Here is my version

Go ahead and make fun of me.

[sek929]

Warwick, RI girls have FAR worse accents than any other in the 50 States.

[Chuckit]

Originally Posted by sek929 

Warwick, RI girls have FAR worse accents than any other in the 50 States.

What about the dudes?

[sek929]

There's something about a shrill womans voice that mashes New York and New England accents together that makes me cringe.

[Kevin]

I can't wait till Monique sees this.

[osiris]

yeah, she's gonna bust.

[CorpITGuy]

I grew up in Little Rock and have a very strong accent. It's not southern (which has a strong influence from the black community) but rather distinctly mountain-south and also much like colonial-era Virginians are believed to have spoken. I was standing in the airport at St. Louis last week and heard a voice, speaking into his Blackberry, say, "Hi, Robert. How ya doin'?" I instantly knew he was from Arkansas -- specifically Central or Northern Arkansas. We pronounce "Hi" in a way that... well... we'd be better off saying, "hey".

When I began approaching executive level positions, I asked a good friend of mine who did business in Silicon Valley for a long time whether I should go to a speech pathologist and try to acquire a more Midwestern, non-regional diction. He didn't find his accent detracting and thought that although many associate the southern accent with supidity, women especially are drawn to southerners and people universally (in this country) trust a southern accent. For that reason, his liability was also a benefit. Ultimately, I decided not to spend thousands of dollars getting rid of an accent that people trust. If they think they're smarter it's just to my advantage anyway. It's always better to be underestimated... ask any good NFL back about that.

I'm most annoyed by "irregardless of the fact" and "the school finally earned its accredidation".

[Oisín]

I'm most annoyed by "irregardless of the fact" and "the school finally earned its accredidation".

Not to mention ‘congradulations’.

Yeah, that annoys me too... How hard is it to distinguish between a sensation and an action?

Considering that all the Scandinavian languages (except Icelandic) have only one word that covers both itching and scratching, apparently not so easy

(Even the Icelandic ones, though different, are similar and from the same root: klóra for ‘scratch’ and klæja for ‘itch’, both from the *kló- root that’s behind the scratch/itch words in the other Scandinavian languages and claw in English)

[TheoCryst]

Originally Posted by Railroader 

The speech accent arcive is an awesome web site.

Here's the North American section: speech accent archive: browse

I think I sound more like the Windsor, Ont. accent than I do the Detroit accent.

Hehe, Brooklyn accents always cracks me up. And I'm allowed to say that, because I am still recovering from my Jersey accent.

[Ratspittle]

Here are mine...I work in a bar and it seems like every hippy girl that walks in and orders a pale ale says, "pell ell" WTF?! "I'll take a pell ell kind brother." Another one that is exclusively guy-prone is by people we call "dudebras". Every third word is dude, or bra. (funny thing is, most dudebras wear visors...at night.) You can be assured that if a guy strolls around at midnight wearing a visor, he will be a dudebra.
Midnight tennis anyone?
RS
btw-if, by this post, I make one person think twice about wearing a visor at night, saying dude or bra, or pell ell, my work is finished here.

[hart]

Originally Posted by nonhuman 

LINGUIST List 14.2909: 'A Whole Nother Thing'

"a whole nother" has a different meaning from "another." Just plain "another" means any old other thing. "A whole nother" means something entirely different from the first thing. As in "I got me a whole nother book from the library." instead of "I got me an entirely different book from the library." It has an entirely different feeling language-wise. Which, of course, raises the whole question of the phrase "I got me."

My impression living in Brooklyn is that "ax" for "ask" is more universal than just Ebonics. I also hear the Brooklyn accent tending more towards a kind of hispanic variant with the old traditional Brooklyn accent fading away slowly. I've been noticing as my three kids are growing up with a lot of Brooklynisms, something I never expected.

In high school I put on a Virginia accent so I would fit in. Now the main holdover is "y'all" which is indelibly stuck in my word usage as in "Y''all want to come over later?" or "I sent it to y'all yesterday." or "I didn't think y'all would be here today."

As for the whole dumb-ass thing from the OP that's just an age/socio-economic thing, not a dumb-ass thing. Since Monique hasn't stepped in I'll just say don't be a dumb-ass; listen to a few more kinds of people before making generalizations.

[SpaceMonkey]

Originally Posted by Ratspittle 

Here are mine...I work in a bar and it seems like every hippy girl that walks in and orders a pale ale says, "pell ell" WTF?! "I'll take a pell ell kind brother."

I don't know about you, but I'm more weirded out by "kind brother." Is this bar in the basement of a cult, or something?

[nonhuman]

Originally Posted by SpaceMonkey 

I don't know about you, but I'm more weirded out by "kind brother." Is this bar in the basement of a cult, or something?

I think it's the 16th century.

[Oisín]

"a whole nother" has a different meaning from "another." Just plain "another" means any old other thing. "A whole nother" means something entirely different from the first thing. As in "I got me a whole nother book from the library." instead of "I got me an entirely different book from the library." It has an entirely different feeling language-wise.

The comparison isn’t between ‘another’ and ‘a whole ’nother’, but between ‘a whole other’ (prescriptively correct) and ‘a whole ’nother’ (prescriptively misunderstood). I don’t see much difference (semantically) between, “I got me a whole ’nother book from the libry” and, “I got myself a whole other book from the library”, other than register and sociolect.

[Chuckit]

To me, "a whole other book" sounds like they were having a two-for-one sale — it focuses on the quantity — while "a whole 'nother book" sounds like "A book totally different from what I read before." There is semantic overlap, but they do give me a different impression. But maybe that's just me.

[0157988944]

See, you just took it to a whol' ..... notha' ..... level.

YouTube - MADTV - Eugene Struthers - Gridiron Gang

[JoshuaZ]

Its not just American girls. Being abroad has helped me realize that women (and men) from everywhere talk like idiots. I've met some really crass and bad mouthed English women, Auzzie women, and a couple of kiwis who appreared cute and fun but were HORRRRRRRRRRRRRRIBLE.

And thats just their language and vocabulary.