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Post by onlymark on Apr 21, 2011 13:23:12 GMT
You would be right, no probably about it..............
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Post by mich64 on Apr 21, 2011 15:51:13 GMT
I find this topic interesting and challenging.
Kerouac and Mark, I would expect your accents to be unique due to my knowledge from reading your varied posts of how many places you have lived and travelled. When I listened to Mark's voice and vocabulary, I was intrigued and it was helpful that Mark posted the meaning of the words spoken.
bjd, my father-in-law is often asked if he is from Belguim when we are in France and when he says that he is Canadian they are not surprised either.
My mother-in-law is from the Lorraine region of France. When she was a child, during the war, she, along with her mother and brother, were sent to Paris and remembers feeling alienated due to their accents. She speaks with sadness about that period of her life, she missed her father, her home, her family and friends and she was afraid for sounding different.
Personally, the injury caused the difference in may accent and vocabulary. During my speech therapy this week, my Therapist again explained that I speak with too much formality. The Pathologist and Therapists have decided for me to spend more time in the Hospital with them. What they are arranging with Human Resources is that I become a volunteer for the Speech Department. I will be given instructions depending on their patient needs. I will be working with stroke patients, dementia patients and children. It will be the first time they have had their own volunteer who is also their patient. I am eager to begin, however, it will most likely take 6 to 12 weeks to organize the project. Cheers, Mich
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Post by cheerypeabrain on Apr 21, 2011 16:26:18 GMT
Mark...that made perfect sense to me.... ;D
The Leicester accent is similar but 'flatter', less well rounded than your dulcet times medear...
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Post by onlymark on Apr 21, 2011 17:19:29 GMT
Glad you understand it. At least others won't think I'm making it all up like a northern version of Stanley Unwin (remember him at all?). Even though I'm within a relatively short drive from Nottingham, the Nottingham city accent is quite different isn't it?
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Post by onlymark on Apr 21, 2011 17:32:28 GMT
Jenny at 1:50 - usual standard accent from Nottingham city -
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Post by mich64 on Apr 21, 2011 18:44:33 GMT
I neglected to comment on my accent when I described my vocabulary. I am told I do not sound anything like I did prior to the injury. My doctor says he hears a French accent as does my family.
My husband was asked by a co-worker, "When did you get a Russian maid?" He had telephoned our home asking for my husband and I explained he was not at home and told him when he would be. My husband told him, "no, that was Mich."
It is when answering the telephone that I have been asked if I come from Eastern European countries, India, Pakistan or France, my husband explains that this is because when speaking on the telephone I do not use complete sentences. When speaking in front of someone, it is then I make it a priority to use all words properly, I speak slower and I want to ensure I am understood. Mich
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Post by Deleted on Apr 21, 2011 18:44:45 GMT
One thing that has always interested me is that there are lots of people from places with strong accents who can shift to a "standard" accent when they see that the person opposite them is having comprehension difficulties, but there are some who seem to have not the slightest inkling that they are not being understood. I will never forget one of my trips to Australia where I had to get the customs official to repeat himself five times to finally figure out that he was asking the very simple question "Do you have anything to declare?" When I finally managed to answer him, he just looked at me as though people with such a poor command of English shouldn't necessarily be allowed into his country.
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Post by onlymark on Apr 21, 2011 19:30:38 GMT
Pardon?
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Post by spindrift on Apr 27, 2011 15:24:18 GMT
Bixa - how can we contrive to record our voices... why don't we chose a verse of poetry then everyone can record themselves reading it?
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Post by bixaorellana on Apr 28, 2011 19:24:01 GMT
Spindrift, at Reply #26, Mark tells how he recorded his voice for this thread. That's a really good idea about having us all use the same text, although it would also be an example of how well, or not, we read aloud. It would be perfect if someone could tape us secretly while we were on the phone with a friend, or otherwise speaking normally and unselfconsciously. NOTE: picture discussion was moved here: anyportinastorm.proboards.com/index.cgi?action=display&board=coffeeklatch&thread=4989&page=1
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Post by bixaorellana on Apr 29, 2011 3:31:31 GMT
I just spent over an hour on the phone with a cousin from Baton Rouge. At some point, I started hearing my own accent, which had gotten increasingly southern as the conversation went on. I heard myself say the word "bridge", and remembered that it usually only has one syllable.
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Post by mickthecactus on Apr 29, 2011 7:29:52 GMT
I must apologise for hi-jacking the thread. I was going to suggest to Bixa that she split it off.
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Post by lola on Apr 29, 2011 15:44:59 GMT
So, that's you in #13, oM? I love it! I've recorded some words on forvo.com, a site I really like, under the handle stokebailey. There's a cassette tape at our library called something like "Accents of Great Britain and Ireland", where people from different regions record the sonnet "Shall I Compare You to a Summer's Day." They also read it in what Shakespeare's accent is speculated to have been. We could do that one for youtube.
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Post by patricklondon on May 1, 2011 10:53:01 GMT
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Post by Deleted on May 1, 2011 10:57:14 GMT
Bixa - how can we contrive to record our voices... why don't we chose a verse of poetry then everyone can record themselves reading it? What a very cool idea. I'm game.
