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Note: Most of this text was moved in 2003 to Talk:Non-native pronunciations of English. Graham 87 18:06, 14 May 2023 (UTC)
I removed a statement from the Mandarin section:
Because it is false. I've never heard Mandarin speakers confuse these. In fact, Mandarin grammar prevents such confusion, because you have to know whether a noun is a count noun or not in certain contexts, more so than in English. (Refer to the measure word and noun classifier articles for more information on the affected area of Mandarin grammar.) That same feature should make the choice between "many" and "much" obvious for a Mandarin speaker, though it is true that there is no direct translation for the latter term - it's not needed because the presence or absence of a noun classifier signals the same thing as the much/many contrast in English.
pgdudda 01:48 Jan 8, 2003 (UTC)
I don't see a problem there: paper is uncountable, but sheets is countable. --
Tarquin 00:27 Jan 9, 2003 (UTC)
This is a rather English-language-centric article. More accurate would be the title "How to tell the origin of an accent in the English language."
Gritchka comments:
I am simply commenting rather than changing it because it's a very vague grab-bag at the moment, and I'm not sure whether it's useful without more solid detail.
2002.03.28: Thank you, Gritchka. You are quite accurate in all of these comments. I just looked in here before making changes to the original article in case discussion shed light on why certain things weren't listed. I'll go make my changes now -- feel free to comment! (Intended changes are to New Zealand and that Indian retroflex thing. More if I think of good ways to address them.) -- pgdudda
I didn't just edit the article; what happened? - PierreAbbat
Gritchka, don't be so shy. If you have something to add, add it. If it will help identify an accent, add it.
---
Added following to East Asian accents:
I have heard this frequently in Thai people, and in Hong Kong Chinese. I suspect that it is common amongst East Asian tonal languages, but others should review this. -- Chris Q 09:13 Jan 9, 2003 (UTC)
Russians might not distinguish between /x/ (Jose) and /h/ (house) when speaking English, but was /x/ considered to be an English phoneme to begin with? I pronounce San Jose, as in the city in California, as /s&n,hou'zei/, but then again I've never heard what a person from there has to say about that.
Hey, I'm an American teaching English to Mandarin speakers in Beijing and there are a few things that I've noticed. First, Mandarin chinese does not have the same 'h' as English. Rather, they have some something resembling /x/; as a result, Mandarin speakers tend to pronounce 'h' as /x/, the former sound being very hard for them. Those that are aware of the difference will often overcompensate and not pronounce the h at all, or much too softly. Secondly -- and this is most prevalent in the north where the Mandarin is very pure -- they have a tendancy to overly retroflex consonants, especially sh, zh and ch (pinyin) for sh, j and ch (english), respectively. Then, the closely related phenomenon of erhua, whereby the speaker gives the syllable's vowel a retroflex quality, sometimes audible as an 'r' to an English speaker (as in yi dianr) and sometimes not (as in dour, depending on the speaker) all significantly alter the vowel quality of the word they are pronouncing. When a Mandarin speaker does this in English, it creates a very bizarre pronunciation that can generally be corrected by instructing the Mandarin speaker to flatten his or her tongue. The non-retroflex x (pinyin) is pronounced almost as an s (but without the voiced quality it gives the following vowel) in some areas and as a result many Mandarin speakers attempting to pronounce 'sh' (in which the tongue is not retroflex) will end up pronouncing a sound that is, to an English speaker, indistinguishable from an s. This s/sh confusion is widespread and makes poor speakers of English very hard to understand. It is not a problem so much with people in the south of China and in Taiwan who generally have a very hard time pronouncing the retroflex consonants of Mandarin properly anyway.
Then, there are some grammatical issues that carry over. First of all, the declarative 'there is' is the same as 'have' (you3) in Mandarin, used without a subject. So it's quite common to hear a Mandarin speaker say 'over there have one' (nei bianr you yi ge) instead of the somewhat more correct 'there is one over there'. This brings up the subject of locative placement. The locative in English tends to be placed at the end of a clause unless it is meant to have focus; in Mandarin it is generally placed between the subject and the verb. This results in very bizarre sounding sentences.
One of the biggest differences that carries over is the yes/no problem. Chinese (and Japanese too) do not actually have words for yes and no. Japanese has hai/iie, but these do not express the same meaning as yes/no in one important and detectable sense: they actually mean affirmative/negative or alternatively correct/incorrect. The Chinese case is more complex but when speaking English this same confusion arises: when answering a negative question in English, we use 'no' to mean that we agree with the (negative) statement. For example, "You're not going to school today, are you?" is affirmed with "no", as in "No, I'm not." whereas the Japanese and Chinese would say "hai" or "dui", respectively. So in translation -- and this is an often tell-tale sign because the habit is incredibly hard to break -- a Chinese english speaker would answer the question with "yes" if he means in fact that he is not going to school. This leads to confusion.
In the preceding paragraph I mentioned the Chinese yes/no case being complex and this too affects their speech. By complex I mean that the Chinese don't actually have words that approximate yes and no at all. With the Japanese, hai and iie are used with approximately the same frequency as yes or no, with the small difference wrt negative questions mentioned above, and so they can be thought of as near translations for yes and no. Chinese, on the other hand, simply has no adequate translation for these words. This is because the Chinese generally repeat the predicate of the question if they mean to affirm it, and negate the predicate if they mean to negate it. So in the preceding example, "You're not going to school today?", I might say, "Ni jin tian bu shang ke ma?" to which a Mandarin speaker would reply "shang (ke)" if he means he will, and "bu shang (ke)" if he means he won't. So in English he might say "go" or "not go".
