Language/Accents

[Abby Normal]

TV and movies are the way that we mostly hear American accents. I have a friend who was born in New York so I can identify his accent by hearing bits of Columbo or Frank Sinatra and I once met an American in London who asked how I knew that he was from Boston. He got it when I asked him to say “Ask not what your country can do for you.” So those to, plus the generic ‘southern’ accent is about all that I can recognise. The phrase ‘y’all,’ is familiar. I think that I’ve heard Ally use it but I don’t know where she’s from.

yall originated in the south but its creeping every where. very prevalent in Md now too.

[Abby Normal]

yes my biggest pet peeves is starting every sentence with so. where the hell did that one come from? and the incorrect use of literally. and the constant use of like. those three are tje most annoying.

someone mentioned making every sentence sound like a question, with the raised pitch at the end of tje sentence. thats an aussie thing, and i find it annoying, but then again i find most everything aussie annoying.lol. except crikey, thats pretty funny.

[c.d.]

My biggest pet peeve is young people who can't speak a complete sentence without using the word "like" every other word. I once sat behind two airhead girls on the subway and one who was talking about some boy in her class said "I use to like like him but I don't like like him any more." I wanted to slap them silly or should I say I wanted to like slap them?

c.d.

[Al Bundy's Eyes]

here in the states theres about half a dozen or so distinct accents.
The Northern accent. Think tje movie Fargo or the dudes from the sctv comedy sketch Great white north. lots of ya,s and the long o super pronounced. With the chicago sub accent...Da Bears (with a very short curt s, not the typical z sound for the plural s).
The Boston accent.. pak ya ca for park your car.
The Brookyn/ NYC accent. think of any mob movie.
The beloved Baltimoron accent... Dyowny Oshun, hon. for at the beach lol.
Of course the southern accent, aka the southern drawl. imho the cutest of all the accents, especially the georgia accent. If youve never heard a cute blond southern girl talking it will melt your heart! the beach boys were correct!
amd the totally bizarro New Orleans Nawlins accent. its unlike anything. spoken on the planet. i think its a weird mix of southern, creole and cajun. totally bizarre and one of the hardest to understand. google a clip of dr john talking and his even isnt that bad as the usual.

amd also strangely enough the entire mid atlantic across the midwest into california, there really is no huge discernable difference in accents.

i may have left out a couple minor accents, but if i have my fellow patriots please let me know!

Hi Abby,

You've got the 'High Tider' accent up your way, closely related to a West Country accent but with New England influence. That's another one that's dying out though.

[Herlock Sholmes]

I also grind my teeth at the overuse / use out of context of the word "literally".

"I literally died!!!!"

No you didn't! You're standing in front of me, perfectly alive talking this sh!t!!

See also stupid people who use "pacifically" when they mean "specifically "
That one bugs me too!

I forgot ‘literally!’ as an example. “Pacifically” is another cracker. I’ve heard seemingly intelligent people using that one.

[Herlock Sholmes]

They will likely go on to make excellent doctors then!

Terrible handwriting appears to be a prerequisite!

I once interviewed an 18 year old guy who had written “I went 2 school at….” I suppose that I should have been grateful that he didn’t say “I went 2 skool @ …..”

[Herlock Sholmes]

yall originated in the south but its creeping every where. very prevalent in Md now too.

Ah, so I might have assumed that Ally is from the south.

[Herlock Sholmes]

My biggest pet peeve is young people who can't speak a complete sentence without using the word "like" every other word. I once sat behind two airhead girls on the subway and one who was talking about some boy in her class said "I use to like like him but I don't like like him any more." I wanted to slap them silly or should I say I wanted to like slap them?

c.d.

Yeah, any of those unnecessary additions are annoying c.d. “Lie,” “ya know,” even “obviously” gets needlessly thrown in a lot. It’s as if they have to get the word count up.

[Fleetwood Mac]

If memory serves I think that Sutcliffe was interviewed around 9 times! Oldfield was absolutely convinced that the guy was from the north east. There was one young girl, I can’t recall her name, who was attacked in a country lane by a guy with a hammer. They didn’t believe it was the YR because she’d fallen into conversation with him and the guy had a Yorkshire accent. She later identified him as Sutcliffe though.

As you said, really sad to think of the lives that might have been saved.

Aye, I think the polis went to Sutcliffe's home and reckoned there was something not quite right with him, and from there went back to their superiors suggesting he was worth a good look at. 'Problem was, the senior investigators had gone right down the 'Geordie accent' path. I'm pretty sure that Sutcliffe murdered at least three more women after that interview. Had they looked into him at that point, they could well have unearthed all of those interviews and his history; and in process saved the lives of a few women.

[Fleetwood Mac]

I don't have any issues with the use of language but the one that always surprises me is the American use of: 'totally'.

There was an interview a couple of weeks back and an American lass said somebody else was: 'totally dead'. Hold on, there isn't a spectrum of 'dead', you're either dead or you're not; there is no 'totally dead'.

Having said that, I don't pretend to be the authority on the day-to-day existence of Americans, maybe there's a 'partially dead' in the United States, whereby resurrection shouldn't automatically be ruled out.

