Posted on 02/28/2007 10:50:51 PM PST by Muentzer2005
It's started. Rising inflection at the end of the sentence. Sometimes several times in a sentence. Very. Short. Staccato. Statements. As yet no use of "like" four or five times in a sentence, but occasionally once or twice.
Meike, once the vocalisation of Laura Ashley prints and the only girl at her inner-London primary school who never dropped any consonant, let alone an aitch, is starting to speak with an American accent. Perhaps not quite an accent, yet, but the rhythm of her speech has changed in a decidedly US direction. The rest can't be far behind.
We have been on "accent watch" ever since we arrived - monitoring our children's utterances for early signs of infestation ...
I caught our son, Joe, using "awesome" last night - without permission or prior consultation - to describe a Matchbox car.
Still, this was an unusual lapse from him. In London, Joe used to like to drop his aitches in grand style but now he has reversed roles with his sister and set himself up as the defender of the old faith.
He continually asks his mother in a worried tone if he's getting an American accent. He wants to go to an English school where he can be taught in English, he says. Quite where he gets this British snobbery from is beyond us.
(Excerpt) Read more at telegraph.co.uk ...
My last girlfiend was from Texas and had a sweet accent. I asked her if she thought the President had an accent. She said no, absolutely not. That made me laugh that she couldn't hear it.
Huh?
Some Bostonians use a glottal stop as well. Of course, that dialect is descended from East Anglia.
I fight it when I notice myself doing it.
In fairness, I think all American accents sound "twangy" to some degree to the Brits.
I can hear the British accents in the Beatles and Stones but not in Dire Straits...for an example.
Language mutates as Dutch in Amsterdam, then transitioning to Flemish as you head south toward Antwerp, then to Walloon (more Frenchlike) as you continue down to Brussels, then gradually transmogrifying into French as you approach Paris. And up in northern Holland, they speak Friesian (which is the most closely related to English)
As posted in another post, personally suspect that almost all American accents/dialects sound twangy to the British ear, just as most British, Australian, New Zealander, and even Irish accents/dialects tend to sound clipped to American ears.
A reference to Eurabia.
Some are super thick when they sing like Herman's Hermits. I must admit I can't hear a British accent in the Beatles. Or Elton John, but then he'll say something like "vodker and tonic".
The British hate it. I grew up in Hong Kong when it was still a British colony, and at those times (not quite 20 years ago) using American English in school was a clear taboo. The culturally myopic English teachers warned us not to speak with an American accent unless we were able to use wholesale American vocabularies in addition - or else face marks deducted in public exams.
The Standard or "broad" American accent is the English spoken in the United States minus some regional characteristics. Examples would be the TV anchors.
It is because the Midwest was (and is still) traditionally the heartland of America. This is the market broadcasters have to aim for. This is why the General American accent in the modern times is more modelled after the Midwest accent.
Co-incidentially before the US became a superpower it was the New England Brahams accent (non-rhotic) that was the most prestigious in the country. Perhaps because it was prevalent before the age of mass media, or because it was closest to the British RP accent (and the British Empire was still the world power at the time)?
LOL Cantonese is my first language, and you are right, it always sounds like people arguing. I know northern Chinese look down upon the language, but they are tolerating it for the time being as Hong Kong is economically developed.
I know deep insider the minds of unification-minded Taiwanese and mainland Chinese, we are "southern barbarians".
My first language is Cantonese, and I asked my grandparents (who don't speak English at all) about how English sounds to their ears. They said it is a bit like people's mouths "yawing" and making a series of sounds.
From the perspective of Australian or New Zealand English American varieties of English do feel different regionally. I think variations on regional level simply does not exist in Australia and is very limited in New Zealand. The English spoken in Melbourne is in general pretty identical to Broome, WA, or between the English spoken in Taranaki and Canterbury.
In Australia, rather than difference in accents according to regions the variation of accents are more due to socio-economic backgrounds (or less-PC wise, class), education, and immigration background. People who have attended prestigious secondary schools will sound more like the British, speaking with a RP accent.
In New Zealand there are slight variations. In the Southland region (around Invercargill) people will speak with a rhotic accent (the only rhotic accent in the country) as the legacy of 19th century Scottish migration. Canterbury seems to be more English RP but this is just my generalization. Auckland tends to have less NZ-specific slangs than Canterbury, and over there in conversations they will use "nope" for "no", while over here in Canterbury people will use the traditional British command tone "nnnnooo" you hear on BBC dramas or the children's show Teletubbies.
So from NZ's perspective, I think most will be able to sense variation between New York and Midwest.
Well cut some slacks to that chaps. ;-) He is British after all, and American English is a subgroup that he only had one day he did in class some years ago, along with Canadian English.
To answer your question "How does the American English (standard) accent sound to other English users? Does it sound drawly (suspect so, as theirs--minus the Canadians--tend to sound clipped)?" properly, what I have gathered from my native-born Kiwi colleagues at work and brothers in church is that the generic American way of speaking English sounds like nasal disease to them, not much variation in tones, speak too slowly a bit like how dumbfounded clueless people respond when asked questions they don't understand, and lack subleties in language. (in British/NZ varieties, "You're good" could mean very opposite things depending on emphasis. Americans generally lack this means of saying things)
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.