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Post by bixaorellana on May 1, 2011 16:56:38 GMT
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Post by spindrift on May 1, 2011 21:46:06 GMT
casimira - great....which poem shall we choose? then narrow it down to a verse or two?
or it could be a sutra....
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Post by patricklondon on May 2, 2011 14:26:33 GMT
Coming into this discussion a bit late - dialects aren't a corruption of a core language, they're a series of different parallel developments reflecting local circumstances, one of which comes to dominate a larger area and ultimately becomes recognised as the common language of a particular jurisdiction, for all sorts of relatively accidental reasons. The idea that one country = one language is relatively recent in human history (and the idea that one language = one nation state even more so). "A language is a dialect with an army" is the standard remark on that point.
For myself, I was brung up to talk proper (i.e., more or less standard BBC English or "Received Pronunciation", indeed all my mother's family seem to have a similar and rather distinctive way of doing it that I can't quite put my finger on (great-grand-mother was a governess, and probably over-compensated for the family's otherwise rather modest origins). Having been educated as a linguist, I do pick up the accent around me quite quickly; I was in the Midlands for some years and for a while could sound like a Shakespearian yokel, whereas back in London I reverted to RP with some rather slack "estuary" vowels. (Incidentally, watching the Danish TV series The Killing, and listening to the way some Danish sounds overlap with English, I suspect the kind of "diphthong vowels" my mother would deplore come from the Danish influence over eastern England - a thousand years ago!).
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Post by Deleted on May 2, 2011 14:46:03 GMT
hmm...yes accents. The trouble with me is I pick up accents very very fast. (Same with languages). And before I know it I'm speaking just like the people I'm around. I have a mixture of an England/Canadian accents. I used to sound almost exactly Canadian at one time, until I met my ex who was British and so I picked up on his accent as well. Each time I go back to the UK, I end up sounding more British. When I worked in London I guess my accent was very much like Patricks, a typical BBC type.
Same goes for vocabulary. I was surprised at just how hard I found it to communicate in Indian with my family over in the England. I had forgotten some of the words! I felt like a right idiot, but they thought it was just amusing. It came easier by the end of my stay though.
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Post by onlymark on May 2, 2011 14:49:43 GMT
So Schweizerdeutsch is a parallel development of .... German(?).... or something else? - if it is a dialect. Or is it a language? I've never understood it.
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Post by Deleted on May 2, 2011 16:50:23 GMT
Well, Alsatians understand it -- it is very similar to their language.
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Post by onlymark on May 2, 2011 17:11:23 GMT
All woofs and barks you mean?
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Post by patricklondon on May 2, 2011 19:41:02 GMT
German and Germanic languages are an interesting case. I'm not enough of an expert to know when and how "Hochdeutsch" came to be standardised (something to do with the Holy Roman Empire?), or which was the dialect that "won", but I do know there are much stronger regional/dialect variations, reflecting the greater political and economic decentralisation of the Germanic language areas, of which Swiss German is just one. Different parts of Germany are very proud of their local variation, be it Kölsch (around Cologne), or Plattdeutsch (around Hamburg - if you learnt school German you can just about understand Plattdeutsch if you think of it as German spoken by someone from Newcastle), and I have the impression they're supported and promoted almost as if they are different languages in their own right. Presumably the Swiss think of Schweizerdeutsch as a mark of their independent identity.
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Post by spindrift on May 2, 2011 21:43:12 GMT
They do indeed. And German speakers from Germany seem to look down on it.
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Post by patricklondon on May 6, 2011 5:55:08 GMT
A bit late now, perhaps, but anyone who's interested in English accents, vocabulary and language in general can still get something out of the legacy of the British Library's recent Evolving English exhibition - podcasts of associated events, samples of accents and voices, and so on: www.bl.uk/evolvingenglish
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Post by onlymark on May 6, 2011 10:00:22 GMT
Interesting that patrick.
I ad a listen t'lad wot cums from raand our way. Saanded a bit stuk up tho.
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Post by bjd on May 6, 2011 11:43:58 GMT
I first listened to a woman from Ontario, then to a guy from S Africa. I find that the problem is that people are reading rather than talking, which changes the way people speak. He was a good reader, with lots of expression. She sounded totally dull, with no inflection anywhere.
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Post by patricklondon on May 6, 2011 12:26:33 GMT
Not Guy Martin, then.
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Post by onlymark on May 6, 2011 13:31:41 GMT
The biker? No, definitely not like 'im.
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Post by bixaorellana on May 6, 2011 17:01:25 GMT
I first listened to a woman from Ontario, then to a guy from S Africa. I find that the problem is that people are reading rather than talking, which changes the way people speak. He was a good reader, with lots of expression. She sounded totally dull, with no inflection anywhere. I've found that, too. That's why I said it would be better to record ourselves simply speaking, rather than reading. Anyway, if you don't care for your own accent, you can just go get your teeth fixed: Imagine going in for dental surgery with an Oregon accent, and coming out with a mixture of Northern British, Scottish, Irish and a hint of Eastern European. This is what happened to Karen Butler, 56. She woke up from anesthesia sounding like somebody from the British Isles.full story here
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