Misuse of articles was mentioned in the article. One tell-tale sign of a Mandarin speaker is his preference for the numeral 'one' to the indefinite article. This is because, in certain situations, Mandarin asserts the indefiniteness of a noun by using 'yi + measure' before a noun. This is hardly strange, most romance languages do this too, but somehow Mandarin speakers consistantly use one when they mean a, especially in the accusative.
Ok actually I could go on all day, and probably some of this is too detailed to be of use in the article, but I figure maybe you could get some use out of it.
Alexander Poquet (atpoquet AT csbd DOT org)
Some have speculated that U.K. accents such as British Received Pronunciation are the result of the U.K. having a high rate of respiratory system diseases such as asthma or rhinitis, making them difficult for non-native U.K. speakers to mimic - can anyone verify this? -- Zoe
I'm with Tannin. The statement is true (I've found a couple of uncited refs), but not noteworthy. -- mib 04:06 May 7, 2003 (UTC)
Dude you totally forgot the california surfer accent.serously you're wierd...:)
30aug02:
i'm not a linguist, but i know a dialect when i hear 1;-) pittsburgh & environs have a distinct 1; let me give some examples:
airdrummer@wheel.org
These are all examples of accent differences not dialect differences. -- Derek Ross
Except for creek. That's due to some ME dialects borrowing ON kriki as crike and others as creke.
Ttk371 ( talk) 04:56, 11 January 2012 (UTC) I am surprised the proper distinction between accents and dialects is lacking in this article. Accents belong to non-native speakers; dialects are geographical or social variations among the native speakers.
This article seems to have been written from a US point of view - there is a list of 'general' characteristics for people from the UK, but not a similar one for Americans. I think that it would be good to add such a category. Unfortunately I'm unable to do so myself. Andre Engels 14:31 Sep 21, 2002 (UTC)
...accent from the film Fargo.
Um, perhaps in the English language, but hardly true of all countries? Are there fewer accents of Russian in Russia, fewer accents of Spanish in Spain, etc.? -- Zoe
I've only heard "naht" around Chicago...naht on the west coast, or even Nebraska. Hence I narrowed the "Midwest and West Coast" to "Midwest (Illinois, Minnesota, Wisconsin)". This accent can probably also be found in Iowa, North Dakota, and South Dakota, but I can't personally vouch for that. It's not prevalent in Nebraska, Colorado, Wyoming, or Montana, as I recall from living in or visiting many of these states, and definitely not prevalent in Washington, Oregon or Idaho. As it turns out, the generic American accent of television anchors is deliberately a Nebraska-ish accent, if what I'm told is true - RobLa 01:52 Dec 15, 2002 (UTC)
Speaking of Midwest America, I live in Illinois ( Crawford County, to be exact), and, despite what this article says, most people here in southeastern Illinois (and southwestern Indiana as well) don't pronounce "roof", "book", and "root" with the same vowel. "Roof" (pronunciations in IPA, I'm new to IPA, so sorry if I'm a bit off) (/ru:f/) and "root" (/ru:t/) have the same vowel, but "book" (/bʊk/) doesn't. However, my grandfather pronounces "Bush" as /bu:ʃ/ and "fish" as /fi:ʃ/, though most younger people use the Standard Midwestern/General American accent, so I don't know if it has to do with age, or if it's a regional thing. -- Evice 07:09, Dec 20, 2004 (UTC)
Accents do vary more in the places where the language originated. This is a well-documented phenomenon which can be used by archeologists to trace the movements of peoples back to their ancestral homes; alas, the proper term for it escapes me at the moment.
Also, I just corrected some mistakes in the Australan section - Oz and NZ accents are very different: instantly recognisable to a native born Australian or New Zealander. I'd imagine that (e.g.) a Canadian or a Californian would notice, but don't know for sure. New Zealand accents can be tricky, as they seem to vary more with social class (working class NZ is similar in some ways to outback Oz, but still has the distinctive "i"s and "e"s of an educated NZ accent), and also as many NZers spend a few years working in Oz and wind up speaking with a mixture of the two accents. As a native-born Australian, I was astonished to see Peter Garret (until last week, the lead singer of Midnight Oil) cited as having a "thick accent"! Not a good example. Note that many Australians who are prominent overseas do not have typical Oz accents - the golfer Greg Norman, for example has a heavy American overlay, and no-one would know from press baron Rupert Murdoch's (News Corp, London Times, Fox & etc) accent that he was born in Melbourne. Tannin
While Australia is a close neighbour I believe it is wrong to say that a sufficient majority of NZers work in Oz and return with affected accents to change our national accent as a whole, while this may have been true in the past I feel that a greater influence on our accent is the media we are exposed to. NZ Television has only just, for the most part, gotten off the ground (up until a few years ago our news broadcasters still spoke "BBC English") the majority of our television is sourced from the US with small proportions from the UK, Australia and NZ. This has had, and will continue to have, a tremendous effect on our accent. Another aspect to consider is that a growing proportion of NZ's population is immigrating from overseas. Because NZ has a relatively small population it's accent can easily be influenced by the number of migrants from Australia & the UK and increasingly Asia & the Pacific Islands 219.89.250.11 ( talk) 12:27, 4 February 2011 (UTC)
Just added IPA for the SAMPA, but there was one vowel that doesn't seem to be SAMPA at all - [o:] in the description of gone. After reading it again I realised that I have no idea what Kesuari was getting at here. Anyone like to hazard a guess? Moilleadóir 05:41, 7 Dec 2004 (UTC)
