I once took a trip to Baltimore, and asked some advice from a hotel security guard. I had tremendous difficulty understanding him, as his speech sounded incredibly slurred and sloppy, or as if he had marbles in his mouth. I was quite impressed that someone with such obvious mental challenges was able to overcome the odds and get and keep a job. Encounters with more of the populace gave me the shocking realization that that’s just how some people from Baltimore talk. I have never been to any other city that sounds as bad. Thankfully, the younger generation either talks like MTV or BET (whichever is appropriate), which are both easily intelligible to me.
Also, I thought that Ozzy Osbourne’s manner of speech was caused by all the drugs he took, but I was told later that everyone from Birmingham talks that way. How many cities can there be in the world where everyone talks like they’ve been hit in the head one time too many? What causes this phenomenon?
Also, are there places in the world where my northeast American accent sounds like I’m permanently drunk?
Well, that’s 2 pit threads in one day. Time to stop procrastinating and do my damn taxes.
Brummies (people from Birmingham) have thick accents, but not that thick, for the most part. I can’t understand Ozzy and I lived in Birmingham for eight years.
There are a few districts where people have even thicker accents than Ozzie; “Er’um’s got a foonay babby, eyah?” is Brummie for “She’s got a funny baby, hasn’t she?” but he’s not one of them.
If you can find a clip of him speaking prior to about 1981, his speech is fairly clear; not exactly received pronunciation, but easy for most English speakers to understand.
I’m curious. Can you elaborate? Which specific features strike you harshly? Also, where do you originate? (I’m ignoring the “Location” item on your profile, since people tend to move around)
Northeast American makes me think of Bostonian ‘staht the cah’ which sounds childish to some. I didn’t use a smiley but didn’t intend it as a harsh insult just a poke. The people in your OP include many smart people who don’t think they have accents either.
Ah, I should have been more specific: Philadelphia, which has a very different accent from Boston.
Sounds like the male announce here.
At least, I think that’s what it sounds like. You see, to me, that sounds like no accent whatsoever.
I have nothing bad to say about “Atlantic Canada”, as I’ve never been there so I don’t know what it sounds like.
Well this is no fun, I don’t hear an accent in Philadelphia residents either. We need to round up some New Englanders. We have a lot of French and Irish accents here but alas I have none according to the Scots and Russians and Iranians, etc. that I’ve worked with.
And then there’s the glorious Pittsburgh accent: perfectly calibrated to say what needs saying as quickly and painlessly as possible, with no regards to aesthetics or manners whatsoever n’at.
I lived in Washington DC for 12 years, just an hour’s drive from Baltimore, and I was there quite often. Can’t say as I noticed an accent in either place. Except that a lot of the locals call their city “Ball’mur” with maybe a little teeny i thrown in between, sometimes.
Thanks to President Kennedy, I learned when I was seventeen that a weird dialect didn’t reflect ignorance. So we got over snickering at him ever time he talked about our probems with “Cuber” – especially when he saved our asses during the Cuban missile crisis.
A little edjication cured me of thinkin’ people are dumb because of their regional dialects. That idea doesn’t seem to have taken hold in television production yet on the East or West Coast. Even when you’re a model, you are pressured to get rid of that Southern accent.
I wasn’t saying “accents sound funny”, in fact I think most accents sound cool and interesting (including Australian, by the way). I’ve heard many different accents, but it’s very frustrating on those few occasions when an accent is absolutely incomprehensible to the point of barely understanding half of the words that a person is speaking. I was trying to communicate with the security guard, but it was like I was talking through the audio equivalent of a one-way mirror: he could understand me, but I couldn’t understand him.
