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 ...
"Interesting-as opposed to the UK or Japan where the standard accent is that of the largest city."
I don't really think Received Prouniciations is really London-based. London has Cockney accent which is working class and up until 15 years ago frowned upon by the polite classes. RP is more modelled on the private "public" school and Oxbridge accents, and these prestigious schools are based outside London, even though they are still in the Home Counties.
Silly article. American's don't have accents. Unless they come from the South. Or Joisey. Or Boston.
Like, gag me with a spoon!
I've found that American Standard English and The Queens English are not all that far apart. They have their accents, we have ours, but they are all variations on the standard. Not that there's anything wrong with that.
That explains a lot. I marvelled at how almost everyone, except for some elderly folk, spoke English in the Netherlands, and fairly American sounding English at that. I didn't understand about the dialects. I suppose all Dutch dialects are derived from German, though I wouldn't say that to a Dutchman to his face.
Now, now... it's obviously in jest. That's the primary difference... the English can laugh at the difference. The French speak broken english and find it superior to the native variety.
Down here in Texas, which is supposed to have a heavy accent, I find that most of the time we talk normally to each other, at least here in the big city of Houston. It's mostly mexicans and country people that have accents they can't shake if they want to.
Everything a Bronxperson says sounds like mawwwwwdlin.
If the British have a glottal stop, you'd have to say the Dutch have a glottal RIP. If you take away the glottal attack and the funny way they spell things, Dutch is quite easy to comprehend.
A friend of mine has a father who is native African and a mother who is Scottish. They moved to the U.S. when she was 3 and became citizens. She speaks pure southern. To listen to her next to her parents with her accent is hilarious. :)
The aussies are the worst about "the rine in spine falls minely on the pline."
When in the mideast I became somewhat self conscious about my muddled American accent since most everyone else was speaking proper Oxford English. Oh well....
It could be - it is sometimes hard to understand what my Kiwi countryfolk colleagues at work are saying, and country Australians will be worse. But my experience with urban Australians is that they speak like the British.
"What's the American Standard?"
If I can remember the information gleened from a college linguistics class, the standard for American English is the Western American Dialect. It's the dialect used in media. Just listen to any nightly news broadcast. No Southern, Brooklyn, or Philly heard there.
Bloody funny, guv'nah!
The French speak broken english and find it superior to the native variety.
And - they complain when we don’t speak perfect Parisian French!
So is English. Especially obvious in words beginning with kn such as knee. In German (Kah-nee)the k is still pronounced but in English (Nee)it is silent.
In addition, I used to work in a prominent building in NYC. They invited many choirs to carol at Christmas for people visiting Santa Claus. Most choirs have very little to no accent. Especially notable, is the lack of accent in childrens choirs from what some consider "The Ghetto."
Appreciated (for this and 64).
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