Tchoosday is not the only pronunciation in Australia; Tyoosday exists as well - I would say only Toosday is excluded LE ✆ N 02:33, 22 November 2006 (UTC)
I found the comments on the lack of aspiration of certain letters interesting. As a young lad I grew up in the Bay of Islands (NZ). For me as a young person the "h" was usually silent. Human, was pronounced uman, Holy as oly etc. Later I purposely made the aspirated h as part of my speech. As a young man I did find the regional differences interesting. Wellington has somewhat of a "posh" sound to the rural ear, and my own accent sounds rather broad in the lower north island, but perfectly at home in the Bay. Americanisms are becoming popular with the young however, yesterday a young man was talking about gas, I thought air, oxygen, nitrogen or bodily emission; he meant petrol. Tony.wallace.nz ( talk) 09:25, 22 February 2012 (UTC)
I'm a North Carolinian now, but grew up in California and Ohio. My parents came from France and El Salvador. I work with computers and sometimes talk about routers, which I pronounce with the vowel of "boot". Everybody else around here calls them "routers", rhyming with "pouters". To me that's a woodworking tool. It routs. A network router routes. I also rhyme "root" with "boot", but I've heard of pronouncing it to rhyme with "foot". This sometimes causes confusion when I tell someone to run route as root. They su route or run /sbin/root. Do I say "route" because I'm from California and Ohio, or because my second native language is French? - phma
not true - i'm a west australian, and everyone i know pronounces 'route' and 'root' the same way. 'root' can be a rude word, but it also relates to the below-ground parts of a tree, and is pronounced with the 'oo' in this case also :o) locally 'route' pronounced with an 'ow' sound would be recognised as belonging to an american accent.
Yes it is true. Rooting is a local rude word. I use router (as like rooter) because I am a stirrer and like to poke fun at peoples prudishness. After causing a stir, in which they say it sounds rude, I then remind them that local pronunciation of route is like (root), and a router routes things so it should be pronounced as rooter, and to stop sounding like Americans. They roll their eyes and keep calling it a router (as in pouter). All good fun. By the way the other reason that saying router as rooter is unpopular, is that rooted is a adjective to describe a piece of equipment that is unserviceable. No one would like a rooter to root (that is break/destroy) the network. Tony.wallace.nz ( talk) 09:34, 22 February 2012 (UTC)
How "A Boot" not having that silly Canadian comment. I've talked to all my friends and relatives in Ontario, nobody says it that way. Only "Newfies" (from Newfoundland) say it that way, and that only is like 0.5% of our population.
Something between "a boat" and "a boot" accurately reflects the Canadian pronunciation, as heard in Tom Brokaw's speech, to this American. Your opinion will probably vary along with your accent.
I've heard Ontarians complain about this before. Perhaps because they seem to be from one of the few provinces which doesn't say "aboat". It's certainly common in Alberta and BC but I've never heard anyone say it in Ontario or NS. Perhaps it has something to do with Scottish influence. Scots replace most 'ou' sounds with 'oo' sounds -- "There's a moose loose aboot this hoose", etc. -- Derek Ross | Talk 23:50, 2004 Nov 9 (UTC)
I disagree, I've lived in Alberta nearly my whole life (with a brief 4 year stint in Saskatchewan), and have never heard a single person pronounce "about" as "aboot". Except of course for the Newfies in Fort Mac.
Also is there some reason that their is no mention of the fact that Canadian Aboriginal peoples have their own distinct accent? It seem odd especially since there is probably enough material about it to have it own page. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 142.161.48.156 ( talk) 07:59, 25 November 2009 (UTC)
Something that bothered me in the article... Sometimes the accent is compared against "native English speakers", but the complete list includes different accents in the United States and England, for some groups who ARE native speakers. I wasn't sure what the best way to correct this would be. -- cprompt
-- That's all well and good... but how does a Bostonian get "fayalam" from "Fire alarm"?
--- 'Faya Alam' I'm sure you figured it out but I only bothered to put it in because I do the same thing, joining words when they have the same letter for some reason. It really makes me think that so many accents have been popularised that I've been accused of having every accent across the country. My native accent is the Washington, DC accent which I've gotten past for the most part. I don't feel confident adding to an article but if its of any relevance we change words like "everybody" to "ur-reebai". -- Ahmed Stephens 12:57, 16 Nov 2004 (UTC)
Hmm, interesting article, but horribly incomplete. I think it might be more useful to have separate articles for each country. This article doesn't even begin to touch on all the available American accents (Long Island, Texan, Californian). Also, even though this article is supposed to be about accents, it contains many regional vocabulary and grammatical constructs, which I don't necessarily think of as part of the accent, and it is inconsistent in its presentation of these words/constructs; if the Canadian 'eh' should be included, so should the commonly used Scottish phrase, "I dinnae can", the Californian "hella", or the Bostonian "wicked". Basically, I'm arguing for a greater subdivision of this article, both by region and category, i.e. "accent", "grammar", and "vocabulary". Any ideas? - DropDeadGorgias
"Goin' up the mo'-urrway Sat-dee cos it's more be'-ur" (trans. "I'm going to use the motorway on Saturday since it represents an optimally efficient choice of routes").
