Accents and dialects

JAS_OH1 said:
They have some bassackwards roads and bassackwards people over there in PA. Just sayin', that clerk had no room for mockery, coming from people who say, "Yinz". I know it's more over in the Pittsburgh area where people say stuff like that, and actually people in Pittsburgh are pretty pleasant overall. Never had the displeasure of going to Chambersburg, though. Hopefully that jerk was just a one-off and other people there were nice!

Urban Dictionary: yinz
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We like Chambersburg overall, we’ve been here several times, that guy was just an azzhole! :laugh:

As to the accent, it doesn’t bother me too much. My manager is in Pittsburg, and the one word he says that always raises a smile is how he pronounces “file” - he says “fow,” no “l” sound.

The other distinctive thing here is that super-flattened “o” sound - “home” comes out like “hoom,” “house” like “hoos,” etc.
 
Language (and dialects) fascinates me. Every country has its own local and regional dialects, and anyone who states the opposite is simply senseless.
Brought up in the UK, we thought everyone who came from over the pond spoke with an "American" accent.
Wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong and wrong! Every state has a different way of speaking - and quite probably, certain areas within each state; just the same as we ´ve got different "dialects" in the UK. The most difficult to understand (for me) were from Texas and Tennessee; but listen hard and you´ll get it!
I´m currently enjoying the London "dialect" immensly - including the smatterings of Cockney from time to time and the quick-fire way of speaking. I absolutely HATE the drawl from where I was born (Maidstone), which goes something like:
"See you, Tracy: I´ve got to get back home and make some dinner for Jason" (Normal)
" Seee yew, Tray seee, I gotta get back oome and make some din-uh for Jay -sun" (Maidstone drawl)
 
karadekoolaid said:
Language (and dialects) fascinates me. Every country has its own local and regional dialects, and anyone who states the opposite is simply senseless.
Brought up in the UK, we thought everyone who came from over the pond spoke with an "American" accent.
Wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong and wrong! Every state has a different way of speaking - and quite probably, certain areas within each state; just the same as we ´ve got different "dialects" in the UK. The most difficult to understand (for me) were from Texas and Tennessee; but listen hard and you´ll get it!
I´m currently enjoying the London "dialect" immensly - including the smatterings of Cockney from time to time and the quick-fire way of speaking. I absolutely HATE the drawl from where I was born (Maidstone), which goes something like:
"See you, Tracy: I´ve got to get back home and make some dinner for Jason" (Normal)
" Seee yew, Tray seee, I gotta get back oome and make some din-uh for Jay -sun" (Maidstone drawl)
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Oh my goodness, yes. When I lived in Florida, my town was a resort coastal town near an AF base and everyone there mostly had neutral "accents", but go 30 miles inland and the southern drawl took over. Most of NW Florida is just underneath Alabama and very close to the state line. A little further east and North Central Florida is under the Georgia state line, so a southern drawl again, but slightly different. Many of the tourists had deep southern accents. The Emerald Coast of NW Florida is also know as the Redneck Riviera, by the way, because people from Tennessee, the Carolinas, etc. would come vacation there.

Here's a story I have told before:
I was hanging out at a bar with some friends in my hometown of Destin, FL back when I was about 25. Anywhere in FL in beach resort areas, most people don't have much of a Southern accent, if any. My friends and I did not. Anyway, some guy came up to me and asked if he could buy me a drink. He had a very deep drawl. I asked him where he was from, and he said what sounded to me like, "Way across Georgia." I asked, "Yeah but where are you from?" and he said, "Way across." I said, "Yeah, but how far across, and what's the name of the town?" He shouted at me, "THE NAME OF THE TOWN IS WAYCROSS!" My friends and I busted up laughing and he walked away.
 
JAS_OH1 said:
They have some bassackwards roads and bassackwards people over there in PA. Just sayin', that clerk had no room for mockery, coming from people who say, "Yinz". I know it's more over in the Pittsburgh area where people say stuff like that, and actually people in Pittsburgh are pretty pleasant overall. Never had the displeasure of going to Chambersburg, though. Hopefully that jerk was just a one-off and other people there were nice!

Urban Dictionary: yinz
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Yinz is very real in Pittsburgh. It is the P-burgh version of Y'all in Texas. My Grandparents said it all the time. My dad, not so much, but he's do it from time to time, much Like I don't usually say Y'all, but do sometimes, depending on the company around me at the time.

And yes, people in Pittsburgh are very nice. I've been back several times, and I've always been treated well.

I was working in Pittsburgh for a week a few years back, with a bunch of guys from an all-white small city in Indiana. They were the ones I wanted to B-Slap. Pittsburgh is an old city, with diverse neighborhoods. They couldn't get past their MAGA mentalities.

