No one speaks english anymore??

On 17/03/2013 10:07 PM, rwalker wrote:
On Fri, 15 Mar 2013 15:46:42 -0400, Robert Coe wrote:

But
enough people say that they find southern accents incomprehensible that I have
to believe them.

Bob


I've lived all over the U.S., and I think it's a bit of snobbery
personally.

I recall seeing a bleak British movie filmed in some industrial city,
where the local dialect was used. The movie had English sub-titles
because nobody outside that region (even fellow Brits) could understand
half the dialog.

And then there are the Scots!!!

--
This space intentionally left blank.

On 3/18/2013 8:37 AM, Usenet Account wrote:
On 17/03/2013 10:07 PM, rwalker wrote:
On Fri, 15 Mar 2013 15:46:42 -0400, Robert Coe wrote:

But
enough people say that they find southern accents incomprehensible
that I have
to believe them.

Bob


I've lived all over the U.S., and I think it's a bit of snobbery
personally.

I recall seeing a bleak British movie filmed in some industrial city,
where the local dialect was used. The movie had English sub-titles
because nobody outside that region (even fellow Brits) could understand
half the dialog.

And then there are the Scots!!!

It's not really as bad as you think! It just requires acclimatization
and attuning your ears but I agree a first time exposure might be helped
by subtitles. I went to college in Glasgow and could not understand
much for a few days but, after 4 or 5 days, I discovered I was beginning
to understand the people in the street and a week later it was not a
problem.

--
Jim Silverton (Potomac, MD)

Extraneous "not" in Reply To.

James Silverton wrote:


It's not really as bad as you think! It just requires acclimatization and attuning your ears but I agree a first time exposure might be helped by subtitles. I went to college in Glasgow and could not understand much for a few days but, after 4 or 5 days, I discovered I was beginning to understand the people in the street and a week later it was not a problem.

Seconded, on TV. (Rab C Nesbit).

BugBear

| students seemed to be mainly from California. I only had one
| acquaintance who was a Tucson native and she had no
| discernible accent.
|
| You do understand what "no discernible accent" means,
| right?
|

It's not what you mean. I grew up in Boston. I hear Boston
accents very distinctly. What I mean by no discernible
accent is the generic, midwestern accent without a twang
that I described as typical of college graduates.

It would be interesting to know the details of why that
accent seems so neutral. The only thing I can think of is
that it involves moderation in emphasis. (Sure becomes
sho[r]e in New England, shooer in the Midwest, and shirrr
on the west coast. There's a progressive compression of
vowels and emphasis on consonants. Different styles, but
the Midwest comes closest to what the letters actually
spell out.)


| Perhaps I should have put more emphasis on the fact that
| I was taking about *regional* accents. There can of
| course also be differences between classes, but that
| isn't a regional accent either.
|
| In my experience they're nothing but. Anyone who goes to
| colllege these days comes out with an Ohio-style, neutral
| accent. It's become the mark of culture.
|
| It actually has very little to do with a college
| education, and has a great deal to do with the ubiquity
| of television exposure to young children.
|

I think there's probably some truth in that. There's also far
more moving around than there used to be, which dilutes
local culture. But I don't think it's so clearcut. (I'm one of
6 brothers. Two of us have Boston accents and four don't.
TV? We watched a lot of the Beverly Hillbillies, Andy of
Mayberry, the Honeymooners, and Groucho Marx growing up.
Heavy accents, all.

Tony thinks I'm exaggerating. I do live in a big city with a lot
of colleges and a lot of non-locals, so I suppose my experience
is atypical. Midwesterners come to the coast for culture. There's
no such exodus in the other direction. So I'm surrounded by a
large number of Ohioan college students.

But I have seen a pattern, nevertheless. People who go to
college -- and anyone who consciously strives to be
upwardly mobile -- works to eliminate regional accent. It makes
them sound educated. We can't help making those judgements.
Just as we can't help overestimating the intelligence of many
Brits due to their refined enunciation and general tone of
confidence.

When I was young I once rented a room from a couple with
a toddler. We were all baby-boomers in our 20s, from middle class
backgrounds, having grown up in the Boston area. The couple
wanted me to minimize my speaking with the toddler because
they had big plans for him and didn't want him to grow up with
an accent.
... Baby Einstein ... Preschool taught by PhDs ... Sheryl
Sandberg scolding women for not aiming to be top executives...
That's all part of a general trend away from valuing a middle
class and toward an idealized notion of exceptionalism as the
ultimate goal in life. For the most part, people simply do not
live with that worldview and also have a regional accent, because
others *do* judge such accents. You may prefer not to see it
that way, but denial of classism is actually part of the worldview
of the educated classes in the US. (As opposed to the UK, where
classism is savagely blatant.)