This is the old joke of translating casual dialect into very formal english, to make the differnece seem more extreme. Will everyone understand or should we put in the direct translation: "Going up the motorway Saturday [be]cause it's more better"? Andy G 00:17 27 Jun 2003 (UTC)
Done. But I've kept "more" because I'm normalising only the words, not the deliberately bad grammar. Andy G 01:29 27 Jun 2003 (UTC)
Carol never made drop rate art. What does this mean? It's supposed to be the translation into normal English (from USA/African American). I suppose you could say that Jackson Pollock made high-drop-rate art. Andy G 14:30, 8 Aug 2003 (UTC)
South Midlands speech is rhotic. This is diagnostic for Yankees to whom it all sounds "Southern."
If I understand it, this implies that Southern (USA) speech is non-rhotic. Which regions are non-rhotic. I have been to Texas, Western Louisiana and briefly to Oklahoma and they are all rhotic. I was under the impression that all of the US was rhotic! -- Chris Q 15:38, 8 Aug 2003 (UTC)
About Ireland : « "l" is clear wherever it occurs in a word, as in French ».
I'm not sure about the meaning of "clear" here, does is mean that the "l" are not pronouced in French ? If so I'm a bit doubtful since I can't find a single word in which the "l" is not pronounced in French ?
Just a remark
→
SeeSchloß 16:42, 8 Aug 2003 (UTC)
Michael Howard, leader of the Conservative Party in the UK, always seems to use the clear L where most people use the dark L, although his accent is otherwise RP. This has not escaped the notice of cartoonists and impressionists. rossb 11:12, 15 Dec 2004 (UTC)
I agree with lhcoyc about 'clear' and 'dark': in standard modern phonetic jargon (which people ought to use when discussing phonetics!) these are 'palatalised'-to-neutral and 'velarised' versions of the /l/ phoneme respectively. British RP does not strongly palatalise /l/ sounds, but does velarise them after a vowel and before another consonant, as in "bell" or "milk". This gives the "l" a "ol" or "ul" quality, as noted by Tolkien in one of the appendices to "Lord of the Rings" (when describing how elves would have written Modern English". Ulster, Scottish lowland/midland and many American accents use the velarised "dark" /l/ much more widely. Conversely, Welsh and Southern Irish accents use it less. Welsh /l/ tends to be neutral-to-clear even after a vowel and before a consonant (like German), while Irish English inherits the habits of Irish Gaelic, which treats palatalised and velarised /l/ as separate phonemes (like Russian).
Michael Howard was born in South Wales of immigrant Romanian-Jewish parents, all of which would tend to make his /l/ sounds less velar than usual in England.
150.203.69.27
05:49, 16 December 2005 (UTC) AGC 16Dec05
As a Southern Irish person I am not so sure that Cavan accents fall into the Ulster accent category. Monaghan and Donegal, yes. But whenever I have heard Cavan people on TV they always sound Southern accent-wise. (Southern Irish)
About Yorkshire : The phrase as written "I were wearing t'red coat" sounds more like "I were wearin't red coat"
I spent the first 28 years of my life in working class sheffield and halifax, and only rarely heard this "t" sound, and then it was usually a form of self celebratory exaggeration, permissable only as a substitute for the definite article at the beginning of a clause ("al mis 'im, t'owd lad"). Mind, i never lived out in rural yorkshire, so i can't speak of what passes for a yorkshire dialect out there beyond saying that it is often very much stronger than that heard in urban yorkshire.
jonathan riley
This article was in serious want of section headings, which I have added. I separated Scotland & Wales from the UK section and renamed the UK section to England, since the history and Gaelic underpinnnings of Scotland & Wales make them distinct from England, in terms of language and culture. I also added mention of the late, great Mid-Atlantic accent formerly used by actors & announcers in Canada and the USA, since it is a now virtually extinct but once very distinctive English accent. -- Sewing 18:53, 3 Oct 2003 (UTC)
The characteristics listed for the Brooklyn accent seem to me to be found throughout New York City and environs (e.g. Nassau and Suffolk Counties to the east, Westchester County, parts of New Jersey). This is borne out by the examples: Groucho Marx never lived in Brooklyn. Lenny Bruce, who grew up in Nassau County, had roughly the same accent Brooklynite Woody Allen does. -- Calieber 19:00, 23 Oct 2003 (UTC)
What is the difference between London and Cockney? 193.131.186.150 13:23, 12 Nov 2003 (UTC)
Cockney is a very specific London accent that is only spoken by a small part of the London population. Americans often imagine that they can speak in a Cockney accent -- Dick van Dyke's attempt at this in Mary Poppins is still a cause of hilarity in London decades afterwards.
Londoners speak in a wide range of accents, ranging from RP and middle-class "Home Counties" English to a wide variety of ethnic accents (Greek, Turkish, Jamaican, black British, Indian, Pakistani, Chinese, Vietnamese...) together with a mix of "Estuary English", Cockney, and other working-class accents. As with other large places like New York, districts like Hackney and Islington can have their own accents. They all blur into one another, with people picking up faint tinges of one another's accents. Somewhere in all that mix is the "London accent": it's more of a cloud of accents than a single clear note.
-- The Anome 13:34, 12 Nov 2003 (UTC)
The section on Estuary English is very POV. Whoever wrote it is trying to stating that such speakers don't understand grammar whereas it's quite clear that the writer doesn't understand it either.
For instance there is no "subjunctive tense" in English. There is a "subjunctive mood". And it's not completely lost since even in the writer's illustration a single past form (rather than the plural past form) is being used which is never used in a non-subjunctive mood in the present. A complete loss would be "I wouldn't do that if I am you". — and nobody would ever say that. In any case this development in the English subjunctive is present in just about every dialect that I'm exposed to - not just Estuary English.
