Dissection of the American English Video
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- Опубліковано 27 вер 2024
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Simon, now that you've done General American English, you should cover American Southern English. As a Southerner myself, it would be awesome if you could cover America's other big accent in detail as you did here and the other video. Southern American English gets looked down on as a backwards kind of accent that only the ignorant speak in, which is not true from a linguistics point of view. It has, in my opinion (and I know I'm biased), a fascinating linguistics history since it is rather distinct from the northern part of the country. Simon, I love your videos. I've learned so much from them. Keep up the awesome work!
I imagine the same is true for various parts of England/Wales. Listen to how Hagrid speaks in Harry Potter. Same for various characters in Brian Jacques's Redwall series. It would be interesting to speculate as to why this view is so? Did it start as just a way of putting others down, to feel superior? I'd like to flip that and see what happens, what it would sound like.
Which Southern English dialect? New Orleans, Nashville, or Eureka Springs, Arkansas? All of these are quite different.
@@mongke7858 my dad (who is a southerner) pronounces the wh.
@Watch My Playlist he already has once I think.
@@Kitsaplorax Eureka Springs is a yankee town in a Southern state. Do you mean Ozark/Appalachian dialect?
As a General American English speaker, your pronunciation of "butter" and "hand" was scarily perfect
To me, the STRUT vowel in "butter" seemed oddly short and tense the first time he said it, but later in the video it seemed "normal"
I love Nudder Budder cookies! 😃
For me, on the west coast, “butter” was perfect but “hand” sounded like it came from a foreign regional dialect.
@@mikeg8276 Interesting, perhaps West Coast dialects have higher pre-nasal raising? I'm personally from the Midwest and know we pronounce /ɛ/ and /æ/ sometimes differently from other dialects. It may have something to do with that.
his "matter" sounded like a completely different man
"It's starting raining ... oh no. I'm inside now" for some reason this made me smile
Here are some notes on some of my dialectal features as a Floridian who grew up in North Florida.
1) The cot-caught merger has yet to affect my dialect. However, the pen-pin merger has definitely affected my speech.
2) T is basically spot on for me in your analysis except for case: very often, I glottalize or devoice my final T’s to a glottal stop. So words like “Matt” or “formulate” become “Ma’ “ or “formula’e”, however “butter” and “fitting” remain “budder” and “fidding”
3) I maintain the “iw” sound in words like “truth”, “due”, “new” and “sue”, a feature I only recently discovered. However, this isn’t the same as a yod, as my “dew” is closer to “diw” than “dju:”
4) Almost all my “L”s are clear, if not all of them, whether at the onset or the terminus of a syllable. In general, to make a dark L takes a bit of concerted effort on my part.
5) My dialect is almost hyper-rhotic, where my R’s are drawn out to a guttural “Errrr” for a lot of words. As an example, in the word “heard”, the “err” sound is exaggerated to the point where it sounds like the “d” is almost added on to the end at the last second.
Yes, Florida has an interesting rhotic accent that has been called a NASCAR accent. I grew up in Gainesville. My native accent painstakingly pronounces all the syllables and consonants. I noticed this in my city peers, which is where children generally learn accents. The rural kids spoke with a pronounced Southern drawl. A little slower, non-rhotic, and with syllables left out. I would say "Eye am going to the store." A Southern drawl sounded to me like "Ahh'm guhin tuh thuh stahhh." Not making fun--just contrasting the Florida NASCAR accent with a Southern accent as I heard it.
Interesting that you said you were going for something "Michigany," because that actually is where I'm from. While accent there was certainly general American 100 years ago, the northern cities vowel shift is changing the accent around the great lakes in what some are saying is the biggest change in English pronunciation since the great vowel shift. Definitely a video-worthy topic.
Also, basically every state the doesn't touch the Atlantic or Gulf of Mexico is considered some kind of "west," which can be confusing. Michigan is in the Midwest even though it is decidedly in the eastern half of the country (not to mention mostly the eastern time zone).
