Talk:Regional accents of English/Archive 1

Misc early text

Note: Most of this text was moved in 2003 to Talk:Non-native pronunciations of English. Graham87 18:06, 14 May 2023 (UTC)

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I removed a statement from the Mandarin section:

• Confusion of countable vs uncountable ("many" and "much") as they are not differentiated in Mandarin grammar.

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 was referring specifically to "much" and "many". Even though, measure words are used extensively in Chinese, the measure word does not indicate whether "much" or "many" shoud be used for a situation. An example in English: "sheets of paper" (noun with measure word) does not indicate whether you will use "much" or "many" for "paper". It is more contextual.

• How many sheets of paper do you have? (你有多少张纸？)
• How much paper do you have? (你有多少纸？)

I have been asked many times whether "much" or "many" should be used for a situation. However, most fluent English speakers seem to have mastered this.

-- voidvector

I don't see a problem there: paper is uncountable, but sheets is countable. -- Tarquin 00:27 Jan 9, 2003 (UTC)

Hmm, I gave a flawed example. But my point was count nouns in Chinese does not help Chinese speakers identify the usage of "many" and "much". I think it is the difference between "actual countability" and "grammatically countability". In Chinese, measure words can be used to all nouns that address countable or measureable objects. In English, not all of those nouns are grammatically countable (e.g. homework, furniture, clothing, paper) -- voidvector

Besides, as your own "flawed" example shows, the count classifier 纸 itself would tell a Mandarin speaker that 多少 should be translated as "many". Now, if Mandarin-speaking students of English don't know this "trick", that's a flaw in teaching, not an inherent difficulty in learning. But that would still lead to the much vs. many confusion that you describe.

It doesn't help that "some" is in certain contexts a mass noun quantifier and in others a count noun quantifier. "How much paper? Some paper." vs. "How many sheets? Some sheets." A way to test for count-ness would be to try replacing ‘some’ with ‘a few’. If it works, you have a count noun. If not, it's a mass noun.

Additionally, it's simple enough to teach: If you can respond with "3hen 1duo", use "much"; if you can use a classifier+number in your response, use "many".

Dunno if that adds anything useful to the discussion. However, to state that Mandarin does not distinguish count nouns when it in fact does, is false. I'd be willing to amend it to something like: Confusion of count noun quantifiers vs. mass noun quantifiers (specifically "many" and "much") as they are not differentiated in Mandarin vocabulary.

-- pgdudda

I was trying to proof that the Chinese classifiers do not help Chinese speaker in identifying whether a noun is count noun or mass noun. That is what you brought up initially if I am not mistaken.

In Chinese, there are classifiers for both count nouns and mass nouns, and even some verbs. For everyday purpose, a Chinese do not need to know whether a classifier is a count, measurement, or others; instead, he only needs to know which classifier goes with which noun.

In English, the distinction between mass and count nouns leads to the usage of different words e.g. many, much, less, fewer, etc. Therefore, when the Chinese learns English, he will have no concrete way of distinguishing mass and count nouns. (Fluent English speaker distinguish them by memory and experience I believe.) Your test is also based on the same concept of mass and count, so it does not help in this case.

A Chinese will have to commit to memory that even though one can count the number of pieces of "furniture" in a room, "furniture" is actually a mass noun.

-- voidvector

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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:

• Cantonese
  • 'wh' is rare in English anyway; most accents have 'w'
  • 'th' - doesn't distinguish [T] from [D]
• German
  • 'th' - as above
• Japanese
  • bilabial f
• Mandarin
  • m occurs initially, just not finally
• New Zealander
  • six and seven are sux and siven
• Persian
  • throat noise? Persian has a [k]. It also has [x] and /q/ (various realizations) but there's no reason their /k/ should be odd.
• Russian
  • palatalized dental? Their cjonsjonantsj are oftjen pjaljatajalized but I don't know what you mean by this epenthetic consonant
• Indian subcontinent
  • retroflex t d n l

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.

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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

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I didn't just edit the article; what happened? -PierreAbbat

Seems to be a bug in the system -- this has happened to me too (found an edit I made in RecentChanges a day or two ago that I actually made in April).--maveric149

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Gritchka, don't be so shy. If you have something to add, add it. If it will help identify an accent, add it.