Other loaded POV words which need to go are "mangle" and "smashed". I also find the "pronunciation spelling" used to be offensive as well as vague and shows the writer's ignorance. Even a simple phonetic transcription would be much better.
— Hippietrail 01:31, 31 Mar 2004 (UTC)
Ever since I first saw it I've not been happy with the estuary English stuff on the wikipedia. I'm not sure I accept the existence of it anyway. When it comes to Essex I think they're just trying to deny that there is such a thing. There is, I'm from Essex and we have our own accent and it's just as legitimate as anyone else's, but Geordies, Glaswegians etc., are all allowed their regional dialects and accents (and they even get them called falsely a seperate language), but Essex people are not. I don't find that people from Kent or London speak the same as people from Essex i.e. have Essex accents.
"Home Counties Estuary English (see below) is extremely prevalent in the Home Counties, ...Southern and Western Home Counties (i.e. Surrey, Hampshire, Sussex, Kent, Buckinghamshire) tend to adopt a slightly "posh" (RP) accent. Essex in general uses Estuary English;" They don't, they just speak with an Esssex accent and use Essex dialect words sometimes. The wikipedia is in general anti-British, anti-English and it doesn't suprise me to then find the anti-Essex attitude on here as well. ...this is in fact where it originated. Northern Home Counties (e.g. Herts) is more akin to the West Country rural accent, but with dropped 'h's being common. " WikiUser 19:51, 27 Dec 2004 (UTC)
I am not sure whether these are issues of accent or dialectal pronunciation. Do any of these occur in other regions? Pædia | talk 05:36, 2004 May 2 (UTC)
I moved this page from Distinguishing accents of English to Regional accents of English speakers to disambiguate its meaning. The prior title was ambiguous since it could have meant:
A feature of Scottish English is the replacement of the "ow" sound with "oo" (cow -> coo, now -> noo).
I've done a fairly major rewrite of the Scottish section, trying to focus on the Scottish-English accent rather than the Scots Language
user: adambisset 9th October 2004 12:00
Diachronically speaking, Scottish English preserves the earlier 'oo' sound, which became 'ow' south of the Humber: for example OE 'tun' (long vowel) became Modern English 'town'. Snugglepuss ( talk) 22:32, 10 January 2020 (UTC)
The pronunciation of the word loch involves a sound that is heard in German but not south of the border in the UK. The English (or American) would simply say a sound like "lock". The Scots therefore have an extra consonant.
That could be a Gaelic thing. The Irish pronounce loch (or lough) the same way. Liverpool has a large Irish population so maybe that's where the gutteral, "soften" c comes from. Afn
Scouse's [x] sound is probably not related to the Gaelic sound; it's an allophone of /k/ in non-initial position, and I don't think most speakers would recognise it as a separate sound. It's part of a general weakening of stops that happens in the accent. 92.4.7.71 ( talk) 18:01, 31 August 2010 (UTC)
This whole set of sections is very wanting, example:
I don't know enough to rewrite it at present, but could we work at it? Dainamo 09:37, 31 Oct 2004 (UTC)
For the purpose of accents, as opposed to dialects, would the page not be far more useful if it included SAMPA tables for each accent? ( GCarty 20:46, 15 Nov 2004 (UTC))
I changed
to
- There are many Yorkshire accents and it is not true to say that they all rhyme "owt" with "note". In any case it depends how you pronounce "note"! "Bevvy" is not exclusive to Yorkshire. Comments on Lancashire belong in the Lancashire section. Paul Tracy
Hey everyone:
I've lived in Birmingham for nearly twenty-five years, as a writer. Despite talking with thousands of people throughout my lifetime, I have never heard anyone but two or three old men use 'bin' or 'bay.' Ai and er are used for aren't and are. Another recent phenomenon is the use of 'was' and 'wasn't' for 'were' and 'were not', but 'weren't' for what would be in standard English 'was not'.
I'm from Alaska, and I was curious about my own accent (Southern Alaskan, not Native Alaskan), and I can't find anything anywhere. :( Maybe someone here knows what an Alaskan accent sounds like? (Maybe it's pretty weak, I dunno...) If not, covering Native Alaskan accents might be a fun addition. <shrug>
I'm from Southeastern Alaska. Now I live in Anchorage. Whenever I go to visit relatives in Montana and Idaho they tell me that I have an accent that sounds like a cross between a British Columbian Canadian (roll the "r" a teensy bit long and say "Eh?" at the end of sentences)... and a Montanan (use colloquial interjections like "You Betcha," "Darn Tootin'," and "Durn it all!").
