gaffa, may I ask where you were born and raised? I see your profile says Chicago but surely nobody is referring to that accent when they speak of the Midwest as being the “standard American” accent? Mr. Carson was born in Iowa, and I would agree he had a pretty neutral dialect.
And could somebody give me an example of someone I might recognize who speaks with the typical (and apparently awful)Baltimore accent? I’ve heard it mentioned here many times but usually the tv show The Wire is used as a reference point and I’ve never seen that.
For me, it’s Chicago and New England (think Norm Abrams) accents that make me twitchy. I’ve dated two men who Chicago accents – both intelligent, nice guys whose accents made them sound to me like boors. Sorry, I don’t mean to offend. It just grates on me.
Something to consider about accents or pronunciation quirks of media performers …
Anyone who’s been to actual training for speaking via radio or TV is taught to de-emphasize certain sounds which get picked up disproportionately by recording gear. If you’re not careful when speaking into a mike you get popping Ps and hissing Ss.
Modern [del]recording[/del] sound processing gear is better than the Olde Stuffe was. So modern performers don’t need to be as careful as those from, say, the 1970s and before. But when you hear TV / radio personalities soft-pedalling some sounds that’s probably at least part of what’s going on.
Given how many people get almost all their social interaction by listening to media, rather than talking to actual humans, these soft-pedals are probably now leaking out into public as the accepted pronunciation.
Came here to mention the This American Life episode on vocal fry, which I see someone mentioned. Here’s the episode in questionwhich might be useful to those who aren’t quite sure what exactly vocal fry is (there’s a bunch of stuff on youtube about it too). The segment is about how they get lots of listener complaints specifically about the vocal fry of the young women reporters there. But yes some men do it too!
To the OP, I’m not annoyed by any accents though I definitely prefer the sound of some more than others. I don’t care for American “northern” accents or ones like Sarah Palin for instance. And as someone else mentioned, I too am annoyed by persistent “upspeak” which was referenced here as “Valspeak” (as in “valley girl” like the Moon Zappa song back in the day, for other olds!). Those are really my only gripes about voices. The vocal fry is by far the worst IMHO.
Russian grates on my ears. Not so much Russian accented English, but actual Russian. It just sounds to me like shnyet shnyet shnyet shnyet and pretty soon my trigger finger’s getting itchy.
I hate people who speak with question marks?
After every G-d damn sentence?
Who title threads, “Help with aquarium?”
As well as grown women speaking in little girl voices.
And I absolutely hate being called, “Mister First Name.”
In my family it is a familiar privilege used by family, close friends. For instance, the guy who rented land from my Grandmother in Tennessee, her name being “Mai”, called her “Miss Mai.”
And there’s a guy I work with who has a type of southern accent (Eastern NC) that grates on me. Other than that, I actually like to hear most accents. I saw some documentary recently where they had some people from Maine and I was entranced by that accent. I just don’t hear it that often.
I too find certain accents more pleasant than others. For example, I quite like a South African accent, and New Zealand accent, but I find that Australian and many American accents irritate me. I don’t know why that is. I really have to work hard to overcome that prejudice/revulsion when I meet someone from such a place and force myself to listen to what they’re saying, not how they’re saying it.
What bothers me more though is a recent trend I’ve noted locally, which is people dropping “to be” and “me” or “you” from sentences.
For example, someone might say “Does this need washed?” or “Are you coming with?”, instead of “Does this need to be washed?” or “Are you coming with me?”.
Well, there ya go! I came into this thread to mention that the South African and New Zealand accents set my teeth on edge (SA more than NZ, but still…)
And Australians don’t have accents. It’s all the rest of you who talk funny.
No she hasn’t, she jumps back and forth and in between. And she’s nowhere near the only person I know who has kept a distinct accent after 15 years and more “here”. Heck, my aunt has lived in the US for 40 years and still doesn’t fuckin’ speak English! (Not the smartest leaf in the family tree, that aunt).
