What's your accent (in your native language)?

[Elta]

"Come on Jessica, come on Tory,
let's go to the mall, you won't be so-ry"

I'm reasonably certain that there is a larger population of natively English-speaking Americans than there is of natively English-speaking Britishers, you know, on the order of 'hundreds of millions more', yet is it not generally agreed that there are many more varieties of British English than there are of American English?

I might be going out on a limb here, but I think it is because British people are much more class conscious than Americans are. So the in group out group dynamic is stronger.

Related: In the past young girls in the lower classes (In England) were taught to speak "up" - That is to sound like an upper class person in order to have a better chance at marrying someone of a higher social class. There has been a notable and steady decline in this since the end of WW2.

 

[Winner]

I'm reasonably certain that there is a larger population of natively English-speaking Americans than there is of natively English-speaking Britishers, you know, on the order of 'hundreds of millions more', yet is it not generally agreed that there are many more varieties of British English than there are of American English?

British English accents can be traced back hundreds of years. America is a new country, and the process of its settlement often prevented very localized accents from developing.

The parts of the US with the longest history of European settlement are also the most linguistically* diverse.

Spoiler :

* - We're talking about English accents, of course.

 

[Traitorfish]

I might be going out on a limb here, but I think it is because British people are much more class conscious than Americans are. So the in group out group dynamic is stronger.

I don't think it's a class thing-. I used to live in a town where people could tell which side of the river they came from based on accent. I think that it's more to do with the fact that British dialects are indigenous, while in America they've emerged from the interactions of immigrant groups speaking various dialects and languages, which naturally leads to homogenisation.

 

[Tycho Brahe]

Whoa, not bad at all. I couldn't get a single damn word when he did the British ones, though

With Russian he wasn't very succesfull. For some strange reason, it is assumed that when doing Russian accent, the consonants should sound especially strong. Which is very far from true. In fact, the biggest feature of Russian language are palalalized (i.e. softened) consonants.

Hollywood Russian accent isn't accurate at all. Here's a dude faking an American perception of Russian language:


Link to video.

So how does it sound when he's genuine?

Speaking of hollywood and slavic accents, take a look on 2 Broke Girls, in which you meet Oleg the ukrainian cook and Sophie from Poland.

 

[Veles]

Nah, he's not geniune, he's obviously overdoing it to sound stereotypically Russian to Americans.

...In there an "Eastern" accent in Russian?

This is a good exmple of East accent, it's pretty noticable even when sung. You gotta be pretty familiar with how a central Russian sounds to be able to notice the difference, though.


Link to video.

 

[Mango Elephant]

This is brilliant! He has to be British or at least not American though, judging by the # of US accents he did vs # of UK accents.

Not to mention his American accents tend not to be very accurate, I don't think.

 

[Tycho Brahe]

....

I was told by a Russian friend that the standard "Moscow" accent is only spoken by Muscovites and homosexuals, and speaking in such a way would make you assumed to be gay by other Russians.

I personally detected no accent between Moscow and St. Petersburg, but that's because I was concentrating on the words they were saying and not so much how they were saying them.

WTH, dude. Didn't he just easily insulted 15 million people? That imaginary 'Maasskva' accent, the one they make fun of in the comedy-shows, is only spoken by celebrities. It has little to do with how actual people of Moscow talk.

Seriously, though, you must have heard of 'Moscow vs. rest of Russia' rivalry. The good and generous folk of the heroical city of Moscow are hated because of their freedom and classiness and tons of moneys, which they unfairly get, sitting in their offices, doing nothing as opposed to poor provincials, who spend thier lifes in coal mines for 6000 rubles a month I'd laugh more if that last part wasn't the sad true.

I live in Moscow Oblast near Volokolamsk (so I'm an uneducated peasant myself ) and people here speak just like they do in Moscow. So this bro of yours just musta been alittle jelly. Can't blame him, though. The distribition in Russia is heavily and unfairly biased towards Moscow, because all huge companies generaly reside here, and thus pay taxes here, leaving little for the regions where they actually get the resources they sell. This is clearly unfair and should be changed. Less centralisation is required.




Wherever I've been in Russia, they spoke the same, with minuscule differences in intonation and pronounciation.

I think it's a common prejudice about people in the big cities: Their all gay, drug addicts or thieves. They talk fast, they think fast, they talk a lot and they are untrustworthy. People on the countryside are slow, simple etc.

The details get blurred with distance. If you live far away from Moscow, you don't distinguish between the different moscovitian dialects, their all just lumped together as one.

That's how it works here in Denmark where I live. I come from the island of Funen and used to be able to pinpoint which city on Funen people came from, just by the way they talk. Then I moved to Copenhagen and I lost it, but gained more knowledge about the dialects and sociolects here.

BTW the dialect(s) of Funen has a cheerful and happy sound to it. Thats a huge disadvantage when you angry. You can curse and demand bloody revenge, it just sounds cuddly.

 

[Winner]

This is a good exmple of East accent,

NEVER use songs if you want to explain a linguistic issue to non-native speakers

 

[Veles]

NEVER use songs if you want to explain a linguistic issue to non-native speakers

Aye, capt'n! Tell me more about what else I should never do, bro

Of course normally it shouldn't be done, but seriously, this vid is actually pretty illustrative.

...If you live far away from Moscow, you don't distinguish between the different moscovitian dialects, their all just lumped together as one. That's how it works here in Denmark where I live. I come from the island of Funen and used to be able to pinpoint which city on Funen people came from, just by the way they talk. Then I moved to Copenhagen and I lost it, but gained more knowledge about the dialects and sociolects here.