[Fleetwood Mac]

here in the states theres about half a dozen or so distinct accents.
The Northern accent. Think tje movie Fargo or the dudes from the sctv comedy sketch Great white north. lots of ya,s and the long o super pronounced. With the chicago sub accent...Da Bears (with a very short curt s, not the typical z sound for the plural s).
The Boston accent.. pak ya ca for park your car.
The Brookyn/ NYC accent. think of any mob movie.
The beloved Baltimoron accent... Dyowny Oshun, hon. for at the beach lol.
Of course the southern accent, aka the southern drawl. imho the cutest of all the accents, especially the georgia accent. If youve never heard a cute blond southern girl talking it will melt your heart! the beach boys were correct!
amd the totally bizarro New Orleans Nawlins accent. its unlike anything. spoken on the planet. i think its a weird mix of southern, creole and cajun. totally bizarre and one of the hardest to understand. google a clip of dr john talking and his even isnt that bad as the usual.

amd also strangely enough the entire mid atlantic across the midwest into california, there really is no huge discernable difference in accents.

i may have left out a couple minor accents, but if i have my fellow patriots please let me know!

Anybody of my generation, I'm 50 now, will remember Hart to Hart and Max. "When they met, it was moider!". What an accent!

[Fleetwood Mac]

These are great FM!

Thanks for posting.

Agree, the Yorkshire one at the end is a belter!

It's pretty unusual though, so I guess it is perhaps representative of a bygone era.

When I was growing up in the area, my friends and family sounded more like the given example of the Hull accent (although geographically we were closer to York than Hull).

The Shetland one is a cracker too!

No bother, Ms Diddles.

Linguistic experts reckon that the part of Britain with the most lasting Viking impact on accent and dialect, is the East Riding of Yorkshire.

I'm guessing that you're from the North Riding/East Riding border. Imagine eh, all of these years you've been minding your own business and giving shelter to your cat in empathetic human/animal co-existence, but it turns out that underneath that gentle exterior lurks a rampaging Viking.

When I was at university, I met a lot of people from around the country, including a few people from Hull and York. Hull has a distinctive accent that is noticeably different from the rest of Yorkshire. But, I know exactly what you're saying in that some people from the York area sound more like Leeds and others from the York area sound more like Hull.

By the way, on Shetland, genetics/DNA studies have uncovered that their dialect is heavily influenced by Norwegian Vikings (as opposed to Danish Vikings in Yorkshire).

[Abby Normal]

I forgot ‘literally!’ as an example. “Pacifically” is another cracker. I’ve heard seemingly intelligent people using that one.

aks instead of ask lol.

[Ms Diddles]

aks instead of ask lol.

Yeah, that one bugs me too.

I'm a big Kendrick Lamar fan.

His tunes are great and lyrically he's brilliant, but I do find myself wishing he would just use "ask" instead of "aks"!

[Fleetwood Mac]

here in the states theres about half a dozen or so distinct accents.
The Northern accent. Think tje movie Fargo or the dudes from the sctv comedy sketch Great white north. lots of ya,s and the long o super pronounced. With the chicago sub accent...Da Bears (with a very short curt s, not the typical z sound for the plural s).
The Boston accent.. pak ya ca for park your car.
The Brookyn/ NYC accent. think of any mob movie.
The beloved Baltimoron accent... Dyowny Oshun, hon. for at the beach lol.
Of course the southern accent, aka the southern drawl. imho the cutest of all the accents, especially the georgia accent. If youve never heard a cute blond southern girl talking it will melt your heart! the beach boys were correct!
amd the totally bizarro New Orleans Nawlins accent. its unlike anything. spoken on the planet. i think its a weird mix of southern, creole and cajun. totally bizarre and one of the hardest to understand. google a clip of dr john talking and his even isnt that bad as the usual.

amd also strangely enough the entire mid atlantic across the midwest into california, there really is no huge discernable difference in accents.

i may have left out a couple minor accents, but if i have my fellow patriots please let me know!

Here's an article on how the far North of England and the far South of Scotland, influenced southern United States dialect and culture.

The people the article refer to are the Border Reivers. These people are erroneously termed 'the Scots Irish' by some Americans.

They were actually the Border Reivers and they inhabited the northern England counties of Durham, Northumberland and Cumbria on the English side, and the border counties of Scotland on the Scottish side. They weren't like other parts of England and Scotland, in the sense that they held tribal loyalties rather than national. Sometimes they would fight one another; sometimes they would join together to fight Scottish armies; sometimes they would join together to fight English armies.

They were transplanted into Northern Ireland as well as directly into the United States because they had a reputation for being tough and could fight off unwanted enemies, e.g. the Indians in the United States. There was nothing Irish about them. As I say, many of them were transplanted directly into the United States and had never set foot in Ireland, and those who were transplanted into Northern Ireland and then moved onto the United States, were culturally not Irish in any sense of the word.

The article talks of studies of southern United States folk music and how that music was derived from the far North of England. It talks of the impact on dialect. It talks of some prominent United States figures during history, such as Lyndon Johnson, Neil Armstrong and Richard Nixon. Their ancestors are traced back to the Border Reivers. The Border Reivers had established clan surnames which meant you could usually deduce whether they were from the far North of England or the far South of Scotland. Neil Armstrong and Lyndon Johnson for example, their ancestors were Border Reivers on the English side. Richard Nixon's ancestors could have been from either the English or Scottish side.

You may find it interesting.

How Northern England Made the Southern United States | History Today