It's the U.S. Dialect map again.


http://robertspage.com/dialects.html



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 11/23/2017 03:09PM by Dave the Atheist.

I just printed off two copies of the article.

I've paid attention to American dialects almost all of my life (my grandparents, and my parents when they were adolescents, all moved to Southern California...where I was later born, so I grew up with many relatives from different far-flung places who "talked funny" ;) ).

Really good information and insights (including some things I didn't know, including the distant-to-me areas I have had some personal experience with).

Thank you for this, Dave!!!

EDITED TO ADD: My Mom was born and raised (up until her junior year in high school) in Tulsa, Oklahoma---and yet, for all the time I knew her, she spoke exactly, spot-on, Southern California Standard English, which also included the Spanish which is part of Southern California life!!!

Once I began to pay attention to accents and dialects (especially after a particular road trip to Oklahoma, so I could meet my biological grandfather for the first time), I realized that she had been raised from birth to speak in OKLAHOMA-standard English, yet I had never heard her do this...so what was going on???

She told me that when she entered Los Angeles High School (as a junior), she had been embarrassed because of her "Oklahoma accent" (there was at least one teacher, and some students, who had made fun of her, with "Okie" jokes, etc.)---so she took the first opportunity available to learn to speak "Southern California English"...

...a three-day school holiday she devoted totally to learning how to re-speak English, without any trace of her now-vanishing Oklahoma accent.

By the time school started the next school day, she had her new, Southern California, pronunciation down pat.

She said it was very difficult to do, but she was absolutely determined that no one would EVER again make fun of her accent!!!

And that is why I never heard my mother speak in her native Oklahoma accent.



Edited 4 time(s). Last edit at 11/24/2017 04:57AM by Tevai.

Not if I don't have to.

Oh, why can't the English learn to set
A good example to people whose
English is painful to your ears?
The Scotch and the Irish leave you close to tears.
There even are places where English completely disappears.
In America, they haven't used it for years!

"Prof. Henry Higgins," from "Why Can't the English (Learn To Speak)", Alan J. Learner, Lyricist for "My Fair Lady."

I see the NPR middle-class suburban inflection becoming the dominant accent. Most newscasters, actors, and media personalities use it. As Americans relocate and move about the country, a homogenization of our language is taking place. On the other hand, as immigration increases, languages other than English gain a kind of plurality in American homes.

Obligatory Zappa,,,

"I Come From Nowhere"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0qwNgbPE5TA

This dredged up an ancient memory from early childhood, in the Fifties. As little kids in our Southern California neighborhood, we played a game we called "ROD-juhs."

This was derived from the name of Roy Rogers. The villains often seemed to have come from New York, and could not say "Rod-jerrs," as we did. When they said it, it came out as "ROD-juhs."

I guess that was the earliest manifestation of what would become a fascination with languages and linguistics.

catnip Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> This dredged up an ancient memory from early
> childhood, in the Fifties. As little kids in our
> Southern California neighborhood, we played a game
> we called "ROD-juhs."
>
> This was derived from the name of Roy Rogers. The
> villains often seemed to have come from New York,
> and could not say "Rod-jerrs," as we did. When
> they said it, it came out as "ROD-juhs."
>
> I guess that was the earliest manifestation of
> what would become a fascination with languages and
> linguistics.

:D :D :D

When I hit Ricks 51 years ago I met a guy from Oakley, Idaho...and he sounded like he was from W. Virginia and then I met a dude from WV and I'm going...yup!

What sat?

M@t

I'm Pacific southwest. Folks from the east say I have a drawl. High don't know about that.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 11/24/2017 04:39AM by donbagley.

Interesting. I grew up in the orchards of E. Washington. In 1917 there was a labor strike and they brought in train loads of pickers to get the fruit off. Mostly from Arkansas, who stayed there. So I grew up with the Northwest accent, and jargon, with a healthy dose of "ya'lls" and called the state "Warshington". Funny how those little pockets show up.

Also, the Skagit Valley, Cowlitz Valley, and Forks area were settled by folks from the mountains of West Virginia. So they have their own little pockets of linguistic differences.

I grew up in central Indiana. We worshed our clothes, and spoke of the goin-ons in Worshington, D.C. We redded up the kitchin after dinner, and had doughnuts for treats. We weren't big on drinkin pop, and the boys loved to go giggin, bikin, play'n roun an goofin off.

When I first moved to SoCal I was constantly asked what my accent was. I was really surprised at that. I sound just like the people on the news I thought. My inner reaction was, 'Well I know I'm a little gay, but . . . " then someone told me I had the Utah thing in the voice. Had no idea there was a Utah thing. But whatever. I'm good either way or as a combo. Having a good time here.

I spent some years around Minnewegian of NW Minnesota and eastern ND. When Sarah Pailin came on the national political stage, the NW Minnesotans, a generally liberal and low-key group, were chagrined to discover she sounded an awful lot like they did.