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Added following to East Asian accents:

• When raising the tone at the end of a question "You did what?", often the last syllable is lengthened and sounds almost like it is being sung.

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)

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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.

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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)

Hi Alexander! Since you're actually "on site" teaching English to Mandarin speakers, perhaps you can contribute something to the to-date-stalled discussion on confusion of much vs. many at the top of this article... I‘ve never noted such confusion in Mandarin speakers, and my exposure is extensive, but you're right there... Have you noted any such difficulty amongst your students? Just Curious™...

pgdudda 02:57 Apr 7, 2003 (UTC)

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

And doubtless others have speculated that it has to do with having a finger stuck somewhere unmentionable, but for some unknown reason, we don't mention it in the article. A statement like the one that Zoe quoted needs to be either referenced to something reputable, or removed from the entry, IMO. Tannin 04:01 May 7, 2003 (UTC)

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)

I agree. Some may have speculated it, but it is a pretty strange speculation. There are plenty of people in the UK without respiratory diseases, and they have no problem with the accent. Also I have yet to hear of a group of US asbestos workers spontaneously spouting BBC English. Apart from that, why would respiratory disease have opposite effects in different parts of the UK, like dropping "r"s in RP vs emphasising them in Scotland. -- Chris Q 12:03 May 7, 2003 (UTC)

Surfer

Dude you totally forgot the california surfer accent.serously you're wierd...:)

Accent vs Dialect

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:

• creek -> crik (i think this is also prevalent in appalachia)
• pittsburgh -> piksburg
• versailles -> versales
• iron -> ahrn (as in ahrn city beer;-)
• north side -> norsside
• south side -> sahside
  • i've heard this described as "swallowing syllables".

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.

Americentric

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)

Indeed! This article can only be subjective.

Fargo

...accent from the film Fargo.

Can anyone from the US fill in a section for this delightful accent!

Sorry, I'm from California. We talk like normal people here. ;) Seriously though, that seems to be a Michigan/North Dakota accent heavily influenced by the Scandanavian population of the region. --Dante Alighieri 13:19 Dec 6, 2002 (UTC)

That would be Minnesotan, though Fargo itself is in North Dakota. And yes, we really DO talk like that, Ja.  ;-) One of the reasons the movie wasn't too popular in MN was because it hit a liiiitle too close to home...  :-) User:pgdudda

Accent variation

Accents and dialects vary more widely within the U.K. itself than they do in other parts of the world owing to the longer history of the language within the countries of the U.K.

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 meant English accents and dialects. After all that was the topic of the article. -- Derek Ross | Talk

Midwest America

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)

Australia and NZ

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)

I tend to agree with this; being an Australian myself, some of the SAMPA vowels cited in the Australian accent section are at the extreme end of the scale. Steve Irwin's vowels may sound like these, but the so-called "Australian" vowels seem to have been taken from either him or an American actor trying to parody an Australian accent. Some of them are right on the money - /{U/ for the vowel in now, for instance - but /@U/ for soon? /U:/ is far closer. As well, the l in "Australia" is not smashed, it may be elided, but it certainly is nothing like universal. It brings back to mind the old stereotype that the Australian pronunciation of "Australian" is ostensibly Strine (SAMPA /str@In/), which may be humorous, but from what I can tell, this isn't intended to be a joke article. I've fixed this up where necessary. As well, people from the south - particularly Adelaide and environs, in South Australia - may pronounce dance or plant as SAMPA /da:ns/ and /pla:nt/ respectively. Again, though, this is by no means universal.thefamouseccles

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)

Route, Root and Rout

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

Actually, the source of the rhyme with "pouters" is because many people (in Minnesota, anyway) rhyme "route" and "pout". Hence, [rawtrz] instead of [rutrz]. Hope that helps... BTW, for me "root" and "roof" rhyme with "foot", not "boot".  :-) I've heard "roof" with the vowel of "boot", but not "root", and it will mark someone as non-Minnesotan to rhyme "roof" with "boot". pgdudda

I'm guessing phma learned these pronunciations due to a logical assimilation of English (which brings knowledge of French to the fore as a reason); problem is, English is rarely logical. Rhyming "route" with "boot" is logical; however, every American I've talked to (including Californians) rhymes "router" with "pouter".