If he needs an example I'll gladly volunteer haha
biggest change in English pronunciation since the great vowel shift? :eyeroll:
@@WinstonSmithGPT Honestly, to me it reminds me a lot of people saying that Appalachian English is the closest to Elizabethan English; that is to say mostly over-blown.
There's definitely an ongoing sound change happening, but so too is there similar stuff happening in Canada and California, and a different less similar sound change that's been happening in the Southern US.
Justin, I'm from Michigan too although I've been living in California since my mid-twenties, I'm 57. My students in California think that Michigan is "East Coast." I show them maps and charts proving that Michigan is in the Midwest. You probably know this but the term Midwest is not arbitrary; it's historical. Michigan was solidly Midwest prior to welcoming the West coast states into the Union. The problem is solved by labeling the Western coast states as "Far West" although, in practice, people in California never say 'far west' they say 'Pacific Coast.'
I was back in northern Michigan in July of this year. I have a home at Houghton Lake and also have property in the U.P. and since I am a certified linguist I listen carefully to language. The Millenials and Gen Z sound like Californians. Their word choice mimics the English west of the Rockies (standard American) and their vowels are changing too. Folks my age and older still sound midwestern. Now I feel guilty painting with such a wide brush, I did run across some young people from time to time who have retained their dialect so I got to talkin' with them and, unsurprisingly, they don't look at their phones much. These kids were definitely outliers. The majority are watching endless clips on social media and acquired our homogenized, lackluster language west of the Rockies. Even in the U.P. where Yoopers wear their dialect like a badge of honor, it was quite watered down among Gen Z.
We linguists love regional, ethnic, and alternative dialects as well as high and low registers and all manner of non-standard spoken forms. Consequently, my bias is against standardization. My opinion is that the loss of regional dialects is as lamentable as the disappearance of regional subcultures. Simon hasn't told us in his videos what his view is but I suspect he agrees. Don't you think? On a positive note, it seems like the younger generations in northern Michigan and the UP continue to be northern woodsmen and outsdoorsmen as always: hunting, finishing, ATVs, snowmobiles, and anything else they can do outside so the regional culture holds strong. This makes me happy.
@@WinstonSmithGPT No, not at all. I pulled up the NCVS map and I wasn't even in it. So Houghton Lake is right on the border of the NCVS map and the UP where I also visit and have property is well out of the NCVS region. I never set foot in any NCVS. Matter of fact, I land at the Cherry Capital Airport in Traverse City which is just on the other side of the NCVS border. It's actually rather hilarious that I spent the entire month of July outside of it without even being aware of its boundaries. Fine point: Houghton Lake is within the range but right on the border and my neighbors there (with whom I am friends) are from further north so it's unlikely that I ever encountered it.
Great video. I think it would be interesting to see more on how Australian and/or New Zealand accents developed, if you have the time to do a video on that :) sorry if you have and I just missed it!
Did Australian and NZ accents develop together so to speak, or did they develop totally separately? They sound so similar to most people that you'd think they developed together in some way.
@@ajs41 Mainly separately, I'd say. It's always the native-born children of immigrants who seem to create a relatively homogeneous accent out of the different accents of their parents. Kids tend to imitate their peers far more than their elders and betters in spite of all efforts to stop them from doing so. I believe British writers were already detecting a distinct Australian accent within ten years of the arrival of the First Fleet.
@@ajs41 A huge number of initial settlers to NZ actually arrived from Australia and not directly from England. It actually contributed to Britain separating NZ under its own umbrella, in an attempt to protect the Maori (and avoid an expensive war).
There were a few very distinct NZ features (uvular 'burred' r) that came from Scottish settlers (mainly in the South Island), but they're almost extinct now.
