Regional Accents

rdrr said:
Nothing beats the Boston accent, and no one can seem to reproduce it properly in a movie (I am looking at you Laura Linney). Outside of Matt Damon and Ben Affleck of course.
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Man I have heard so many bad takes on the accents of Jack and Bobby Kennedy that I've lost count of the movies.
 
lizkat said:
Man I have heard so many bad takes on the accents of Jack and Bobby Kennedy that I've lost count of the movies.
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Yeah no one speaks like the Kennedy's, and I am not sure that even the Kennedy's do!

On another note. When I moved to MA from MN back in 1980, I was troubled by not only the accents but the regional use of words. I went to the school office to get directions to my homeroom. They proceeded to tell me that it was right next to the "bub-lah" (bubbler or water fountain). I had visions of bubble machines in my head, when my grandmother would watch Lawrence Welk when I was a wee lad.

Also being from Minnesota we had shakes (malted milkshakes) as a dessert. My family went to Friendly's and they didn't have malted milkshakes but the closest thing to them was a Frappe. Never seeing that word I proceeded to pronounce it Frap-Pey, and quickly was laughed at. After calming down the waitress asked me if I would like chocolate or vanill-ER. I shit you not... I sheepishly answered vanilla and hoped I wouldn't get laughed at again.

To this day, I don't understand the rules where Bostonians thrown out all most all of the Rs and add them to the end of random words.
 
rdrr said:
Yeah no one speaks like the Kennedy's, and I am not sure that even the Kennedy's do!

On another note. When I moved to MA from MN back in 1980, I was troubled by not only the accents but the regional use of words. I went to the school office to get directions to my homeroom. They proceeded to tell me that it was right next to the "bub-lah" (bubbler or water fountain). I had visions of bubble machines in my head, when my grandmother would watch Lawrence Welk when I was a wee lad.

Also being from Minnesota we had shakes (malted milkshakes) as a dessert. My family went to Friendly's and they didn't have malted milkshakes but the closest thing to them was a Frappe. Never seeing that word I proceeded to pronounce it Frap-Pey, and quickly was laughed at. After calming down the waitress asked me if I would like chocolate or vanill-ER. I shit you not... I sheepishly answered vanilla and hoped I wouldn't get laughed at again.

To this day, I don't understand the rules where Bostonians thrown out all most all of the Rs and add them to the end of random words.
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I waited tables at Denny’s on the NYS Thruway for a couple summers (many years ago). I remember one table, the people had southern accents. I didn’t have trouble understanding them, but they did ask for something I’d never heard of. One of them wanted an “orange coke” - I didn’t question them; I just wrote it down. I was starting to mix orange juice and coke and another server asked what I was doing. I told her and she explained to me that in the south, they call everything “coke” and what they really wanted was orange pop (or soda as they call it in most places). Glad she saw that, because I think a coke with some orange juice mixed it would not have tasted very good....
 
SuperMatt said:
I waited tables at Denny’s on the NYS Thruway for a couple summers (many years ago). I remember one table, the people had southern accents. I didn’t have trouble understanding them, but they did ask for something I’d never heard of. One of them wanted an “orange coke” - I didn’t question them; I just wrote it down. I was starting to mix orange juice and coke and another server asked what I was doing. I told her and she explained to me that in the south, they call everything “coke” and what they really wanted was orange pop (or soda as they call it in most places). Glad she saw that, because I think a coke with some orange juice mixed it would not have tasted very good....
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Yep in the midwest or at least in St. Paul when I was growing up. Everything we wore on our feet was a "tennis shoe". Another vernacular I had to quickly change or get teased endlessly.
 
Yoused said:
Does she (or you) pronounce it "Flow-da"?
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That's actually a funny question because back a couple of weeks before Christmas, the ILs were down, and my nephew was doing a project, I think for civics or something, anyway, he had a survey he ran me through, asked all sorts of pronunciation questions, some specific terms used for various things (like the thing you push around a grocery store).
 
