Such as the “different to” someone posted above. I’m used to “different than.”
U2 definitely still sing in an Irish accent. I’m surprised you don’t hear it on The Wall, it comes in really strong there.
The accent might not be as strong as when they speak, but there are differences in how west coast people would sing. Even the Beatles had accents when they sang, but they were more subdued.
Syd Barrett definitely sang with an accent. Some other bands with singers who have distinct accents:
Sex Pistols (by the way, the influence of English bands on punk has led to a lot American bands adopting English accents- listen to Green Day)
Television Personalities
Smiths
You get the idea.
I don’t recall hearing or reading that in any Linguistic literature as it relates to the “all accents are equal” idea.
What you’re referring to here is an individual phenomena. Some people are receptive to picking up the new area’s accent, some are not.
That one grates. (I’m used to ‘different from’.)
I disagree from well thought out experience. More harsh accents are difficult to pick up than softened ones. Parts of Southern accents are easy to pick up by visitors and many report that it is more pronounced when they have been drinking. I report this a a phenomena not from a few people but of hundreds.
I have never met an adult that picked up any of the harsher, more clipped accents such as the stereotypical Boston or Bronx accents. I would say that effect is extremely rare or nonexistent from experience with thousands of people.
Californians indeed have an accent. Some have a pretty hardcore one. I can usually pick a Caliifornian out of a crowd. It’s a bit of a drawl. I have a pretty heavy one. People nail me as a Californians within minutes of meeting me.
One thing to keep in mind is that a lot of Californians wern’t raised in California, so that affects me.
While that dose affect me to some degree, that is neither here nor there. What I really meant to say was “that affects things”,
I agree it may not be the best word for it, but I can’t think of any other word that is closer.
I am using accent to mean an “added tonal quality.” I can pronounce “schedule” like shedyule instead of skedyule but unless I put on my faux-British “accent” no one is going to think I’m British just because I pronounced it with a shh sound.
If accent isn’t the proper word though, I am not sure what is. But just the overall pitch, amount of nose used, roar, or whatever. It seems to usually be something affected to give a certain sense of a character about your group of people. For instance Japanese guys lowering their voices ten notches and adding a growl to seem properly samurai. Or similarly flamers having their own higher voice with the slight lisp (or whatever.)
No. Think back to the fish/water analogy offered earlier. You don’t hear your own accent - nobody does. It’s still there.
Um, what do you think the word “accent” means if it doesn’t encompass pronunciation?
Hey, do you pronounce the names “Don” and “Dawn” differently? Because there’s a merger of those two vowels such that most West Coasters pronounce them exactly the same way; it’s something that’s spread some across North America but it certainly isn’t the norm where I am. If you pronounce them the same, or “cot” and “caught”, then that should be an easily perceptible clue that you have a west coast accent.
I can’t even figure out what this little rule you’ve invented could possibly mean. But trust me when I tell you that Johanna knows far more about linguistics than you do. Probably more than I do as well, come to think of it. You really shouldn’t go around attempting to correct her.
Precisely.
The West Coast accent is, in large part, what you hear on TV and in the media. Obviously speakers of other accents can hear that they don’t speak the same way people on TV do. That doesn’t mean that the people on TV “don’t have an accent”. It means they have an accent that occupies a somewhat privileged place in the larger community. It still makes no sense to suggest that anyone “doesn’t have an accent.”
Dude! You’re a scientist, aren’t you? Surely you know about observation bias!
It’s always seemed to me that the Beatles had a fairly distinct English accent when singing. Not as profound as when they spoke, but still there. “I Want to Hold Your Hand” and “A Day in the Life” come to mind.
A little anecdote about accent identification: My friend Joe and I have both lived in California all our lives, and the last 12 or so years in the same town, but I have a vaguely Chicagoan accent (probably comes from the fact that my parents are both from Illinois, though my accent is more pronounced than either of theirs). It’s not uncommon for people here in the States to ask where I’m from, and not fully believe me about being native Californian. When Joe and I were in Australia, however, almost everyone we talked to there instantly pegged me as Californian and most often thought he was South African. Don’t know what this proves other than people with a different frame of reference for things reach different conclusions, but it was a bit odd.
Well, I answered the question on accent vs. dialect in the above post. As said, given it may be the wrong word, but in common usage where I grew up at least I can say that accent is generally used to refer to a sound not pronunciation. If that isn’t the technical word, then I am quite willing to swap it out with the correct one once it is figured out what the hell bit of linguistics I intended instead.
I do agree that the biggest part of the argument is that it’s operating in a sort of linguistic version of relativity. All I can do is take what other things that other people have said to me or that I have heard that didn’t jive with what “should be” and go out making a fool of myself trying to convince the world to debate the evidence rather than common knowledge.
At the moment the best I can say is that none of the songs referenced have included an “accent” as I am currently intending the term.
I certainly agree that their singing accents often are not as strong as their speaking, accents, especially with their earlier, bluesier songs.
But The Beatles sang with an accent. Grab a lyrics sheet and sing along with some of your favorite Beatles songs…you’ll find you pronounce words differently than you usually do.
Unless yer from Liverpool
Let me mitigate that by saying “except when playing the judge or Mummy” of course. Just so we aren’t thinking I’m totally bonkers.
I provided phone support to a repair technician with a Valley accent Friday morning, so it’s still around.
“Ah don’t haiyave ain aiyaccent.”
- Kellier Pickler, April 11, 2006
Note that when it comes to phonology, many distinctive features of the “California accent” are mentioned, including regional differences within the state.
Interesting. It says that in California English ‘king’ and ‘keen’ have the same vowel sound. As a native Southern Californian, I pronounce ‘king’ with a short ‘i’ (sort of like in ‘pin’), and ‘keen’ with a long ‘e’ sound.
I’ve heard claims that singing through microphones tends to lead people to use vowel sounds which are more typical of American accents than English ones. I prefer this to the idea that in the 1960s there was a real concept of emulating an American accent in order to be successful (after all, plenty of people made a fortune just from the British market.)
Professor Higgins confirmed that years ago in “My Fair Lady.”
Every continernt, country, locale, and language or dialect.