So curious about this as well. I'm from South Africa and some of our accents bear similarities to NZ and Aussie accents, which is really interesting to me considering we're so far away. It makes me think our accents must've developed along a similar path
I think linguists tend to disagree on A LOT of minor details but I really do love the fact that you do these videos. I’m hooked on them. AZ Foreman and ACE Linguist also took swings at approximated bygone dialects from American history. Have you ever read Benjamin Franklin’s phonetic guide to American English, or reconstructed, for yourself, pronunciation from contemporaneous rhyming patterns, like David Crystal did with OP? It really reveals a lot.
There is a dialect found in the outer banks region of North Carolina called high tide (or hoi toid) English. It is very redolent of the accents found in East Anglia (specifically Norfolk, Suffolk and north Essex).
It would be cool if that previous video became part of a series to showcase the evolution of the other english accents over time. I enjoyed hearing the reconstructions and it was a nice addition to add in human sounds like ‘um’ and coughs like it’s a real recording of the person
The history of the “drop” vowel sounds is actually more complex than that. Around the 1600’s, I believe, in southern English English there was a split, the lot-cloth split, where that vowel became longer before most voiceless fricatives (th, s, f) and the “ng” sound. This split would eventually disappear in England (although older recordings of the queen still exhibit it). However, in the U.S. it would become more pronounced to the point where the long version of the vowel merged with the “aw” vowel in words like “law,” “caught,” “pause,” “all,” etc. This means that “offal” and “awful” became homophones. Then the remaining “drop” vowels that hadn’t been lengthened opened up and merged with the “palm” vowel, so that “father” and “bother” rhyme perfectly.
It is after all of this that the caught-cot merger merged all of these vowels. The caught-cot merger is predominant in all of the western U.S. and in some regions of New England. Boston English never had the father-bother merger and instead all versions of the “drop” vowel merged with the “aw” vowel.
Great comment, very interesting! Thanks a lot!
Grew up in WI, where everyone pronounces caught and cot identically. I don’t, and I’m not sure when it changed but my accent is much more generalized now. Currently in South Pennsylvania, Cumberland valley, which has an odd accent all its own.
@@mongke7858 Really? All three differently? I would expect “palm” and “cot” to have the same vowel even for Easterners. Do “father” and “bother” rhyme in your variety? Perhaps it’s something about the nasal “m” that changes the previous vowel in “palm” that makes it sound different from “cot.”
@@mongke7858 As a Bay Area expatriate (Oregon resident) for whom those sounds are identical, I can only hear the difference when old movie stars speak in Mid-Atlantic, or possibly on the rare times I hear my uncle that's from Philly and splits time between New York and Vermont, blending the already (to me) nearly interchangeable New York and Philly accents
@@ArturoStojanoff As someone who grew up in a southern, western part of the Western New England English dialect area, I pronounce "cot" with an open back unrounded vowel and "caught" with an open-mid back rounded vowel. I don't know if someone listening would be able to tell but for me, "calm" is slightly fronted and slightly closed compared to "cot" but not necessarily all the way to near-open or central. So I think that distinction is disappearing in the Mid-Hudson Valley/Western Connecticut. I may actually pronounce them the same at normal speech rates sometimes or perhaps always. But saying the words individually I can feel a slight difference that doesn't feel related to nasality. If anything, it's probably down to a slight difference in tongue position related to the alveolar stop that I pronounce "cot" with versus the velarized (dark) "l" that I pronounce "calm" with. But again, it's not a strong enough distinction that I could be certain I would hear the difference (or lack thereof) if someone pronounced both "cot" and "calm" with an open back unrounded vowel sound. I do hear the difference with speakers who have the merger as the variant I most commonly hear sounds to me to be even further back and slightly more open than "cot" is for me.
I really like how you use the forensic analysis from the alveolar “t” as sounding more like a “d” as in butter and water in American English, as evidence that the accents in the colonies contain fossils of 300 year old British English. Then you apply that hypothesis to the clear and dark “l”. Quite fascinating, Simon.
'D' still used in Westcountry english in place of a t, so in Devonian for instance, butter is budder.