As with accents, such people also tend to lose regional and
historical idioms. The social climbers switch from local idioms
to whatever fashionable keywords the educated classes are
currently using to indicate a highbrow sensibility: "absolutely",
"having said that", and any technical-sounding
latinization of normal language: "Grow your company by leveraging
social media implementations to monetize relationships"
instead of "Buy your Facebook ads here!" (Though an interesting
exception to that is the adolescent slang that's become acceptable,
such as the use of "cool" or "I am so not going". With literacy so
low among college graduates, I guess the language of the official
intelligentsia is bound to be a bit quirky.)

"Mayayana" wrote:
| students seemed to be mainly from California. I only had one
| acquaintance who was a Tucson native and she had no
| discernible accent.
|
| You do understand what "no discernible accent" means,
| right?
|

It's not what you mean. I grew up in Boston. I hear Boston
accents very distinctly. What I mean by no discernible
accent is the generic, midwestern accent without a twang
that I described as typical of college graduates.

But that is *not* a lack of an accent. It's just one
specific accent.

It would be interesting to know the details of why that
accent seems so neutral. The only thing I can think of is
that it involves moderation in emphasis. (Sure becomes
sho[r]e in New England, shooer in the Midwest, and shirrr
on the west coast. There's a progressive compression of
vowels and emphasis on consonants. Different styles, but
the Midwest comes closest to what the letters actually
spell out.)

For one definition of which sounds those letters spell...

| Perhaps I should have put more emphasis on the fact that
| I was taking about *regional* accents. There can of
| course also be differences between classes, but that
| isn't a regional accent either.
|
| In my experience they're nothing but. Anyone who goes to
| colllege these days comes out with an Ohio-style, neutral
| accent. It's become the mark of culture.
|
| It actually has very little to do with a college
| education, and has a great deal to do with the ubiquity
| of television exposure to young children.
|

I think there's probably some truth in that. There's also far
more moving around than there used to be, which dilutes
local culture. But I don't think it's so clearcut. (I'm one of
6 brothers. Two of us have Boston accents and four don't.
TV? We watched a lot of the Beverly Hillbillies, Andy of
Mayberry, the Honeymooners, and Groucho Marx growing up.
Heavy accents, all.

Tony thinks I'm exaggerating. I do live in a big city with a lot
of colleges and a lot of non-locals, so I suppose my experience
is atypical. Midwesterners come to the coast for culture. There's
no such exodus in the other direction. So I'm surrounded by a
large number of Ohioan college students.

But I have seen a pattern, nevertheless. People who go to
college -- and anyone who consciously strives to be
upwardly mobile -- works to eliminate regional accent. It makes
them sound educated. We can't help making those judgements.
Just as we can't help overestimating the intelligence of many
Brits due to their refined enunciation and general tone of
confidence.

That's a matter of perspective. I spend a lot of time
teasing, and being teased by, a couple of Brits. We all
realize that there are many accents in the UK and there
are many accents in the US. None of them represents the
definitive accent for either. And nobody lacks an accent,
by definition.

When I was young I once rented a room from a couple with
a toddler. We were all baby-boomers in our 20s, from middle class
backgrounds, having grown up in the Boston area. The couple
wanted me to minimize my speaking with the toddler because
they had big plans for him and didn't want him to grow up with
an accent.
... Baby Einstein ... Preschool taught by PhDs ... Sheryl
Sandberg scolding women for not aiming to be top executives...
That's all part of a general trend away from valuing a middle
class and toward an idealized notion of exceptionalism as the
ultimate goal in life. For the most part, people simply do not
live with that worldview and also have a regional accent, because
others *do* judge such accents. You may prefer not to see it
that way, but denial of classism is actually part of the worldview
of the educated classes in the US. (As opposed to the UK, where
classism is savagely blatant.)

Oh I absolutely agree that such notion exist. It may
even be prevalent among educated people. But it isn't a
sign of education so much as a lack of principled
values. Perhaps psuedo-educated is the right term...

As with accents, such people also tend to lose regional and
historical idioms. The social climbers switch from local idioms
to whatever fashionable keywords the educated classes are
currently using to indicate a highbrow sensibility: "absolutely",
"having said that", and any technical-sounding
latinization of normal language: "Grow your company by leveraging
social media implementations to monetize relationships"
instead of "Buy your Facebook ads here!" (Though an interesting
exception to that is the adolescent slang that's become acceptable,
such as the use of "cool" or "I am so not going". With literacy so
low among college graduates, I guess the language of the official
intelligentsia is bound to be a bit quirky.)