They also tell me I speak rather slowly and in a measured way. I attribute this aspect of my Alaskan accent to having lived in a predominantly native village for over 20 years. We just weren't in a hurry to say everything, I guess! :)----
The Florida section looks dubious to me. I can't find any information that indicates that 40% of all southern Florida residents are native New Yorkers. However, since I've never even been to Florida and live on the other side of the continent, I'm not in a position to change it significantly. Anyone from Florida care to comment? Kukuman 01:52, 2 Mar 2005 (UTC)
If you want to research the link between New York City and Florida, you should look into the Jewish emigration from Europe post WWII. The holocaust and the war made New York City the home of the largest population of Jews in the world for decades. When the survivor population aged to retirement,-- i believe in the 70's for the majority-- there was a massive migration to Florida. Florida, is afterall the retirement capital of the country. Because of this, New York no longer houses the largest jewish population, and a large portion of Florida's population is Jewish, New Yorker. Hence that certain strain of floridian accent that's suspiciously similar to Jewish New Yorker. (Mary Bluestocking, 20, Nov. 2005)
I live in Florida, although I am a transplant from Philadelphia. I think most people here are transplants, and there are a wide variety of accents, everything from New York to Red Neck to Cuban... Not sure any of them are unique to Florida. Tadpole256 ( talk) 00:10, 15 April 2011 (UTC)
It seems to me this page is in dire need of cleanup. It's also way too long. If no one objects, I'm going to start moving details of individual accents to the articles on those accents, and just have short précis here of the accents discussed elsewhere. -- Angr 08:06, 3 Mar 2005 (UTC)
Okay, I've done it. I've moved a lot of content to English English, Welsh English, Scottish English, Hiberno-English, Canadian English, American English, and Australian English. I have actually deleted very little, just things that were made redundant by the move, and vague impressionistic statements like "it's a very soft accent" which are unencyclopedic. -- Angr 17:37, 5 Mar 2005 (UTC)
Is the Quebec entry under Canadian refering to francophones? The anglos certainly speak the generic "western canadian" accent that characterises the English of Ontario & Provinces west (& the territories?). Well there are some nonuniformities across this accent, Quebec Anglophones speak with this accent, and the article creates a deceiving impression the way its set up now that the Quebec English accent is somehow different from the usual variation level - but it isn't. WilyD 15:13, 14 March 2006 (UTC)
The General American, aka "non accent" is said to be from "Iowa and adjacent parts of Nebraska, and Illinois". The Berkshires region and/or Western Mass also has a "non accent". I haven't spoken with any one from those locations personally but there is a local radio personality who is from Iowa and doesn't have any kind of discernable accent compared. I can only assume some how Western Mass has escaped the (horrid) accents of both Boston and Worchester. Is it possible that there are other "pockets" of the General American accent in the US besides the ones mentioned in the article?
I am not a linguist (hell i'm not even 18 ;)) so i would like to know the thoughts of someone who has more experience in these matters. Especially if they for some unknown reason were in the same place talking with someone from Des Moines, Iowa and Springfield, Mass. Which is hopeful thinking at best. izret101 22:46, 12 April 2006 (UTC)
This article would benefit hugely from recordings of the "typical" accents. I know that it's impossible to have a standard speaker of each accent, but even a rough idea would make this article much more comprehensible and lively. CJHung 23:55, 24 June 2006 (UTC)
I don't think the supposed 'Ulster dialect' of English differs significantly from the other dialects in Ireland. Unfortunately I don't enough about linguistics to be sure of this, the only thing I'm sure of is that 'look' and 'luke' are pronounced the same in all of Ireland and, I would assume, in Scotland also. I've deleted this and the au pronounced ow thing. Could someone with linguistic knowledge and a knowledge of Irish accents review this section please? - User:Dalta
The article states:
"Hiberno-English is spoken throughout the Republic of Ireland, except in Counties Donegal, Monaghan and parts of County Cavan, which belong linguistically to Ulster, the province to which the six counties of Northern Ireland belong."
Surely Hiberno-English is, by definition, the type of English spoken in Ireland? The Hiberno-English article seems to think so, and it would be somewhat ludicrous to argue that Irish hasn't affected Northern Irish speech. Isn't Mid-Ulster English a variant of Hiberno-English, as opposed to them being two distinct things?
Also, isn't it rather confusing to be discussing a dialect in an article about accents, as though the two terms were freely interchangeable? People can have different accents, but use the same dialect, or the same accent and different dialects for instance. Martin 19:55, 2 October 2006 (UTC)
I have a query I haven't been able to have answered so far, despite asking linguists at my university: Are 'colonial' English accents influenced at all by Indigenous peoples' accents? For instance, I am Australian and have noticed many accent similarities between Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal English speakers. Obviously some of these similarities come from loanwords used by non-Aboriginal Australians such as 'kangaroo' and 'barramundi', but does this borrowing extend beyond Aboriginal words to English ones? Does the mainstream Australian accent have influences from Aboriginal languages, or are Aboriginal-English accents affected by the ways non-Aboriginal speakers talk? Some examples of the kind of thing I'm thinking of are the widespread substitution of 'd' for 't', as in "gedoudovit" ("get out of it"), the common omission of an 'r' sound, as in "haahdly" ("hardly"), "neeahly" ("nearly"), "paahk" ("park"), etc, and the 'Aboriginalisation' of non-Aborignal words such as 'Nullarbor' (which is actually Latin but is never pronounced that way). It also seems to me that something similar is happening with Maori and non-Maori New Zealand English speakers, and First Nations and non-Indigenous American and Canadian English speakers. The reason I ask this is it seems that large parts of the Australian and New Zealand accents in particular seem quite far removed from their supposed English/Scottish/Irish origins. 130.95.121.91 04:54, 24 November 2006 (UTC) machyak
Would it be possible to get some reliable information into this article about perceptions of the attractiveness of various accents? For example, I think that a considerable number of my fellow Americans find many non-American accents to be attractive. I think this sort of info would be quite interesting. Thanks to anyone who can include reliable and sourced info along these lines. Dave Runger (t)⁄ (c) 08:46, 6 February 2007 (UTC)
The class-based definition is outmoded, and there are no references. The remarkable homogeneity of the accent, despite the vastness of the continent, is not highlighted. Tony 12:53, 14 May 2007 (UTC)
Oh, and will someone please remove the "Good job" banner at the top. This is a pretty bad article. Tony 12:55, 14 May 2007 (UTC)
Coming from New Zealand and having a relatively mild accent I find many similarities between the way I speak and the way most people talked while I was in Melbourne. I Generally found most people's Australian accents in Melbourne to be a lot milder to those in Queensland. Anybody else have any views on this? —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 121.72.245.240 ( talk) 14:43, 14 May 2007 (UTC).
