On Sat, 20 Dec 2008 17:05:21 +0100, Donna Evleth
wrote:
>
>
>> From: satan@notinnedmeatdodo.com.au (Mr Q. Z. Diablo)
>> Organization: Unlimited download news at news.astraweb.com
>> Newsgroups: alt.activism.death-penalty,soc.retirement,rec.travel.europe
>> Date: Sun, 21 Dec 2008 00:15:31 +1100
>> Subject: Re: THE WAR IN LYON
>>
>> Donna Evleth wrote:
>>
>>>> I'm sceptical. Can you hear differences in the accent of Russians
>>>> and Bulgarians speaking English? Maybe. But those are different
>>>> languages. What you are saying is that you can hear the difference
>>>> between people whose language is a specific English dialect. And
>>>> then divide it between American and British even though American
>>>> and British might be less different in some cases than American and
>>>> American or British and British. It's certainly an entertaining
>>>> thing to discuss.
>>>
>>> No, I cannot hear differences in the accents of Russians and Bulgarians
>>> because I do not know either of those languages.
>>
>> I can most definitely hear the differences in the accents of Russians
>> and Ukranians speaking English. It is not a big ask. I don't speak
>> Russian at all, either.
>>
>>> It has to be a language I
>>> know, and even then it has to be a dialect of that language I am
>>> particularly familiar with. American English, preferably without a regional
>>> accent such as Southern or Texan, and British English are the only ones I
>>> can do this with.
>>
>> Accents in the English language are incredibly fascinating to me. My
>> wife speaks North American English with Canadian Raising (the "aboot"
>> thing that South Park makes a great deal of fuss about). I speak
>> English with a neutral, middle class Tasmanian accent (which is often
>> considered by the grossly uneducated to be an "English accent").
>> Desmond speaks English with a Scots accent which is somewhere between
>> Glasgow, Edinburgh and nowhere in paritcular, John Rennie sounds a lot
>> more Gine Counties than he ought, Andrew (Cerby) is middle class,
>> neutral Melbourne, Mr Haley (long since departed the group) speaks in an
>> utterly neutral Northern Californian accent and so on and so forth.
>>
>> I love it all. I love the fact that Australia and most of New Zealand
>> has/have non-rhotic accents. I adore the NYC non-rhotic, sneery,
>> barking noise. English is one of the few languages that I speak
>> fluently (I can claim Japanese as a second but that is shaky at best)
>> and I embrace all of its variants. I also pride myself that I can
>> usually tell where people come from based on the noise that they make.
>>
>> I would bet dollars to doughnuts that both you and Earl have pleasantly
>> neutral Californian accents.
>
>Other Americans have often thought that I have a Midwestern accent. Iowa
>seems to be the state most often picked. I have ridden through Iowa on the
>train. That's all. However, my parents were both from the Midwest,
>Illinois, and Earl's parents were, too, Minnesota in the case of his father,
>South Dakota in the case of his mother. I am never too pleased when I am
>stuck with the Midwest label, since it's the region of the US I like the
>least. The country is all too often flat and boring, the food is usually
>terrible, bland and overcooked.
>
>In fact, when we were growing up (1930s and 1940s) there was no real
>Californian accent yet. There weren't enough real Californians. Most
>people already came from somewhere else. You accent tended to be that of
>where else it was they came from.
As hard as I've tried, despite speaking quite fluent Italian from an
early age when the brain is like a sponge among peers, I have never
been able to rid myself of the "upper midwestern twang" common among
those born and raised in Chicago, when I speak English.
Planet Visitor II
http://alt-activism-death-penalty.info/dictionary.html
>Donna Evleth
> |