Turns out the main group of settlers in Wasilla AK were from NW Minnesota. Oh the shame. :)

I also once met a couple in Sandy, UT, who had what sounded to me like a spot on rural Eastern North Dakota accent, so I asked if they were from there. No, but they had both lived in Oslo, Norway until age 20. So the Dakotasota accent was basically Norwegian

But does this explain the movie “Fargo”?

For most of my life, I have been something of a shape-shifter, when it comes to regional dialects.

After going to Guadalajara (MX) for a summer as an exchange student, my fairly generic Mexican Spanish became distinctly Jaliscan, though I can consciously tone it back down if I am aware that I'm doing this.

The other major linguistic shift in my life came during nearly a decade spent in SE Louisiana, in the 80s. I can do it consciously. I can remember taking a claim by phone from a local, and when I hung up, my co-worker, who sat right behind me, chuckled and said, "Dayum! You're startin' to sound like US, Yankee!" (I think I had not only used the ubiquitous "y'all," but added the possessive form, "y'all's," as in "y'all's house.")

My DH, on the other hand, isn't even aware that he does it. He is bilingual too, and it always makes me smile when I hear his words and articulatory patterns gradually take on the characteristics of whomever he is talking with at the moment.

Here in NM, a LOT of people, even those for whom English is the primary language, have certain Hispanic characteristics to their speech: the classic double-negative (He didn't do nothing!), or "It's over there," (accompanied by a hand wave, used to describe anyplace that isn't "right here.") And of course, the rising and falling tone patterns that are more common to Spanish then to English. I used to fear that people would think DH was making fun of them, but nobody ever has.

In a country as vast as the U.S., I think it is inevitable that our English would vary, from one area to another because of local history or geography.

If merican is the language that is going to 'AXE' me a question? Then, no I don't.

Hey now--don't go nucular on us.

No, eh!

wowbagger Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> No, eh!

:D :D :D

I wrote a paper on Utahnics for a university class in linguistics. I should post it somewhere.

I strive for that perfect Upper-Midwestern Great Lakes dialect in which newscasters used to be tutored, but I fail miserably at it. In reality, I'm somewhere between Rocky Mountain and Pacific Southwestern. My first home was on Moana Street in Laie, HA, but it was a little enclave of the Utah Valley, and parents there fought any pidgin variety of English with a vengeance. Some Latino (learned on my mission and further honed in my California work) finds its way into my language as well.

Dialects are fascinating. It's been suggested that de-emphasis of locally-produced television programming combined with less talk among family members with more time spent in front of screens (even on car trips, many families have videos playing now) is slowly leading to the eradication of local dialects except, for some reason, in urban America.

When my dad taught at BYU-H, a particular linguistics course requirement in a class taught by our next-door neighbor was for members of the class to find and interview native English-speakers they didn't know, to show them pictures of objects and to ask the subjects what words their families used at home to name those objects, and to have subjects read given sentences aloud, noting specific pronunciations. Names and identifying information would be given, and after-the-fact, it would be determined if the class had correctly identified the student's place or places of origin. It was, of course, more complicated with military brats or kids who had otherwise moved a great deal, or even kids with parents who had been raised in very different parts of the country, though articulation tends to be picked up from peers once a kid reaches a critical age. A few kids were unidentified. I remember a girl from the San Fernando Valley who babysat us when our regular nanny was unavailable and my mom was unavailable as well, whose parents and even grandparents had been raised there in the SF Valley, being identified as having come from Iowa or southern Minnesota by the professor himself.

My goal would have been to be linguistically unidentifiable.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 11/26/2017 02:20AM by scmd.

scmd Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------

> I remember a girl from the San Fernando Valley who
> babysat us when our regular nanny was unavailable
> and my mom was unavailable as well, whose parents
> and even grandparents had been raised there in the
> SF Valley, being identified as having come from
> Iowa or southern Minnesota by the professor
> himself.

My paternal grandfather was from southwestern Minnesota, and my paternal grandmother was from just over the state line in South Dakota...and although I was raised in the San Fernando Valley, there are certain words of theirs I still use, and others I still pronounce as they did, that came from each of them. My grandpa was a great storyteller ("The Three Billy Goats Gruff," etc.) and I can still "hear" him telling me those tales.

Tevai Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> scmd Wrote:
> --------------------------------------------------
> -----
>
> > I remember a girl from the San Fernando Valley
> who
> > babysat us when our regular nanny was
> unavailable
> > and my mom was unavailable as well, whose
> parents
> > and even grandparents had been raised there in
> the
> > SF Valley, being identified as having come from
> > Iowa or southern Minnesota by the professor
> > himself.
>
> My paternal grandfather was from southwestern
> Minnesota, and my paternal grandmother was from
> just over the state line in South Dakota...and
> although I was raised in the San Fernando Valley,
> there are certain words of theirs I still use, and
> others I still pronounce as they did, that came
> from each of them. My grandpa was a great
> storyteller ("The Three Billy Goats Gruff," etc.)
> and I can still "hear" him telling me those tales.


You're so fortunate to have those memories of your grandfather, but of course you already know that.

A?

I grew up in the suburbs of Washington DC where everyone seemed to work for the government and were from somewhere else. It was a stew of dialects. So my own dialect is probably a stew as well.