"Root" rhyming with "foot", on the other hand, I've noticed mostly in the southern US (Texas and Georgia, so it would make sense in NC as well). I see that as a regionalism, and not even unanimous in the region (especially among computer techs).

Hephaestos

I grew up in Washington and Florida and I agree that a r-ow-t-er is a woodworking tool. But most computer people I've spoken to (which isn't a lot) seem to use the pronunciation you and Hephaestos attest is the more common. My very old dictionary defines "router" as "a person or thing that routs" and gives the ow pronunciation. It also gives the primary pronunciation of "route" as the oo one, but says that sometimes, and often in the case of definition 3, it is pronounced the same as rout. Definition 3 is an order "in military usage". Definition 1 is a road or path taken...

-- SS 20:28, 25 Aug 2004 (UTC)

In Australia, the "pout" pronounciation is used because pronoucing it the other way turns it into a local rude word...

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)

Canadian About, Aboat, Aboot

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.

In my part of Canada (Vancouver Island), it sounds more like "abowt" (as in "ow, I stubbed my toe."). "O" (as in pronouncing the letter "o") is also common in such words as "holy," "goal," "load," "know," etc. There is definitely a British-style precision to the vocalisation. I've occasionally been asked (usually by Americans) if I'm English. I've never even been there. Fishhead64 03:07, 16 March 2006 (UTC)

I do not agree. Some sections of Ontario pronounce it differently. A notable example is the Ottawa "valley" accent. Furthermore, there are other certain words that are spoken differently however people don't talk about them in standard conversations. For example, many Canadians say "sorry" emphasising the o while Americans say it more like "sarry". Canking 00:25, 17 April 2007 (UTC)

Cape Breton and part of the northern surrounding area of NS such as "New Glasgow" should also be mentioned as having a distinctive accent. This has a greater Scottish influence vs the Newfie one which is more Irish. Canking 00:32, 17 April 2007 (UTC)

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)

What's a native speaker

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)

Breaking it up

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

Add what you deem approprate. Let's see where that takes us. --Menchi 21:07 16 Jun 2003 (UTC)

There are many more american accents than those listed. I can distinguish speakers from Tennessee, North Carolina, Southern Indiana, Virginia, Texas, Alabama. There are a number of accents in the Northeast that aren't mentioned. The Minnesota accent is actually more pronounced up toward North Dakota. I'm glad someone mentioned the Pittsburg Accent. That one is very distinctive. The Louisiana cajun accent should be mentioned for sure --rlyd

Casual vs Formal

"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)

What was that "optimally efficient" thing? Please do make that closer and more understandable "translation". But since we're "translating", "more" is redundant for average English speakers. --Menchi 00:35 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)

Drop Rate Art ?

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)

Rhotic speech

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)

Louisiana was probably the only area in that list where you were at hazard of hearing non-rhotic speech. The speech of New Orleans differs somewhat from general Southern, by my understanding. Non-rhotic areas of the U.S. are generally found on the northeast coast (New York City and northward) and the southern coast (from Washington DC southward). Ebonics is non-rhotic countrywide. Non-rhotic speech is not admired in the USA, and has tended to shrink somewhat at the expense of network English. More information is at American English. -- IHCOYC 15:51, 8 Aug 2003 (UTC)

L -- Clear vs Dark

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)

I suspect that the distinction being made here is between "clear" L, the usual English "l" sound as in "millet;" and "dark" L, which is velarized and tends towards the qualities of /w/; in those varieties of English in which it appears, it tends to appear before consonants, especially stops, such as in "melt." The author of that paragraph says that Irish English lacks this w-like L -- IHCOYC 16:35, 9 Aug 2003 (UTC)

Ok, I think I approximately understand (although I do not really understand what these different "l" sound like since I do not know whether "millet" is pronouced the same way as in the French word or rather like "hello", in English :-D Do you realize how deep my ignorance is ?). The problem was only my english since I did not see "clear" as the opposed of dark, but as a synonym of "erase". But in this case I suppose it would have been « "l" is cleared... ». Thanks for the enlightenment :-] → SeeSchloß 20:04, 9 Aug 2003 (UTC)