It's vice versa with me here, I'm Moscovite myself, just moved to the country, away from the traffic jams and crazyness of the huge city. So my expert opinion - no dialects in Moscow.

BTW the dialect(s) of Funen has a cheerful and happy sound to it. Thats a huge disadvantage when you angry. You can curse and demand bloody revenge, it just sounds cuddly.

That's the thing with the beautiful French language: it's rather hard to imagine someone acting tough while speaking French. As opposed to, say, German.

 

[Tycho Brahe]

...


That's the thing with the beautiful French language: it's rather hard to imagine someone acting tough while speaking French. As opposed to, say, German.

What? Nonono! French can sound very angry and intimiating.

 

[emzie]

Can you expand on the Acadian?
I know a lot about their history, as my girlfriend is mainly Acadian French (from main)... She told me she really has a hard time with traditional French, because they are so different.
Can you pinpoint the differences? She really couldn't as a barely even part time speaker.
I find it fascinating.

If you look of a map of Europe, France is a pretty big swath of land for one language. And indeed, it's not one homogeneous place. Historically, it was divided in the north with Oil (Oil isn't quite right, the i has two dots over it but I don't know how to make that character) languages and in the south and Occitan languages in the south. In the 1800s, standardization replaced many of these regional dialects with the French we think of today as Metropolitan French -- basically what was spoken in Paris.

However, before this standardization took place, France lost contact with North America and so the French over here was not influenced by the reforms enacted back home.

Going back to the oil languages, different regions of France spoke French differently, and North American colonies drew from specific areas of France to the exclusion of others. Well, linguistically anyway... the populations were from all over. Quebec French drew a lot from Normandy and Acadian French, from western France. So they spoke different oil languages and weren't in contact with France when standardization made everything less regional.

I guess it'd be as if there were two colonies, one settled linguistically by people from southern England, and the other settled by people who spoke Scots. The colonies are then cut off from the UK and each develops without benefiting from linguistic changes back home.

British English accents can be traced back hundreds of years. America is a new country, and the process of its settlement often prevented very localized accents from developing.

The parts of the US with the longest history of European settlement are also the most linguistically* diverse.

Spoiler :

* - We're talking about English accents, of course.

CANADA #1!

The map says so!

Lucy is going to hurt me when she reads this.

 

[Tabarnak]

Can you expand on the Acadian?
I know a lot about their history, as my girlfriend is mainly Acadian French (from main)... She told me she really has a hard time with traditional French, because they are so different.
Can you pinpoint the differences? She really couldn't as a barely even part time speaker.
I find it fascinating.

I can't tell you exactly what are the differences, but since you know the entire history of this little nation i can at least show you a video(skip to 2 min.) where you can listen to some differences and their proper words used.

What is fascinating to me is that they use really ancient words from the France nation that lived before the 17th century. Their language is a mix of old(common from France before the Revolution) french, english and modern quebecois language.

I heard that the french people from middle ages from the ancient continent had more or less this accent. French people had so much anger from the monarchy institution that they even decided to modify the french language and their accent(''standardization'' like contre said) but meanwhile the north american french had keep the ancient language and integrated it to many different forms of this old language. It's just more powerful and attractive from Acadian than any other form of quebec languages/accents.

 

[Arwon]

You guys should check this guy out:


Link to video.

He's American I gather, but for some strange reason the four Scottish accents he does are very accurate, creepily accurate almost. Not often you hear an American doing a decent Scottish accent either, far from ones that good!

His Australian accent is better than most attempts I've heard. The Saffer one sounded excellent though.

 

[Camikaze]

You really think so? The first half was decent, but he made a mess of the rest. "I fight everyday for the cause against the poachers" sounded like it was from Campbelltown.

 

[Leoreth]

That's the thing with the beautiful French language: it's rather hard to imagine someone acting tough while speaking French. As opposed to, say, German.

Fight the cliches of your own language, perpetuate those of others. Well done, Sir.

 

[Veles]

Fight the cliches of your own language, perpetuate those of others. Well done, Sir.

Aw, come on, bro. That was clearly a light-hearted joke. From which an interesting discussion of phonetical quirks of different languages can potentially arise. First, we bring up the stereotypes, then we disprove them.

By the way, I only brought that pic up as an illustration of English-speaking people perception of German language. To me it doen't sound especially harsh, quite frankly. Fun fact is that 'schmetter' in 'schmetterling', comes from Slavic word smetana (sourcream).

 

[Lillefix]

So the Czech composer is called sour cream.

 

[Veles]

Yep. And Czech religious reformer Jan Hus is called 'goose'. And Czech warleader Jan Žižka is called.. um... 'slushy'. And Russian composer of Czech origin Ivan Glinka is called 'clay'. Correct me Winner or Gorakshanat if I'm wrong.

 

[ShahJahanII]

Fairly normal "American" accent, comparing myself to national news anchors.

 

[Winner]

So the Czech composer is called sour cream.

Actually, no.

Smetana just means "cream", and the word itself sounds "sweet" when you hear it. Sour cream would be "(za)kysaná smetana"

Yep. And Czech religious reformer Jan Hus is called 'goose'. And Czech warleader Jan Žižka is called.. um... 'slushy'. And Russian composer of Czech origin Ivan Glinka is called 'clay'. Correct me Winner or Gorakshanat if I'm wrong.

"Hus(a)" is goose, yes, but I have no idea what "žižka" (that's /zhishka/ or some such transliteration nonsense) means. "Hlinka" means literally "little clay", but it's also a name of a hockey player/coach

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Back to accents, it's funny to hear how different the Czech and the Slovak accents are in English. Slovaks sound... well, "Eastern", more Slavic. Czechs just sound weird.