I unwittingly tuned in to this zombie thread which is totally unrelated to my topic except when I got to post #47 (which is current) it got me to thinking.
I have a serious aversion to accents, drawls, certain vocal traits. , teeth on edge “shut the fuck up” annoyance.
As I said in my post in that thread, I’m talking about American speech that veers from “standard” or “neutral” or whatever the proper term is.
It’s not about a prejudice against certain classes, or regions (as far as I can consciously tell) and I don’t let it show or avoid people. I simply get really freakin’ irritated by the sound of some people’s voice.
Does that happen to anyone else? In that thread Brandon explained at length something call Misophonia and it sort of seemed to be along the same lines as how I feel.
I know people in all different locales with all different speech patterns are reading this and I sincerely do not mean to offend anyone. Again, I don’t judge or disparage anyone for how they speak. I know it’s my own problem and I just kind of suffer it in silence. I’m just wondering if anyone else feels the same way.
(please don’t hate me please don’t hate me please don’t hate me)
I don’t know if it’s irrational, but I do get annoyed by some Spanish-language voiceovers in games, mainly:
lots of Spanish-language voiceovers are done by the same studio. This studio has only one actress…
and then there’s the ones where the actor has a pgonushashon ghefe’t. With so many people in the world, you couldn’t find someone who can read a handful of lines without sounding like his mouth is full of soap?
Outside of that context I tend to find super-high voices irritating (think Melanie Griffith), and also some mannerisms which I see as artificial (the kind of people who sound like they’re listening to themselves in a mirror, and yes I’m mixing images).
I think the guy who resurrected that the other thread is flat crazy and his assertions are pure BS / crazy / woo.
Having said that there are certain accents that mildly annoy me when I hear them. I associate them with loud ignorant anger-driven people. Even if the folks talking are PhDs quietly discussing happy puppies. My reaction amounts to “take your grating noise elsewhere and get out of my ears!!”.
The fact that most folks with this accent do tend to be loud in public and tend to talk incessantly makes it a bit worse for me.
Not sure if this is the same thing, but I see red when people leave the “g” off words that end in “ing”. “Good mornin’” is a sure way to make my morning decidedly ungood.
The only one I mind is that rising inflection of Valspeak.
I once heard an hour talk by Richard Feynman in pure Brooklyn (although he was actually from Far Rockaway, which is technically in Queens) and it was charming. When he took questions at the end, though, his answers were in standard American, so I assume the effect was studied.
On NPR, when Eleanor Beardsley speaks, I want to smack the person closest to me. That grating accent. I love Katharine Hepburn, and she had a similar tone, but it really worked for her…
There was an interesting This American Life segment recently about how they get a lot of complaints about “Vocal Fry” when they have young women report stories. He went on to say that before that they would get complaints about how young women would end non question sentences with rising inflection like a question. Before that it was them using the word “like” to much and so on and so on. His thesis was that the specific complaint was whatever the trend of the day is but the bottom line is some people just don’t like hearing news or authoritative commentary from young women.
The second I hear a thick Indian accent when I call customer service/support, I become irrationally rage-y. But maybe it’s nto really all that irrational, since my hearing is damaged from listening to music way too loud right next to my ear and my phone has shit sound anyway, the thick accent and weird emphasis is going to tip me right over into not understanding somewhere between 75 and 100% of whatever this person says to me, which is a pretty understandable reason to get a little rage-y…especially since I’m calling because I’m having some kind of issue that needs addressing, not just for fun, and I’m poised to be a little rage-y to begin with.
Some voice tones do bother me, along with music from a saxophone. Also those who have very loud/prominent voices. And some accents I have a hard time understanding, not that they bother me, just it does make it more difficult to have a conservation with them.
[QUOTE=WOOKINPANUB]
Not sure if this is the same thing, but I see red when people leave the “g” off words that end in “ing”. “Good mornin’” is a sure way to make my morning decidedly ungood.
[/QUOTE]
The trend I have seen is they leave off the Good part, and just say mornin’. I have no problem with leaving off the g, because they have communicated the concept ‘morning’ to me sufficiently. But to leave out the good part makes me want to reply ‘yes it is morning’
It’s hard not to be offended in some way by the OP. With the exception of vocal fry, people’s accents are not affectations. That’s the way they learned to speak. S’uthrnrs, folk from Bahstan, or (yo) Brooklyn, even people from Wecahnsin aren’t doing it to be cool.
Let those without any regionalisms cast the first staan.
I’m not questioning anyone’s motivations or reasons for the way they sound; I’m just saying the mere sound of certain voices / dialects irritates me seemingly more than it should. My apology still stands; I really don’t mean to offend, though of course I know that some will be (understandably) offended.
Once I got an unsolicited call from a lady with one of those exceedingly nasal Northeastern accents. I inquired if she was having sinus trouble–& her sound improved immediately. Still, it was the nature of the call that got me, not the accent.
A Deep, Deep South accent can get to me. It overlaps with my part of Texas & those who used it in my youth were exceedingly ignorant. So I remind myself that not everyone who talks that way is an inbred racist. (It’s far less common around here, now.)
How about irrationally liking accents? Lyle Lovett comes from around here & wrote some liner notes: “They demonstrate a sensitive, sophisticated understanding of the dignified South.” This was a reissue of albums by the legendary Uncle Walt’s Band. Who came from South Carolina, from whence some dreadful folk have hailed. But I like the accent. (Lyle went to A&M so he’s heard some doozies.)
I once worked for an Indian doctor who loved to “put on” his accent; a certain Peter Sellers movie inspired much of his humor. So I rather like to hear Desis talk…
Well, to be fair, it was your comment about dropping the “g” that “offended” me (I’m not really offended). That’s my accent. I don’t do it deliberately, but if I try to reform and say “morning” it sounds to me like Jonny Lee Miller in Elementary over pronouncing his final syllabless. Saying “morninG” sounds affected to my ears.
This board is full of threads about people bitching about the most odd things. One never knows what will upset someone. Do I have weird bathroom habits? Should I honk at that bicyclist, or not? Can I drink milk in a bar? Now someone’s judging me on my g’s. What’s a guy to do?
Well to begin with, start pronouncing the final “g” and stop asking so many damned questions
I think all these pesky, petty things that we bat around here are just blowing off steam in a way so we don’t take our little irritations out on people IRL. I promise, if I ever met you and you said “good mornin’ WOOK”, I would not think less of you or show any outward signs of irritation at your particular way of speaking.
While you’re getting irritated at people who don’t pronouce the final “g,” I’ll be over here getting peeved at people (primarily English) who can’t pronounce the [del]le’er[/del] letter t.