Some Lowland Scottish speakers only ever use dark "L". Some Highland Scottish speakers only ever use clear "L". -- Derek Ross | Talk 23:50, 2004 Nov 9 (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)

Yorkshire phrase

About Yorkshire : The phrase as written "I were wearing t'red coat" sounds more like "I were wearin't red coat"

agreed. 193.131.186.150 13:23, 12 Nov 2003 (UTC)

agreed but the "t"is not always pronounced as a "t" anyway; (more likely to be so before a vowel) often it is more like a glottal stop. Paul Tracy 09:40, 10 Nov 2004 (UTC)

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

Article headings

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)

Brooklyn

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)

London vs Cockney

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)

Estuary English and POV

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'ver tried to re-work the south east stuff, having recently mistaken a native Essex accent for soemthing else - it is very distinctive and very different to Estuary. The stuff on Herts was over-simple and the lumping in of Kent with Sussex and Surrey absurd. Icundell 20:51, 27 Dec 2004 (UTC)

St. Louis and vicinity

• Some, usually older generations, pronounce measure as /"meIZ.@r/.

• Some pronounce wash as /wOrS/ or /wArS/, e.g. /"wOrS.IN.t@n/ for Washington.

• Some speakers errantly pronounce Italian as /aI.t{l.j@n/ and mostaccioli as /mVskAtSoli:/. This seems ironic, with the presence of The Hill.

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)

/"aIt{lj@n/ or /aI"t{lj@n/ was what my grandparents in Melbourne, Australia always used to say but I've never heard it from younger generations. I always assumed it was affected by the wartime derogatory term /"aItaI/ - which I don't even know how to spell. — Hippietrail 00:15, 3 May 2004 (UTC)

Disambiguation of article title

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:

• How to distinguish one spoken accent of people in England from another (as in Pygmalion)
• How to distinguish one spoken accent of English-speaking people worldwide from another
• Examples of things that make a particular English speaker's accent unique
• Usage of accents in written English -- Cecropia | Talk 14:36, 29 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Scottish sounds

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)

Scottish sounds again

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.

Agreed. A possible exception is in the Liverpool (or Scouse) accent discussed in the article - the gutteral 'ch' sound is used in the broadest of Scouse accents. Adambisset 13:22, 23 Oct 2004 (UTC)

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

South African English also has the gutteral "g" or "ch" sound (I believe it is "x" in IPA) adopted from Afrikaans/Dutch. Example: The composer J.S. Bach's name rhymes with the first syllable in the German word "achtung" rather than "back" or "buck" as in most other forms of english, . Roger (talk) 11:18, 27 July 2008 (UTC)

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)

UK Regions (to do)

This whole set of sections is very wanting, example:

1. The implication that there is a "Welsh Accent" without even being pedantic about differences between Cardiff and Swansea, the accent in North Wales is different enough for many from other pars of the UK to mistake it for somewhere near the Northwest of England.
2. People in Hampshire "speaking posh" (a silly POV word incidentally) I would have said the actaul accent is far more Estuary, and in parts lightly seasoned with a west country lilt.
3. I am also not satisfied that there are sufficient divisions in accent. For the North West we are limited to Scouse and Lancashire.

I don't know enough to rewrite it at present, but could we work at it? Dainamo 09:37, 31 Oct 2004 (UTC)

IPA/SAMPA tables

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))

Yorkshire - Owt and Nowt

I changed

• Many dialect words, for example "owt" and "nowt" (both examples rhyme with "note", whereas the Lancastrian "nowt and "owt" rhyme with "out") for "anything" or "nothing", "bevvy" for drink etc.

to

• Many dialect words, for example the archaic "aught" and "naught" ("owt" and "nowt") for "anything" and "nothing". In some areas these both rhyme with "note", in others they rhyme with "out".

- 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

Quite correct. I'm a Yorkie and I pronounce 'owt' the same as 'out'.GordyB 14:45, 11 August 2006 (UTC)

It's pronounced 'Out' in North-East BrE aswell. 82.22.134.112 11:38, 17 May 2007 (UTC)

Birmingham accent-- inaccuracies

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'.

