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Post by lola on May 7, 2011 14:32:16 GMT
So, we've been watching DVD set Life On Mars, Manchester version lately, and finding the accent charming but challenging in spots, like during the labor dispute and football episodes. Last night we broke down and turned on the English subtitles.
The Evolving English map is fun. I found I could handle the Mr. Tickle better if I skipped to different sections for each reader. One woman from Kansas put on self-conscious airs and pronounced both sets of "t's" in "attitude", though; we don't do that sort of thing in these parts, Miss Smartypants.
The geography's a little off, too, so it took me awhile to find any Minnesota speakers. I spent a week there recently, and love that accent. You could hear it in one man from the Twin Cities' "scone" and "attitude."
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Post by hwinpp on May 20, 2011 5:15:03 GMT
They do indeed. And German speakers from Germany seem to look down on it. I wouldn't say Germans look down on it. Most Germans speak their home dialects anyway, even Braunschweig and Hanover have a home grown dialect that's quite funny. Hochdeutsch and Plattdeutsch are originally exactly that, high German was spoken in the mountains and 'flat' German in the flat parts, even extending as far south as Cologne (Koelsch is a 'Platt'). I don't know when and how 'Hochdeutsch' became the name for standard German. Here's what the (English) wikipedia article says about Hochdeutsch: Hochdeutsch is a German word which literally translates to "high German".
It is commonly used with two meanings:
Linguistically and historically, it refers to the High German languages (Hochdeutsche Sprachen), or dialects (Hochdeutsche Mundarten/Dialekte), which developed in the Southern uplands and the Alps, for example, modern central and southern Germany (Saxony, Bavaria, etc.), Austria, Liechtenstein, and Switzerland. This is opposed to Low German dialects (Plattdeutsch, Niederdeutsch), which developed on the lowlands and along the flat sea coasts of modern northern Germany (Lower Saxony, North Rhine-Westphalia, Hamburg, etc.).
It is also used to refer to Standard German, a standardized form of the German language (Standarddeutsch), used as a written language, in formal contexts, and for communication between different dialect areas, which everybody in the German-speaking regions is supposed to understand, and which is taught to foreigners. This use is somewhat misleading since it collides with the linguistic term for the High German languages, but in fact, Standard German, is composed mostly from these High German dialects.
In the first usage, hoch refers to "high" in a strictly geographic sense, as "situated far above sealevel", thus in the mountainous regions surrounding the Alps.[1]
In the second meaning, hoch came to mean "educated" or "cult" in an academic or social context, as opposed to the local dialects which are used in informal situations.
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Post by Deleted on May 27, 2011 8:42:06 GMT
"British pop star Cheryl Cole has been dropped from the judging panel of the US version of The X Factor, according to a US report.
Entertainment website TMZ said sources claimed producers were concerned the singer's Newcastle accent was too strong for US audiences."
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Post by bjd on May 27, 2011 10:01:58 GMT
I heard her on a video on the BBC yesterday. She sounded perfectly fine to me.
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Post by bixaorellana on May 31, 2011 0:27:30 GMT
I didn't know who she was, but found this interview on youtube: www.youtube.com/user/cherylcolemusic?blend=1&ob=5#p/u/0/us6EPrD_kKMShe has a very pleasant speaking voice and is not difficult to understand. Oh -- I did have trouble at @2:20, but by listening carefully several times, I realized she was saying that she showed it "to me friend, Lily". I thought the first girl with a question was difficult to understand.
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Post by Deleted on Jul 12, 2011 20:28:37 GMT
When your parents are from different countries and you are born in a third country, it is difficult to know what to lose and what to acquire.
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Post by Deleted on Jul 14, 2011 19:29:55 GMT
There was a debate on the radio the other day about accents, because one of the authorities involved in the new African addition to the French départements -- Mayotte -- was caught saying that proper schooling should rid the inhabitants of their accent. This had people up in arms everywhere, because there are many regional accents in France, just as there are in all other countries of any size at all, and people are generally quite proud of their accents. Why should the accent of Mayotte be any more shameful than the accent of Marseille or Toulouse?
Naturally, things are always a bit more complicated than that, since certain accents are associated with less developed areas. But should we really give up a part of our identity to succeed in a different place?
Eva Joly was just chosen to be the Green candidate for the next presidential election in France. She has a very thick Norwegian accent since that is where she is from. When she was questioned about whether anybody can take her seriously with such an accent, she had a very elegant reply. "My accent is proof of the influence of French culture around the world."
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Post by auntieannie on Jul 19, 2011 16:11:35 GMT
yey for Eva Joly!
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Post by lagatta on Jul 20, 2011 3:20:55 GMT
Well, I dunno. I think it is wonderful if people -and their elected representatives - come from everywhere on the planet. But if Mme Joly has a "very thick" accent that makes her discourse difficult to understand, shouldn't she be taking elocution lessons? She is not an oppressed working-woman who has no time or resources to do so.
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Post by Deleted on Jul 20, 2011 4:52:58 GMT
Oh, she is perfectly comprehensible.
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Post by fumobici on Jul 20, 2011 5:07:28 GMT
I'd love to be able to pronounce French that well
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Post by auntieannie on Jul 20, 2011 16:01:43 GMT
she's fine... I like her!