CD
 
JAS_OH1 said:
Oh my goodness, yes. When I lived in Florida, my town was a resort coastal town near an AF base and everyone there mostly had neutral "accents", but go 30 miles inland and the southern drawl took over. Most of NW Florida is just underneath Alabama and very close to the state line. A little further east and North Central Florida is under the Georgia state line, so a southern drawl again, but slightly different. Many of the tourists had deep southern accents. The Emerald Coast of NW Florida is also know as the Redneck Riviera, by the way, because people from Tennessee, the Carolinas, etc. would come vacation there.

Here's a story I have told before:
I was hanging out at a bar with some friends in my hometown of Destin, FL back when I was about 25. Anywhere in FL in beach resort areas, most people don't have much of a Southern accent, if any. My friends and I did not. Anyway, some guy came up to me and asked if he could buy me a drink. He had a very deep drawl. I asked him where he was from, and he said what sounded to me like, "Way across Georgia." I asked, "Yeah but where are you from?" and he said, "Way across." I said, "Yeah, but how far across, and what's the name of the town?" He shouted at me, "THE NAME OF THE TOWN IS WAYCROSS!" My friends and I busted up laughing and he walked away.
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I don't know how it was back then, but Destin FL is rich white people vacation homes now. Resorts, fine dining, no place for po-folk. I would expect a real mix of accents, from Hotlanta draw to New York Jew (although more of that in Miami). My parent's wealthy stock broker has a house there.

CD
 
People say kiwis and ozzie are similar. They arent, kiwis are different. I try find a way of putting my voice on here.
Southlanders have a drawl that is different again. My grandkids somehow have picked up the drawl of them. Lord knows where they got it from.
Scottish people may as well be talking swahili.

Russ
 
Last time I did a Yorkshire accent (where I've lived in the UK) my teacher graded me with a B. When I imititated Nigella Lawson for my last assignment, I got an A :laugh: so now I'll imitate Nigella to get good grades lol. Apperently my teacher prefers a Southern British accent.

I prefer the Yorkshire/Northern UK and Scottish accents though. So romantic.

I really loathe it when I am tired and I speak English with a Dutch accent, it just sounds awful to me.
 
Windigo said:
When I imititated Nigella Lawson for my last assignment, I got an A :laugh:
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Nigella makes everything sound like a romance novel…specifically, the passages where things are taking a turn. :laugh:

Windigo said:
I really loathe it when I am tired and I speak English with a Dutch accent, it just sounds awful to me.
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I’ll bet it sounds fine.

As far as languages go, I’ve always preferred those that most people describe as harsh, as opposed to the smoothness of say, Spanish, Italian, or French.

For some reason, German sounds absolutely beautiful to me, and I’m always caught a little off-guard when people say it’s got a brutal sound. Same with Russian, I like all those hard consonants.
 
My accent is all over the place and depends a lot on who I am talking to at the time. I can easily slip into a Glaswegian accent, not thick but obvious enough. However my secondary school didn't liked it and 'Queen's English' was called for. This applied to all of the girls there which given the location in the West Midlands wasn't the easiest of tasks. The Potteries has it's own unique accent & words.

Time out up north and down south, marrying someone from the Oldham area of Manchester and family being from south Wales or from Warrington has meant that my accent standards out.

Curiously this has become very noticeable in the last 6 years since moving to Australia. Even in the last few days I've been identified as being from Lancashire by my accent. The guy's wife is from Burnley originally... Total stranger...

I also get frequently stopped by people completely randomly usually saying "I've love your accent". It's become a regular "thing". I've given up saying the UK when o.k. addled where I'm from. I now give a closer location or Lancashire, Cheshire or Staffordshire... throwing in Scotland for good measure!
 
caseydog said:
Yinz is very real in Pittsburgh. It is the P-burgh version of Y'all in Texas. My Grandparents said it all the time. My dad, not so much, but he's do it from time to time, much Like I don't usually say Y'all, but do sometimes, depending on the company around me at the time.

And yes, people in Pittsburgh are very nice. I've been back several times, and I've always been treated well.

I was working in Pittsburgh for a week a few years back, with a bunch of guys from an all-white small city in Indiana. They were the ones I wanted to B-Slap. Pittsburgh is an old city, with diverse neighborhoods. They couldn't get past their MAGA mentalities.

CD
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Pittsburgh is about 2 hours from me. I go there about 10x a year, usually for work, though we've gone to the casinos a few times. It's a pretty cool city.
 
karadekoolaid said:
Last time I was in Florida, the mixture of accents was incredible.
Cuban, Venezuelan, Dominican Republic, Nicaraguan, Mexican and Puerto Rican. :roflmao: :roflmao: :roflmao: :roflmao:
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I had a woman from Caracas come to work for me in the mid-90's. She had worked for Pepsico there and wanted to learn to repair compressors used to produce breathing air for scuba/fire fighters. You also need to be able to decipher "Cracker" in central Florida. Those folks are named for the cattle people that crack whips when moving the cattle around.
 
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