13 December: U.S. accents

[starlady]

U.S. accents for puzzlement 

An American accent. Apparently I have one. Who knew?

I was told by an Australian friend recently that my American accent is actually quite strong, which I found kind of hilarious. It's not that I disbelieved that statement, per se, because everyone has an accent, but that my own accent is a little bit of a mongrel at this point--being from South Jersey, I speak very nasally, but I don't have the accent where I would say "Joisey" and I do say "hoagie" and root for the Phillies. (Only a very small group of people eat hoagies but root for the Yankees.) To make matters even more linguistically confused, my parents were/are both from Wisconsin (and in particular Milwaukee) and I definitely had a bit of the "nerd accent" when I was a kid from reading far above the level of my speech--I stilll pronounce both vowels in "crayon," for example, although the O is very faint. In college I spent four years in Minnesota trying not to pick up the accent and mostly succeded except for when I say "Minnesota" or when I go back to the Midwest; when I called my sister from Milwaukee in May the first thing she told me was she could hear my accent had come back. I've mostly resisted the vowel flattening of California (the native Californians I know have no caught/cot distinction) and I'm in no danger of the Northern Cities vowel shift, just as I'll  never have the General American accent. In the meantime, I'm very amusing to linguists at parties, and I'm still pretty liable to say "yo" and "dude" like we did back in Philly in the early aughts. I'm sure there are some words I use that I pronounce in a Philly way too, even though the Philadelphia accent is mainly associated with South Philly. It's also not to be confused with the Lancaster county/northeastern Pennsylnpvania accent, where people call cow juice "melk," sleep on "pellows," and drink "wuter."

The thing about U.S. accents, of course, is that it's not just a question of how we pronounce words but of what words we use. In Minnesota they say "Duck duck grey duck" and in Wisconsin they drink out of "bubblers" instead of water fountains, just as people in the South drink Coke instead of soda and in Boston it's pop, and in New Jersey we all put our pumpkins inside the house on October 30th because it's Mischief Night. The isoglosses can be very precisely mapped, and that's quite fascinating--New Jersey, since there are so many people in it, is particularly interesting in this regard, since the various word regions match up very well with the geographical, political, and other divides in the state that people who think it's small have no idea about. I'm sure it's similar for other places.

The third thing, of course, is that all accents are equal but some are more equal than others. Britain gets all the credit for being able to place people precisely on a class scale based on how they speak, but the States is not far behind in terms of vocal stereotyping and stigmatization, aided and abetted by popular culture and Hollywood. I talked a bit about just one example of this sort of thing, the stereotyping of Southern and non-mainstream U.S. Englishes in Disney movies, in my post about Toy Story 3 a while back; I dabbled a bit in sociolinguistics in college, which is how I know this much, but I know even less about AAVE and other non-mainstream dialects.

Comments

[thistleingrey]

Yeah, Californians say "dude," too, but pronounce it a bit differently. I have a lazy California mode for traveling within the US outside of California, to show that I have a regional accent they can identify and am not FOB, because otherwise sometimes they ask me where I learned such good English *headdesks*, and a hyperenunciation mode for speaking with people whom lazy-CA mode confuses aurally, which is mostly but not only second-language learners. My mother was so, so angry when I said "wul" for "well" and "sə'm" for "something" as a child, hence the latter. It's useful at professional conferences, too, where people sometimes are itching to ask where I learned my English. (Seriously, people have proposed, "Not Hong Kong?" right after I tell them I'm from Los Angeles. STFU.)

But you're absolutely right, even the hyperenunciation mode doesn't distinguish caught/cot while speaking, though I *can*. I find it sort of marvelous that sometimes people can't hear the distinction for that pair or (different people) for pin/pen.

[via_ostiense]

It's useful at professional conferences, too, where people sometimes are itching to ask where I learned my English.

Where on Earth is that a polite question to ask?

[thistleingrey]

It isn't, yes. My phrasing was ambiguous, I realize; outside conferences people are more likely to come out with it if the thought occurs to them, and at conferences they're less likely actually to say it, IME, only to drop leading attempts to make me answer the unspoken question.

I now return to struggling fairmindedly with the English usage in a conference proposal I'm reviewing, in fact, from a team employed by S/SE Asian universities. I hope their proposal is accepted; if I'm understanding everything correctly, it's fascinating work.

[via_ostiense]

Oh, the question was directed at the people asking you, not at you. The mind boggles at how/why that even occurs to people to ask.

[troisroyaumes]

to show that I have a regional accent they can identify and am not FOB, because otherwise sometimes they ask me where I learned such good English

Is that why I keep getting asked this question even after the asker has heard me speak in my very "learned from television" US accent? I've always found that mystifying as well as irritating...

[thistleingrey]

Yeah, from what I can tell, doesn't matter how "authentic" the vocal delivery is. I guess that for some people, a small excuse will always them say accidentally or intentionally discomfiting things.

[puzzlement]

Thank you!

I think Hollywood makes some West Coast accents almost invisible to me. Conversely I can't (for obvious reasons) distinguish other US regions except very broadly (some Southern accents, for example).

I think word-wise Australia is nearly as bad, often for words to do with childhood. (The words for what you wear to swim area particularly telling as regards your state.)

This is the part where I wish I'd learned IPA

[starlady]

People in Hollywood usually are doing a kind of General American that is actually not very West Coast. Off the top of my head, Emma Watson's California accent in The Bling Ring is a notable recent exception. Even for me the California accent is very hard to hear--the stereotype is that people who have it end declarative statements with a rising intonation, and while I have encountered that, it's much less common than the really flat vowels. The telltale besides the lack of caught/cot distinction is that people who have a real California coastal accent will say "conTENue" instead of "conTINue." It's not the same vowel shift as pin/pen, which is NCVS and sounds different.

People from the rural Pacific Northwest also sound subtly different from California coastal, but I haven't encountered it enough to describe it very well.

What do you call the rainbow things you put on ice cream, by the bye?

Re: This is the part where I wish I'd learned IPA

[puzzlement]

The General American versus Californian thing may account for my difficulties at US immigration: it tends to be the first accent I encounter and I often have difficulty understanding what I'm being asked. A little unfortunate. (To date, I've only ever cleared US immigration at LAX and SFO.)

I call them sprinkles.

Re: This is the part where I wish I'd learned IPA

[via_ostiense]

How was The Bling Ring, btw? Read a news article about it when it was coming around, but didn't get around to seeing it.

Re: This is the part where I wish I'd learned IPA

[starlady]

I liked it. Unfortunately, because the dude is the only one who talked to the production, it's more centered on him than I actually cared for, but I still liked it.