I would be very interested in reading about the accents of India and Liberia. Thank you.
Does anyone kow when Americans started talking like Americans? I'm sure the colonists at Jamestown and Plymouth had the same accent they had back in England. John Harvard probably pronounced his name pronounced his name like an Englishman, not like a Bostonian, ie Havid. Is there a history of English accents anyhwere? 24.39.17.223 14:10, 18 August 2007 (UTC)
Regional accents of English speakers → Regional accents of English. FilipeS 18:37, 3 October 2007 (UTC)
Went i took my linguistics class in college, I saw a video that mention "Oxford accent" as the most respected accent in Britain and its colonies. Is that accent/dialect mentioned anywhere on Wikipedia? -- Voidvector ( talk) 22:44, 27 November 2007 (UTC)
![]() | It is requested that a global map or maps be included in this article to improve its quality. |
A map would probably be helpful. -- Beland ( talk) 02:40, 28 January 2008 (UTC)
The map on the page today of the so-called anglosphere
seems to me much worse than having no map at all. Where is Nigeria? India? - phi 08:50, 22 September 2013 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Ph7five ( talk • contribs)
"The South East England derived Estuary English is now growing in importance as a widespread standard form in the south."
Says who? I think not in the Westcountry. White43 ( talk) 11:03, 26 June 2008 (UTC)
This is unlikely the case, given that the East Anglia existed below the traditional north south divide and Anglian Mercia cut across it. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.177.169.14 ( talk) 17:12, 17 June 2009 (UTC)
Yes, this just seems plain wrong. The two main differences between the north and the south are the 'a' sound in words like 'bath' and the 'u' sound in words like 'cup'. These would have been pronounced identically in the time of the angles and saxons (more or less as northern English pronounces them today) - the south-east has started to pronounce these differently only in the last few hundred years. 86.177.9.126 ( talk) 22:51, 16 January 2010 (UTC)
Hi I typed in English accent and was hoping for an article about the way native english speakers speak foreign languages. Is there an article for that? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 75.164.146.34 ( talk) 05:04, 2 July 2009 (UTC)
This is typical Wikipedia leftist nonsense. The difference between British and American and Australian etc English on the one hand and Pnilippine Indian etc English on the other, is that the latter only speak English as a second language and their English is incorrect. Pamili! Just because Filipinos struggle with English pronunciation does not make that pronunciation correct English. What about Wikipedia's leftwing extremists putting up an article on the Chinese pronunciation of Swahili? Or the Sudanese interpretation of Quechua! Stupid! Stupid! Stupid! Djwebb1969 ( talk) 15:37, 13 July 2009 (UTC)
The article states that:
"Native English speakers in South Africa have an accent that generally resembles British Received pronunciation modified with varying degrees of Germanic inflection (caused by the Afrikaans influence)."
Much as I would like for this to be the case (since I am an Afrikaans mother tongue speaker), I believe it to be untrue. I remember a radio program about linguistics in which a linguist (from a South African university) claimed that it was a common misconception that the South African English pronunciation was influenced by Afrikaans. People apparently draw the conclusion because both pronunciations have many schwa sounds. This property of SA English, according to the linguist, is due to pronunciation that the English settlers' forefathers used in the UK. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Wynand.winterbach ( talk • contribs) 17:20, 26 July 2009 (UTC)
This article has already been tagged as problematic for several years without being subject to any significant improvement. While the entire article mostly reads like an essay or a collection of personal observations, the section on Philippines in particular is blatantly lacking in neutrality. I am suggesting that according to modern interpretations, its content may also not be politically correct, and that the section should be removed from the article until rewritten and WP:RS and WP:V. Rather than WP:BOLD and removing it myself immediately, I am suggesting we should discuss what should be done about it..-- Kudpung ( talk) 12:52, 10 May 2010 (UTC)
Since the tags on the article page and the comments here about neutrality have not been addressed, I have begun a cleanup with the removal of this edit frpn the Phillipine section. Reason: WP:COPYVIO of Teaching English As A Second Language : A New by Vyas/patel (eds), Publisher PHI Learning Pvt. Ltd., ISBN 8120339339, 9788120339330. Source: Google Books. -- Kudpung ( talk) 01:36, 13 March 2011 (UTC)
I have noticed that the stereotypical pronunciation for "t" when Indians, Pakistanis etc. speak English is somewhere in between the standard English "t" and "d". How is this described on Wikipedia? I couldn't find it in any article I looked in. (For an example, just watch things like The Simpsons, and listen to Apu say things like "Two ninety-nine" - it's almost a "d" but not quite.) Avengah ( talk) 22:11, 18 March 2011 (UTC)
Here I leave the text that uses this term. I have no idea what a brrr is.
The Corkonian accent has a unique lyrical intonation. Every sentence typically ends in the trademark elongated tail-off on the last word. In Cork heavier emphasis yet is put on the brrr sound to the letter R.