--
Floyd L. Davidson http://www.apaflo.com/
Ukpeagvik (Barrow, Alaska)

| | You do understand what "no discernible accent" means,
| | right?
| |
|
| It's not what you mean. I grew up in Boston. I hear Boston
| accents very distinctly. What I mean by no discernible
| accent is the generic, midwestern accent without a twang
| that I described as typical of college graduates.
|
| But that is *not* a lack of an accent. It's just one
| specific accent.

If you say so. It's cultivated because it's perceived as
lack of accent. It's not an accident that news announcers
are not trained to speak with a southern drawl or a Down
East accent.

| But I have seen a pattern, nevertheless. People who go to
| college -- and anyone who consciously strives to be
| upwardly mobile -- works to eliminate regional accent. It makes
| them sound educated. We can't help making those judgements.
| Just as we can't help overestimating the intelligence of many
| Brits due to their refined enunciation and general tone of
| confidence.
|
| That's a matter of perspective. I spend a lot of time
| teasing, and being teased by, a couple of Brits. We all
| realize that there are many accents in the UK and there
| are many accents in the US. None of them represents the
| definitive accent for either. And nobody lacks an accent,
| by definition.
|

How graciously multicultural of you. But I think you're trying
hard to deny the obvious fact that we all judge accents. Why
do you suppose Downton Abbey is such a big hit with the
highbrow Anglophiles who fund PBS? Those people wouldn't be
caught dead watching a US soap opera, but clad the same
plotless, gossipy titillation in British accents and it becomes
respectable theater. (Which is not to deny that there are
some rough and unattractive British accents. That's why I
said *many* Brits.)

Mayayana wrote:

|
| But that is *not* a lack of an accent. It's just one
| specific accent.

If you say so. It's cultivated because it's perceived as
lack of accent.

Not my me, it's not.

I'm a Brit.

BugBear

bugbear wrote:
Mayayana wrote:

|
| But that is *not* a lack of an accent. It's just one
| specific accent.

If you say so. It's cultivated because it's perceived as
lack of accent.

Not my me, it's not.

I'm a Brit.

BugBear

A great example!

If nothing else, it probably sounds like a "bloody American".

--
Floyd L. Davidson http://www.apaflo.com/
Ukpeagvik (Barrow, Alaska)

On Sun, 17 Mar 2013 20:21:08 -0800, (Floyd L. Davidson)
wrote:
: rwalker wrote:
: On Sun, 17 Mar 2013 18:51:46 -0800, (Floyd L.
: Davidson) wrote:
:
: Whatever, regional accents and dialectic differences in
: how language is spoken and used are very real and are
: not in any way a class distinction.
:
: Well, that's one take on it.

A wildly incorrect take, as it happens.

: But it is also an easily verifable take (which any
: linguist will expond on),

Nonsense; linguists are as able to recognize and catalogue dialectical
distinctions based on class as they are distinctions based on region. Whether
the implied class distinctions are real or not is a different question, with
different answers in different cases.

: while saying that such distinctions are merely snobbery,
: probably is itself an expression of snobbery.

But that's not at all what Mr Walker said. He said he thought the pretense to
finding the regional dialects of others incomprehensible is a bit of snobbery.

Bob

Robert Coe wrote:
On Sun, 17 Mar 2013 20:21:08 -0800, (Floyd L. Davidson)
wrote:
: rwalker wrote:
: On Sun, 17 Mar 2013 18:51:46 -0800, (Floyd L.
: Davidson) wrote:
:
: Whatever, regional accents and dialectic differences in
: how language is spoken and used are very real and are
: not in any way a class distinction.
:
: Well, that's one take on it.

A wildly incorrect take, as it happens.

Your discussion does not support that. Instead is suggests
you are not responding to what was said: class distinctions
are different than region distinctions. It was NOT stated
that there is no such thing as a class distinction, just that
it should not be confused with regional accents.

: But it is also an easily verifable take (which any
: linguist will expond on),

Nonsense; linguists are as able to recognize and catalogue dialectical
distinctions based on class as they are distinctions based on region.

Which of course is exactly what I have said...

Whether
the implied class distinctions are real or not is a different question, with
different answers in different cases.

: while saying that such distinctions are merely snobbery,
: probably is itself an expression of snobbery.

But that's not at all what Mr Walker said. He said he thought the pretense to
finding the regional dialects of others incomprehensible is a bit of snobbery.

What he said is snobbery!

--
Floyd L. Davidson http://www.apaflo.com/
Ukpeagvik (Barrow, Alaska)