Actually, the examples you give are from the Black Country, and are regularly heard in places such as Tipton and Dudley. --Kudpung (talk) 12:24, 10 May 2010 (UTC)

Alaskan accent?

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!  :)----

Florida

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)

Cleanup

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)

Quebec

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)

A common difference between Montreal English and that spoken in Southern Ontario the way "A" is pronounced. For example "garage" when the emphasis on the second a instead of "garoge" where the "A" sounds more like an "o". Another example is somebody from "Barrie" Ontario will pronounce the "a" like an "é" whereas in Montreal the "A" will be expressed differently. Canking 00:29, 17 April 2007 (UTC)

General American?

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. izret10122:46, 12 April 2006 (UTC)

General American isn't exactly from Iowa and adjacent parts of NE and IL; rather the local accents there come closest to being GenAm. That's not to say there aren't other regions that come close to it too. Angr (talk • contribs) 05:49, 13 April 2006 (UTC)

Recordings

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)

"Ulster dialect"

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

Look and Luke are not pronounced the same in all of Ireland, they're only pronounced the same in Ulster and Scotland. In the rest of Ireland, they are pronounced differently, although for many people look and luck are the same. I'll have a look into the pronunciation of /au/ when I get a chance, but for now it looks like the claim in the article is fairly reasonable. User:Angr 06:03, 17 July 2006 (UTC)

As someone who was born and grew up in Scotland, and has encountered probably, almost every Scottish accent, (perhaps excepting some borders and island accents), I would like to point out, I am aware of only a handful that pronounce look and Luke the same way. However, accents of Manchester and Lancashire (I believe, certainly accents from that general area) do notably pronounce these two the same. Jamesaf87 (talk) 18:15, 30 April 2008 (UTC)

Hiberno-English

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)

'Colonial' English Accents

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

All of the examples you give of "Aboriginalisation" in Australian accents also appear in some British and/or Irish accents, so I would need to see more evidence of this. Also, I don't see the relevance of your theory to regional accents within Australia, which is what the article is about. Grant | Talk 18:55, 28 July 2007 (UTC)

Attractiveness

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)

Attractiveness is an opinion, therefore not something that can be taken from a NPOV. There is no topic regarding this matter.--Hamster X (talk) 14:57, 15 April 2008 (UTC)

But there can be NPOV reports about people's opinion. For example, I understand that Dennis Preston's research has demonstrated that the New York accent is stereotyped as unpleasant by people from the South and Midwest. AJD (talk) 18:22, 15 April 2008 (UTC)

Has this topic been expanded upon? When I was travelling through E. Europe, one of my companions was French, and I was informed that French males find the American female's accent (when speaking French as second language) attractive in the same manner that American females find general London male's accents attractive. Where would I contribute this? Fiscalia (talk) 17:14, 13 August 2010 (UTC)

You can't add that because "I was informed that" is not a Reliable Source Roger (talk) 19:45, 13 August 2010 (UTC)

Disputed: Australian accents

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)

The divide between Broad/General/Cultivated is very well-known in the relevant academic circles. What is your reference for the claim that the "class-based definition" is outdated? Grant | Talk 18:49, 28 July 2007 (UTC)

I don't think it was the Broad/General/Cultivated division he was talking about. There seems to be a trend to emphasise the rural-urban divide more as a predictor of where an accent will appear in that spectrum. Class can be a little more difficult to define and correlate I suppose. ☸ Moilleadóir ☎ 07:03, 25 June 2008 (UTC)

NZ & Melburnian Accent

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).

If by "milder" you mean "more like New Zealand speech", then I think you mean this:

The salary-celery merger is a conditioned merger of /æ/ (as in bat) and /ɛ/ (as in bet) when they occur before /l/, thus making salary and celery homophones.[1][2][3] This merger occurs in the English spoken in New Zealand and the Australian state of Victoria. In varieties with the merger, salary and celery are both pronounced /sæləri/ (Cox & Palethorpe, 2003).

The merger is not well studied. It is referred to in various sociolinguistic publications, but usually only as a small section of the larger change undergone by vowels preceding /l/ in articles about l-vocalisation. Most Victorians and New Zealanders do not exhibit l-vocalisation."