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Post by mich64 on Jul 21, 2011 13:24:22 GMT
I have begun group speech therapy after 4 1/2 years of one on one speech therapy. I lost my natual accent when I had my injury. As I have written, when I encounter new people many will ask me where I am originally from, once I explain I ask them where they thought I was from, so far I have been told French, German, Russian, East Indian but my favourite is how many think Swedish! I do not think I or my family will ever hear my original accent again but I keep trying. Cheers, Mich
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Post by bjd on Jul 21, 2011 15:26:57 GMT
Good luck with that, Mich. Would you hear your own previous accent if you managed to get it back, or are you used to hearing yourself with your new way of speaking?
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Post by Deleted on Jul 21, 2011 18:22:12 GMT
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Post by mich64 on Jul 22, 2011 1:33:23 GMT
I do not think I would know.... and I doubt my family remember it either, it is so different now I do not think I will ever recover it. I have myself on a video tape from a trip before this happened but I cannot listen to it yet...
Cheers, Mich
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Post by tod2 on Jul 22, 2011 8:34:47 GMT
Kerouac - Hey - he wasn't half bad! I thought the Vietnamese accent quite good actually
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Post by patricklondon on Jul 22, 2011 14:30:28 GMT
Just a thought for those who are interested in recording and voices.. I've just signed up - and submitted a couple of recordings - to Librivox, an online volunteer audiobook service using out-of-copyright material for recordings also in the public domain: www.librivox.org
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Post by lola on Jul 22, 2011 17:16:05 GMT
Thanks, Patrick. This looks (well, all right, and sounds) good. I might give it shot. Would you be willing to tell us what you read? Or me on PM, alternately, if shy?
I love that #74 guy, Kerouac, though I cannot approve his "midwestern." For one thing, that term includes Chicagoans, Minnesotans, Hoosiers, and me. And Walter Cronkite, who's from St. Joe.
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Post by patricklondon on Jul 29, 2011 7:11:00 GMT
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Post by lola on Jul 29, 2011 14:54:13 GMT
That's beautiful, Patrick. Thank you. I used to have an album of shakespeare scenes and poems read by Sir John Geilgud and a couple of Dames, and your reading reminds me a little of his. Less of his actorly timbre.
My ear for accents is only somewhat less tin than formerly.
About people who acquire accents at UK school or university. Do they revert when they go back for a pint with their old coal miner, for instance, pals? Or chatting with their mums, who presumably sacrificed for that accent?
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Post by patricklondon on Jul 29, 2011 17:15:01 GMT
I think it's well-known that children are commonly "bilingual" as between school and home, though it doesn't always have a class element (nowadays, children of immigrants may well be "trilingual", as between their parents' home language, whatever slang they speak with their contemporaries, and the formal academic language of school). Once upon a time, the working-class schoolchild who made it to Oxbridge and found themselves stranded between there and home was a familiar figure in literature and drama. These days, it would be less acute a problem, as accents and expectations change: academics no longer speak exclusively "posh" and Oxbridge-scholarly, nor do people who go to upper-crust private schools (even junior royalty speaks with "Estuary" vowels now), and with getting on for 40% of the relevant age-group going on to higher education, more and more families are relatively familiar and comfortable with the whole set-up.
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Post by Deleted on Jul 29, 2011 17:20:51 GMT
That is really true. I think that all of us have somewhat different accents, vocabulary and intonations depending on whom we are with -- parents, friends, strangers, etc. And even though I will never attempt an English accent, when I am with British people, I will adopt the vocabulary and intonations. Even without the accent, I am almost accepted as a member of the group.
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Post by onlymark on Jul 29, 2011 17:39:44 GMT
I do change speed of speech and usage of slang and my accent softens a little in foreign company, but on the whole it stays virtually the same. Much to the regret of my mother and wife, my mother because of wanting that I sound more BBC and my wife because (I think I mentioned somewhere, sometime) my kids have picked up my hardened vowels.
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Post by lola on Jul 29, 2011 20:52:46 GMT
We like your vowels exactly as is.
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Post by onlymark on Jul 30, 2011 13:30:47 GMT
It's too late to change them now anyway.
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Post by Deleted on Jul 31, 2011 17:08:30 GMT
Easier to lose one's mrbls.
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Post by lola on Aug 3, 2011 2:26:59 GMT
"You knew about (in this case, my vowels) when you married me" sometimes works.
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Post by ninchursanga on Aug 3, 2011 11:43:21 GMT
Speaking dialects there is one big difference between Germany and Switzerland. In Germany, speakers of dialect are looked dow upon, similar to what Mark was saying of how he would be perceived if he spoke in his local dialect. Educated people in Germany tend to speak nice, clear standard German. In Switzerland people are proud of their dialects, it sets them apart and your doctor, laywer or manager will simply speak in dialect. Standard German originates when Martin Luther wrote down the bible in German. Apparently it was a bestseller at the time and the first time that a 'story book' was distributed in print only and not passed on orally. The Swiss usually call standard German 'written German' cause really no-one talks like that.
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Post by ninchursanga on Aug 3, 2011 11:46:35 GMT
During my last visit to the Netherlands I noticed that I've almost lost my accent. It used to be that Dutch people weren't able to hear that I didn't grow up there, but they would always assume I was from a certain city whose accent I had aquired. Nowadays I just sound like a German who learned how to speak Dutch. I've also noticed that it takes me longer and longer to get back into it, as my vocabulary is slowly eroding. It's all still there, but it takes me longer to retrieve words.
'Language eriosion' is incredibly interesting but few researchers concentrate it. I've been digging through the online library about articles or publication and there's very little.
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