Similar to the Cork accent but without the same unmistakable intonation, Kerry puts even heavier emphasis on the brrr sound to the letter R. For example: the word Forty. Throughout the south this word is pronounced whereby the r exhibits the typified Irish brrr. In Kerry however (especially in rural areas) the roll on the r is enforced with vibrations from the tongue (not unlike Scottish here). "Are you?" becomes a co-joined "A-rrou?" single tongue flutter (esp. in rural areas). This extra emphasis on R also seen in varying measures through parts of West Limerick and West Cork in closer proximity to Kerry. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 190.161.180.214 ( talk) 18:11, 9 June 2011 (UTC)
In the England section, many links have been redirected to the dialect page rather than the geographical region page, which typically is primarily focused on a modern administrative division not always co-extensive with traditional accent/dialect areas. This may or may not be considered an improvement. My thinking is that people will come to this page to find out about the accents/dialects rather than the geographical region itself. Govynn ( talk) 19:35, 15 June 2011 (UTC)
At least on the ones I've grown up with, mirror has one syllable and rhymes with near, but not with nearer. 71.191.233.120 ( talk) 00:22, 26 December 2011 (UTC)
The observation that 'nearer' and 'mirror' rhyme strikes me as a natural and correct one. I grew up in Chicago, St. Louis, central Colorado, and southwest Michigan, and have spent years also living and working in central and northern Indiana. I have also heard in southwest Michigan some people on rare occasions pronounce mirror as "meer", but more often--when it does not rhyme exactly with 'nearer'--it sounds somewhere in between, due to how quickly it's spoken, so that the first syllable is much stronger and the second is subtle. This is not the case with 'nearer', however, where the second syllable is more obvious than that of 'mirror'. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Langley js ( talk • contribs) 14:33, 5 February 2012 (UTC)
Where is the Scotland section? The Britain section has subsections for England and Wales, with links to the main pages for each, but nothing for Scotland. Am I missing something, here? The only mentions I can find of the Scottish accent are under the sections for Ireland and New Zealand. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 109.246.242.180 ( talk) 14:40, 9 January 2012 (UTC)
Should someone who has the time add some links from IDEA to the pages of English dialects and accents. — Preceding unsigned comment added by KennedyBroseguini ( talk • contribs) 07:25, 25 June 2012 (UTC)
I'm American and have noticed similarities between Australian and South African accents of people I've encountered. What is that? How did it happen? I'd like to see some explanation in the top of the "Southern hemisphere" section. -- ke4roh ( talk) 02:52, 12 August 2012 (UTC)
This is a glaring omission, English being one of the official languages of India and widely spoken in that subcontinent. Had I the knowledge (and time) I'd add it myself. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Aldiboronti ( talk • contribs) 18:33, 16 February 2013 (UTC)
This was exactly the question I was wondering when I switched to the Talk page. 108.18.45.129 ( talk) 22:15, 17 February 2013 (UTC)
The UK accents in parts of the north are so different that you can place someones origin to within a couple of square miles if they lived there for the first deade of life. Rather than trying to list places that have distinct accents (which would be very long) it would be better to just describe how diverse the accents are. The only first hand example i can give is of my own home region in [historic] lancashire. In the bolton area, locals can discern bolton and wigan (listed), but also Chorley, Horwich, Blackrod, Bury, Westhoughton and so on. These are all in a 13 mile radius (bar Chorley)!! It is easier for the article to be representative by describing the density of distinct accents rather than naming places. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 80.176.89.230 ( talk) 01:12, 19 July 2013 (UTC)
Firstly, I would say that unless references can be provided, most of the content of this page should be deleted.
Secondly, the subject of "accents" is a technical one; information should be - as is very well presented in the North America section - presenting the phonetics of prononciation. The worst part is the endless list of British places without any indication to the reading audience as to how these accents actually sound.
This is an encyclopedia for a world readership: someone in India doesn't need to know that Bolton is different from Wigan - they need to know that the Queen speaks differently to most people, that diphthongs are more prevalent in the south of th UK and flat vowels in the north. It needs to draw on studies that map accent areas [http://www.city-data.com/forum/attachments/general-u-s/46654d1249711003-accent-map-accents-america.jpg like this one] (although I know that there is no cited reference to it ... but there must be some out there). A good example of such a page is General American.
So, come on everyone - let's have some real content, and I'm sure we'll improve this article in no time! Francis Hannaway ( talk) 09:34, 29 August 2013 (UTC)
Can someone rearrange accents - for Ireland - should be heading, then split between Northern and Southern Ireland. Otherwise, having Ulster just under Northern Ireland does not make sense. Where should the Donegal accent sit - Southern or Northern Ireland?? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.167.122.49 ( talk) 16:05, 19 June 2015 (UTC)
Can someone add in a section on the Thames/Medway accent, which is the origin of the Australian accent. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.167.122.49 ( talk) 16:07, 19 June 2015 (UTC)
Can someone also add in a section about the origins and links between the Irish Cork accent and modern Jamaican. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.167.122.49 ( talk) 16:18, 19 June 2015 (UTC)
Navarchy and I have been disagreeing on whether United States standard English is rhotic or not. Navarchy wants the table to say it is both rhotic and non-rhotic, but I want it to say US English is rhotic, because the current standard accent, General American, is rhotic.
Navarchy, could you explain your reasoning? You posted a link about regional accents, but you also said something about the standard US accent having changed over the past century. I'm not sure what you mean: are you trying to say that some regional US accents are non-rhotic, or that the standard US English used to be non-rhotic but now is rhotic? I'm a little confused. — Eru· tuon 20:06, 29 August 2015 (UTC)
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