From English-language vowel changes before historic l. Grant | Talk 18:41, 28 July 2007 (UTC)

India and Liberia

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)

Proposed move

Regional accents of English speakers → Regional accents of English. FilipeS 18:37, 3 October 2007 (UTC)

Oxford accent

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)

Google search shows that "BBC English" is almost interchangeable with "Oxford accent". There is an article for BBC English, so I figured they are the same. --Voidvector (talk) 22:50, 27 November 2007 (UTC)

Map

A map would probably be helpful. -- Beland (talk) 02:40, 28 January 2008 (UTC)

It seems to me we could have a map of pronunciations of something broadly distinguishing regional accents, perhaps the "a" in "cat". What would be a good, distinctive sound? -- ke4roh (talk) 02:57, 12 August 2012 (UTC)

The map on the page today of the so-called anglosphere

File:Anglosphere map.png

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)

Estuary and the whole south

"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)

Northern and Southern English accents reflect colonisation by angles and saxons respectively?

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)

I concur.   pablo_hablo. 23:31, 16 January 2010 (UTC)

What about the Danelaw, did it have a lasting effect on northern England's dialects? Roger (talk) 11:58, 1 September 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)

No, but the number of unknowns would make such an article problematic; because the way that native English speakers speak English varies so much, and because there are so many other languages, and because people learning a second language have a wide range of ability and proficiency, there is no general way in which native English speakers speak foreign languages. There would be little in common with the way a Scotsman speaks Russian, a Yorkshireman speaks Spanish, an Australian speaks Japanese, a Texan speaks Hindi etc.  pablo_hablo. 05:38, 2 July 2009 (UTC)

Native English vs. incorrect English of learners

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 influence of Afrikaans on South African English phonology

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)

Neutrality

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)

Political correctness is not a criterion for inclusion or exclusiuon of material from Wikipedia. If its notable and properly sourced its in. Roger (talk) 07:12, 13 May 2010 (UTC)

Precisely: it is not sourced at all, and even its parent article has been tagged for years without the slightest attempt at improvement..--Kudpung (talk) 14:24, 2 June 2010 (UTC)

In the interests of neutrality and quality, it's probably now time we did some serious pruning to remove the unsourced claims, the personal opinion, and the original research. In my opinion, some of it is possibly inaccurate and misleading. --Kudpung (talk) 05:48, 29 January 2011 (UTC)

Starting clean up

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)

Indian / Pakistani etc. pronunciation of "t"

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)

There's more I forgot. The stereotypical Indian etc. pronunciation of "p" is somewhere in between "p" and "b" in standard English pronunciation, for example in the phrase "make a purchase", it's almost like "burchase", but not quite. In both these examples, I'm wondering also if I can hear some aspiration; this I'm not sure about. In any case, where are the features I've pointed out here described on Wikipedia? Thanks! Avengah (talk) 02:32, 19 March 2011 (UTC)

Irish brrr

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)

Links to dialect pages

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)

Nearer and mirror in North American dialects

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)

Er, what? Do you have a source on this? That seems like a really bizarre pronunciation... I certainly don't recall ever hearing "mirror" pronounced that way. Out of curiosity, where exactly in North America did you grow up? (For what it's worth, I'm from California.) --Smeazel (talk) 22:41, 1 February 2012 (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)

I am from Toronto, Canada and 51 years of age. Mary, merry, and marry are identical. Hairy and ferry rhyme. Nearer and mirror rhyme; I cannot imagine how it would be possible for nearer and mirror not to rhyme, eh. 99.237.226.35 (talk) 19:21, 16 July 2012 (UTC)

For clarity's sake, here is the rest of my accent from the Canadian section:

• the vowel sound of out [ʌʊt] is different from that of loud [laʊd]
  • Absolutely. A better example is house/houses where the diphthong changes, because the 's' in the plural is a zed, not an 's'.
• no contrast between the vowels of caught and cot
  • Absolutely.
• shone is /ʃɒn/; been is often /bin/; process can be /prosɛs/; etc.
  • I pronounce all 3 that way.
• Words like drama, pyjamas, pasta tend to have /æ/ rather than /ɑ/~/ɒ/
  • Not for me. Only pyjamas has /æ/ for me.
• Words like sorrow, Florida, orange have /or/ rather than /ɑr/
  • Absolutely.
• therefore, sorry rhymes with stor(e)y rather than with starry.
  • Absolutely.