@@kernowforester811 it’s part of a wider trend whereby ‘f’ becomes ‘v’ and ‘s’ becomes ‘z’ too of course. It’s always seemed obvious to me that the West Country is where ‘t’ becoming ‘d’ originated before travelling to America, though there are 19th century Yorkshire dialect books that say ‘bud’ and ‘boddum’ are Yorkshire dialect for ‘but’ and ‘bottom’ so such pronunciations must have been fairly widespread in England even then (long before the recent Americanisations).
@@overlordnat RP has really muddied the waters. If the West Saxon for England capital remained as Winchester, I am sure modern English would be very different. A 'butty' was a work mate in the old mining industry in many parts of the UK in the 19th C, from the 'butty' system of sharing a work load between several miners. Pronounced more like 'buddy' down here in the old tin and copper mines of Cornwall/Devon. Is that where American's get the term from? I don't know, but my dogs are my 'buddies', nothing to do with American English!
Hi Simon, I greatly appreciate you. I was born in 83 and grew up living all over the us so I have a ‘feeling’ and can emulate most us accents or dialects. If you ever want a first hand perspective of current US accents, I’d be glad to help in any way possible. Love your stuff
-Josh
I'm American, living in Illinois. And your american accent is awesome. Spot on! I would have just thought you were from another part of the country from me.
As a note, the northern New England accent does drop r where is in a word and add r where they don't belong. i had to work hard to speak with a General American accent while in the Navy so as not to get picked on.
Thank you, sincerely, for your effort. One of my pet peeves is when people say "Warshington," instead of "Washington."
@@WinstonSmithGPT not sure where Warshington comes from. Just a pet peeve. ;)
Of course, as east New England was heavily influenced by those from East Anglia, the dialect tends to be largely non-rhotic. Non-rhoticity originated in the region around London England.
how do you say law rand ordah (law and order) ?
Alveolar tap T is also a feature of Ulster English which was developing at approximately the same time as American English. It's also a feature of newer southern Irish English, including my own speech, which seems to be an independent development since the late 20th century.
As an Englishman who's spent large chunks of time in the US (currently living in Vermont), I think you've done an excellent job in characterising general NE American speech patterns. I do agree that, as you've said, your 'L's were a tad overly velar. I've made a bit of a study of how American English has changed, particularly since the 1960s, and I would say that once television, in particular, became widespread by the 1950s, stylised version of metropolitan New York City speech spread like wildfire throughout the country. As television and radio stations continued to proliferate, there were many announcers from the Northeast who migrated to other parts of the country to ply their craft at these stations. Even after many stations began hiring locals, it was this generalised Northeastern speech that was deemed more desirable from a broadcasting standpoint. These speech patterns thus became rather ubiquitous. Unfortunately, of course, the proliferation of generalised speech also began to 'water down' local dialects and accents. In any case, one of the things I've noticed is that 'L's started to become more velar in the '60s and '70s. Obviously, I'm ignoring local NYC and northern New Jersey dialects, some of which were highly velar from a long time before that. Love your channel. Cheers!
How did you move to the us?
Stupid question to an intelligent observation.
Interesting! I'm from Tennessee and I pronounce cot, caught, and palm all differently. If you want to pronounce "water" more American you can speed up the "a", but your American accent on the video with the transcripts is so good!
Central North Carolina the same on cot v caught, but caught v palm are drawing closer. Also short e-i are nearly equal: pen-pin, ten-tin. I agree on water, too: the “a” is clipped to the point of almost sounding like wutter
I had never heard of a 'dark L' before, but I think it's the most American sound I've ever heard you make
Hi Simon. I am originally from northern Georgia (not quite in the Appalachians but closer to Atlanta), and my accent maintains the distinction between 'due' and 'do'. I second the motion from another commenter regarding the American Southern English video. Accents vary widely within the region and I'm sure we would all learn a lot from your research into the topic. Great work, cheers!
I love your stuff, Simon! Keep up the good work :D
I think an interesting video on American English would be Southern accents and iambic pentameter (especially Appalachia). Keep up the amazing content!