DT said:
That's actually a funny question because back a couple of weeks before Christmas, the ILs were down, and my nephew was doing a project, I think for civics or something, anyway, he had a survey he ran me through, asked all sorts of pronunciation questions, some specific terms used for various things (like the thing you push around a grocery store).
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Easy! A caht
 
theSeb said:
We recently went on a road trip to Scotland. I cannot understand the people in Glasgow. It's English, apparently, but it does not sound like it.
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We lived for a year in Nashville, Tenn. Our Son's friend we had over at the house, I could not understand him. Wife had trouble understanding at the Post Office. :)

Watched Bad Day For the Cut (not sure what the title means) filmed in Northern Ireland, we ended up turning on closed captioning to make sure we caught all of the dialog. :)
 
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Cmaier said:
She does leave off "to be" though. "The room needs swept."
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That’s not an accent issue, but it does drive me crazy. Don’t people realize stupid?

(See?)

No offense to your wife. It’s the habit of absent wording that I criticize.
 
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I’ll go on record as having a neutral accent or possibly a mid-Atlantic accent. No on can identify where I grew up based on my accent. :unsure: When I want to be funny or sarcastic, I can pick up something that can be construed as a Texas twang. ;)

Renzatic said:
So why do all the southern rock bands of the 70's still have their accents when they sing?
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Maybe the Southern accent is subtle or different enough it can coexist with singing?
 
Huntn said:
I’ll go on record as having a neutral accent or possibly a mid-Atlantic accent. No on can identify where I grew up based on my accent. :unsure: When I want to be funny or sarcastic, I can pick up something that can be construed as a Texas twang. ;)


Maybe the Southern accent is subtle or different enough it can coexist with singing?
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It's probably more the relative weight of text (lyrics) v the melody and rhythms of speech or song, and on top of that then the regional accent.

There are assumptions your ear begins to make in terms of expectation, but in song it can be mostly that the words hang together with the beat, and your brain says ok later for whatever words are being sung. It's why we can appreciate pop or rock music that is sung in another language, but soon grow tired of someone telling us the news on TV in a language we don't get. But it's also why people like having a translation of the libretto handy during performance of an opera. When music alone doesn't tell the whole story, understanding the words certainly does matter.

In song, and more or less heavily depending on genre, the words still matter but the beat prevails and so for example in a scripture-themed motet there are parts of words than would be pronounced in speech but are elided or not sung in performance. For instance, the Purcell song based on Psalm 130:

Plung'd in the confines of despair,​
To God I cried with fervent pray'r:​
O lend to me a gracious ear;​
Not sunk so low but thou canst hear.​
​
Now if the beat in that music had been different, it's possible the word "plunged" might even have been sung as "plung-ed". As long as you understand or can read English, you'd still get the meaning of that text no matter which way sung.

Compare and contrast to rock or pop -- say US southern rock-- where what's different is MOSTLY the fact that a regional accent overlays the pronunciation of words in the lyric, which pronunciations are still influenced at root by the dictates of rhythm and melodic line. Take The Allman brothers in Come On in My Kitchen.

You better come on into my kitchen​
'Cause it's goin' to be raining outdoors​

Now when The Allman Brothers perform this, you may hear that second line as

cuz it's gone to be rainin' ow-dohz​
​
And of course that's if you're even paying attention to the words depending on which Allman bros tune is in play. You might just be stompin' yer boots on the floor about a minute into the thing.
 
Edd said:
I'm the same with my accent, bouncing around states as a military kid nothing got burned in.
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I don't know your generation, but my kids (gen Z) grew up in New England and don't have any regional accent. I believe the thought is that they will completely die out in a generation or two.
 
theSeb said:
I could not understand what the lady was asking me at all
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I suspect that I could handle Scotland. All it takes is to sit through a dozen episodes of Hamish MacBeth with captions off. That is a show you really have to pay attention to in order to understand the dialog.
 
rdrr said:
I don't know your generation, but my kids (gen Z) grew up in New England and don't have any regional accent. I believe the thought is that they will completely die out in a generation or two.
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I’m Gen X but I can think of a couple New England natives I know in their 20s without accents but their parents have fierce NH accents.
 
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