99.237.226.35 (talk) 19:46, 16 July 2012 (UTC)

I am so curious now. I have never been to Canada, but I used to be 51. My curiosity was inspired by "cannot imagine how it would be possible for nearer and mirror not to rhyme". I could suggest listening to the BBC World Service - but that might involve a long wait for both words to show up. I am British born and grew up in several Welsh and English regions (always RP at school), but I have lived in California for the last 30-odd years. I have two different sounds for the first vowel in nearer and mirror. I can only imagine them rhyming by pronouncing one as I would the other. My nearer first vowel is like seer, pier, weir, deer. My mirror first vowel is more like Mitt, kit, writ. I am curious ... do you sound both like my nearer (seer) or both like my mirror (kit), or another sound? ChrisJBenson (talk) 07:39, 7 August 2013 (UTC)

I don't think this is what the talk page is for, but I'll reply anyway. There's no way I can know what "nearer" and "mirror" sound like in your idiolect unless you link me to a recording of you saying them. But in my own American speech, "nearer" and "mirror" rhyme. I hear the sound in both of these words as the same as the one I use in "deer", "pier", etc. In fact, I used to say "mirror" and "mere" the same. But now I try to say "mirror" with 2 syllables, like "mere-er." Accentman (talk) 16:20, 14 August 2013 (UTC)

Scotland

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)

International Dialects of English Archive

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)

Southern hemisphere

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)

Why has India been omitted?

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)

Indian English is not (generally) a native accent of English, as most Indians do not speak English as their first language. --Florian Blaschke (talk) 18:54, 15 December 2015 (UTC)

England - How does that article plan to be representative.

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)

This is not an encyclopedic article

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)

Here's another source that, although it deals with dialect it also includes accent/prononciation. Francis Hannaway (talk) 09:47, 29 August 2013 (UTC)

Ireland

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)

Australian accent and the Thames/Medway accent

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)

Jamaican and the Cork accent

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)

Rhoticity of American English

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)

In the south, along with major cities as in: NYC and Boston, they are non-rhotic. "General American" is rhotic; but very few places in the United States actually speak with this accent. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Navarchy (talk • contribs)

Actually, some areas and dialects of Southern American English are rhotic. Many, if not most, geographical dialects in the US are rhotic. - BilCat (talk) 04:24, 3 April 2016 (UTC)

Depending on where in the South, you can't simply group the south into one accent, those that have and "Inland" southern accent will have the R, but those that live on the coast will drop it. We chose the midwestern accent because it is easily understandable by all Americans — Preceding unsigned comment added by Navarchy (talk • contribs) 05:33, 4 November 2016 (UTC)

This discussion is a little old. However, I think that Labov et al. actually do group the South into one accent. Also, didn't Labov et al. write an chapter about the restoration of the /r/ in the South?LakeKayak (talk) 20:42, 5 May 2017 (UTC)

@Erutuon and BilCat: As Navarchy is no longer active, we are not going to get his consensus on this anytime soon. However, as a counterpoint, there are also rhotic dialects found in England. However, the dialect is reported to be non-rhotic on the table because the English of England is predominantly non-rhotic. Therefore, in the same right, as American English is predominantly rhotic, I agree that it should be reported as rhotic. I'll make the change now.LakeKayak (talk) 22:44, 7 May 2017 (UTC)

@LakeKayak and BilCat: I'm cool with that decision, but probably a footnote should explain that not all English dialects are non-rhotic, and not all American dialects are rhotic, just so that readers aren't confused. — Eru·tuon 04:33, 8 May 2017 (UTC)

@Erutuon: I don't object to adding a footnote, but as I'm not 100% certain how to do it, I will not be able to do it myself.LakeKayak (talk) 20:00, 9 May 2017 (UTC)

@LakeKayak: I've added the footnotes. For explanatory footnotes, the template to use is {{efn}}, and the footnote list template is {{notelist}}. — Eru·tuon 21:40, 9 May 2017 (UTC)

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