#regional accents

[parkakeet]

I grew up thinking that the way I spoke was normal. the 'correct way' and then I moved, and all the sudden people start correcting the way I talk. 'stop dropping words' 'stop talking lazy' 'I can't understand you when you do that'

except 'talking lazy' is wrong now. I have to say 'speaking lazily'

because apparently it matters, even if you understood me, that I speak the way you speak.

and suddenly I realize that when I talk with my dad and when I talk with the batista at the Cafe. I'm speaking differently.

cause dad says, 'oil needs changed on my car' and I say to my roommate, 'my car's oil needs to be changed'

and I try not to talk lazy cause, talking lazy gets you mocked.

cause apparently you can't understand me if my vowels get a little fuzzy and I say 'it's helling outside' instead of 'it's hailing outside'

I want you to listen to my grandpa speak. because already from him to my dad to me, we speak more like you. but my grandpa still says 'tuesdee' and 'kai-yote' and 'bachry', and I'll understand and understand and understand till he dies.

I'm not putting my damn voice up for debate. understand. or don't fucking talk to me.

[blackswaneuroparedux]

Accent is the soul of language; it gives to it both feeling and truth.

- Jean-Jacques Rousseau

One reason why a couple of my American male work colleagues left America for Europe because they were annoyed by young college educated women dropping their authentic regional accents (some are even melodic to listen to) for this all too pervasive annoying nasal whine. This is not cool. Just super grating on the nerves.

[featherlesswings]

Watching X-Men (2000) for the first time in 10-15 years, and it suddenly occurs to me why it took so long for Actual Cajun Channing Tatum to finally get to play Gambit. In that run of movies they cast an Aussie as a Canadian, a Kiwi as a Mississippian, a Dutch woman as a New Yorker, a Scot as a German…. Seems to me they were confused about how on earth a person with the actual cultural background of the character could possibly pull it off.

[liminalweirdo]

Say what you say and where you're from in the comments. I'm from the east coast of canada and we mostly said, "Do you want a drive?"

[lemonbombsfjl]

💙🌊*Share far and wide to nip this nonsense in the bud.*

They picked on Biden’s stutter! Never again! Enough of this mean-spirited petty bullshit!

WE ALL DO IT. Remember your mom’s ‘phone voice?’ You own speaking voice when you talk to a supervisor or teacher? Not the same voice as when you order a coffee, or talk to a child, or chat with friends.

•psychologytoday.com/us/blog/achieving-health-equity/202012/what-is-code-switching

•en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Code-switching

[racefortheironthrone]

Is the expression "Well I do declare" unique to one particular region of the United States or just a general Southernism?

Well, I would say that it's more a Southeastern expression than a Southern expression and it's specifically associated with the upper class/"genteel" diction and accent. And there's a reason for that, because the phrase really entered into pop culture awareness with...

Specifically, "I do declare" is a catchphrase of Scarlett O'Hara, especially early in the film when she's very much in her Southern Belle debutante flirting mode. She says the line so often that it was used by later films that were satirizing or playing off Gone With the WInd, because those later filmmakers knew their audiences would immediately pick up the reference.

So yes, "I do declare" is an expression I very much associate with upper-class white Southerners from the Atlanta-to-Charleston region.

[secretagentsagainstwhatever]

very serious question

[vaticinatrix]

i could go so many places, some without leaving the u.s., and pull a quincey morris. this knowledge haunts me

i could go into heavy detail and i will. i will go into heavy detail

my folks are from central/southern appalachia, and while i didn’t grow up here myself, i spent summers on my grandparents’ farm and. yknow. learned to talk from my parents. i don’t have a heavy accent, but i sure can play it up (apparently it gets thicker when i talk to my family but still). i don’t typically use hillbilly slang, but i can. which is often hilarious, bc people who aren’t used to appalachian vernacular are fucking bewildered. anyway, if you’re from outside south/central appalachia and have come this far, i have a question:

how does the phrase “fine as frog’s hair, split three ways and stretched a mile” make you feel

[starsinoursystem]

In the Midwest your sentence is just one word okay?

Idunno? One word

Alot? One word

Aswell? One word

What'chadoin? One word

Also fuck G

Doin

Bein

Seein

Feelin

G is just an extra around here

And the vowels are probably optional

Anyway thanks for coming to my ted talk

[how-bout-i-tell-you-anyway]

the way i differentiate between the different countries of the uk is that the irish are country british and the scottish are cowboy irish. tell me i'm wrong

[romanyeva]

This poll is a perfect example of rhoticity in English. Rhotic accents pronounce the 'r' at the ends of words, while non-rhotic accents don't (rhoticity also involves the pronunciation of 'r' in the middle of words too so it's more complicated - but that's not relevant in this example). Rhotic English speaking accents worldwide are the majority, that's why the poll result is a landslide. The only English speaking country that has almost zero rhoticity is Australia - even England retains some regional rhoticity.

There's also the question of vowel merger in the above question. Some non-rhotic regions would pronounce the vowels in 'flaw' and 'floor' differently (for example, some non-rhotic southern U.S. accents where the homophones would be flow/floor). To answer yes in the above poll, would require a non-rhotic regional accent with the hoarse/horse merger AND the caught/court merger, which would make the choice of 'no' in the above poll even more likely.

[parkakeet]

me when another US American attributes t glottalization to their accent specifically, instead of it being an extremely common linguistic phenomenon across American English accents, especially in the west

anyway, regional accents are super cool! do some research on yours to find out what is actually specific to it, and what is not 🥰

[promblums]

Say out loud, "But she has to."

[niceven1]

I love different accents so much

[crusheswhimsandfancies]

I just keep playing Staged on a loop. Hearing David and Michael talking in their natural accents is my emotional support at this point