thestonesfan said:
Hey! The Midwestern dialect isn't annoying!
Actually, people who go to school for public speaking, such as radio people, learn Midwestern speak. I guess it's the most 'neutral'.
Broadcasting we often joked about how our professors always wanted us to speak the queens own English with a typical brit accent if you have ever heard the CBC Radio you know what I mean.
Thogh TV stations such as CTV and Global seem to copy the northern US accent. Peter Masbrige on the CBC does this too - though most of Toronto does so it creates a kind of Toronto accent. Though in reality its more word choice than anything else.
Quote:
Originally posted by Yoshimune
I probably also couldn't tell the difference between an English accent and an Australian accent if you brought two people up to me and made me guess.
A lot of people cant I one mistook an austiraln with a weak accent for a brit or a British Colombian. Im told some of them have a bit of a British accent Thogh later I was talking to a serever in a coffeshop who said Id never guess her accent. oddly enough I got it right. Most people asumed she was from the UK not Australia.
sysyphus said:
The key thing to remeber is that accents change over time. The British accent at the time of the settlement of the present day USA was quite different from the British accent of today.
From what I understand, in those days the British accent was somewhat more like the present day US accent. As the US was settled, the accent there evolved one way and the accent in Britain evolved another way.
My theory is that the people who would become Americans were from the middle and lower classes and as such didnt speak the queens own English. After the war they were isolated and a new accent took root.
Benderino said:
This has probably been addressed, but oh well. When the US was formed, the citizens didn't have English accents, well they did, but not what you're thinking. There was the New England accents and the Southern accent, they existed, but along with American nationalism came a new American vocabulary, spelling, and accent. The accent had been drifting farther and farther from English since about 1700.
Whats funny is an old Encyclopedia circa 1950 has different sections for English and (American) English. The article says that on the whole American English is different in a number of was since the US often adopts words from other languages, compounds many words and changes the meaning of words.
This says nothing about spelling but thats already been covered.
A guide to American precondition of English
Word what is sounds like
Creek crik
Roof ruff
Four four - say the word at about half speed.
There are other examples but thats all I can think of.
Generally speaking I can understand anyone speaking English if the words and grammar are correct. I can hear past even the strongest accents. I credit 3 years of living in the US back when I was a child for this. Whats interesting is when I came back to Canada I sounded like an American to my relatives.
Subsequent recearch says people get their accent when they learn to speak from age 2-7. Therefoe explaning why even if you move to a place with a difent accent you will still sound like where you were born.
2 stories
1. While in the US my father was talking to someone who said gee you sould just like an american! You dont have an accent.
2. Once while driving to Flordia we sopped in North carolia not far from the boarder with south carolina and the watress upon hearing we were from up north thought we were from the northern US.