Not whole accents, but there are bits and pieces that annoy the spit out of me. When I first encountered the whole Spanish-speaker problem with Y and J, I ended up almost decking the guy since I thought I was being made fun of (as it turned out, I was, just not through pronunciation).
Also, English people? If you’re going to berate the rest of us over glottal stops, you need to stop your abuse of the letter R. I don’t care how overeducated and cultured you claim to be, hearing you talk about “Chinar and India” makes you very difficult to take seriously. The phrase is “the letter R”. Not “the letta a”, nor “the lettuh auh”, nor “the lettah ah”. If you can’t make a phonetic distinction between a doctor examining you and a pirate welcoming you to the crew, you’re doing it wrong.
And when you can make a phonetic distinction between “our” and “awe”, we’ll talk.
Sorry that I forgot to mention it. Born in St Louis but raised in Kansas City. Walt Disney spent most of his formative years in Kansas City, as did Walter Cronkite, and between them and Carson they were the voice of the USA.
I’ve encountered the classic C’cawgo accent, though not much in my neighborhood.
I’m the opposite. Sofía Vergara, at least her character on Modern Family, sounds like someone trying to have a hyper just-came-from-Colombia accent. She hits and exagerates every point where Spanish speakers stumble as they learn English. I’ve learnt and spoken English since pre-school and she sounds like I would if I tried to imitate the “classic” Latino accent. It’s so bad, for me, that it makes it imposible for me to listen to her in spite of being amazingly hot.
One of the most valuable things I’ve learned from the Dope is that what you speak of is not an accent. It is a sociolect, a way of speaking common to a particular social group. For instance, murdered gay politician Harvey Milk had a Long Island Jewish accent overlaid with a gay sociolect.
I have a Midwestern accent, overlaid with a computer geek sociolect - any random person meeting me for the first time would instantly assume that I could fix their computer, even if the subject never came up in conversation.
Sociolects are probably more common in less socially accepted groups as a way of bonding against outsiders, but I’d imagine that they are used as a mark of membership in elites as well - cheerleaders with whatever the current version of Val speak.
I do, but only because I don’t fit the preconceived mold (mould).
I am Canadian. This, to many English speakers in the world, mainly in the USA, means that I am supposed to say “aboot” and “hoose.” Thing is, I don’t. My normal speaking voice is the same as any midwestern American’s. Let Tim Allen (from Michigan) and I record a dialogue, and try to tell which of us is from the US and which is from Canada.
Really? Are we going to play variety/accent/dialect/sociolect/idiolect/code change/bidialectism here? In that case I hope you’ll address the fallacy of saying “British accent”.
I really don’t think that the OP was going for the linguistics lesson.
Sorry, I wasn’t trying to imply that she lives in the US or anything; it just seems that she’s been involved in the American film industry for a long enough time that I’d think her English would be better. Remember, I did say irrational. Anyway, I usually enjoy a Latino accent(did I use the correct term?), but I just don’t like her altogether so that one little thing gets magnified for me.
[QUOTE=Ají de Gallina]
I’m the opposite. Sofía Vergara, at least her character on Modern Family, sounds like someone trying to have a hyper just-came-from-Colombia accent. She hits and exagerates every point where Spanish speakers stumble as they learn English. I’ve learnt and spoken English since pre-school and she sounds like I would if I tried to imitate the “classic” Latino accent. It’s so bad, for me, that it makes it imposible for me to listen to her in spite of being amazingly hot.
[/QUOTE]
You’re certainly not alone in feeling that way. I can see how it could get on one’s nerves, yet miraculously it doesn’t not irritate my special snowflake ears
[QUOTE=carnivorousplant]
OP, where are y’all from?
[/QUOTE]
I was born and spent the first half of my life in Sothern California but live in Florida now. And yes, as I’v shared here before, I did have that stupid annoying ValSpeak thing going on (though mine was more surfer / stoner, but just as stupid and annoying). My mother pointed out how unpleasant it was so I worked to lose it starting when I was around twelve. I’m sure there are still things about my voice that irritate others but I do make an effort to stay as neutral as possible.