Hi Simon. Speaking of arhoticity, have you noticed the modern phenom of r-dissimilation in otherwise rhotic accents? To my knowledge, it seems to mostly occur in syllables which don't have primary stress, and it tends to occur in a word with at least two syllables with r-coloring.
So you get:
supprise for surprise
bezerk for berserk
patticular for particular
undewear for underwear
etc.
I've also noticed it's more likely to be avoided in non high frequency words, or words which are more high register.
I actually do this in my own accent altho I'm otherwise rhotic (from California), which leads to foward for forward (high frequency in casual speech) vs foreword always said with both Rs (low frequency usage in casual speech).
Oh, and curiously, I've even started to pick up on othewise being used in casual speech for otherwise.
Thanks Simon, your videos are excellent. You do tend to put an over emphasis on the influence British English on American English (which is obviously significant) and don’t add in the considerable influences of the German, Dutch (US ‘L’ can sound Dutch) and Irish languages and the influence of Hiberno-English which must have added to rhoticity of American). I read once that Austrian German had a huge affect on the Brooklyn and then Long Island accents of New York.
To my ears, New York accents sound more Southeast England-ish than anything else. In particular the upper-class speech of Long Island probably comes closest among American accents to resembling Received Pronunciation.
Agreed. Good point. During the colonial period, the European populations of the Middle Colonies of New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Delaware were ethnically very mixed, the English constituting only 30% in Pennsylvania, 40-45% in New Jersey, to 18% in New York. (Wikipedia). The Dutch colonized the Hudson Valley. The Swedes and Finns colonized the Delaware Valley. They later were joined by not only English immigrants but also by other ethnicities across the British Isles and northwestern Europe. Not to mention the many Africans brought against their will. In the North, almost as many German speakers as English speaker emigrated to America. There is a "German belt" that extends all the way from eastern Pennsylvania to the Oregon coast. According to the US Census Bureau there are about 43 million German Americans, the largest self-reported ancestry group in the country. German was widely spoken until World War I. And even today, in “Pennsylvania Dutch” country, German is the primary language for many people. Simon makes good videos. But I suspect he hasn’t fully comprehended the ethnic and linguistic diversity that created ‘general American English.’
@@phillyphilly2095 Good points!
I don't think he's discounting them. Also, Hiberno-English probably didn't add rhoticity to American English, as the timeline doesn't line up: widespread use of English in Ireland only happened in the 1800s, and that mostly coincided with the Great Famine, which was what caused the waves of emigration to the US. American English was plenty rhotic at that point. Anglophone Irish emigrants would've sounded quaintly old-fashioned (like Simon's first speaker in the previous video). Many would've learned English in the US. None of that is to say that it wasn't influential, just that it's probably not a significant reason as to why American English is rhotic.
British English was rhotic in the colonial era and it still is in some English accents today (e.g. Bristol).
British actors are famous for mispronouncing the American TRAP vowel before /n/ or /m/, but Simon nails it!
I've been digging through Webster's early writings recently in my efforts to reconstruct 18th century English, and specifically to reconstruct American English as that's what most of my clients are interested in. It's been a very informative process! Thank you for your work on this as well! It always helps me to see what sources others are turning to, and it especially helps to be able to give my clients samples to listen to that aren't just me.
Just turned 38, Brooklyn-born. NYC definitely has a lot of "au" sounds still (sometimes even more exaggerated like "aw" sound), check out the old SNL skit of Mike Myers' "Coffee Talk"). I also noticed when I went to college other regional dialects were different. When we New Yorkers say forrest or horror, it it pronounced more like "far-est" and "har-rer" with an "ah" sound where as the Midwest and Connecticut, which I guess is more "general" say it with a more "oh" sound, like "faux-rest" and "whore-roar". Also "tour" has the dipthong sounding like "tore" versus the other regions say "tewer" like "sewer". Philly and Baltimore white folk have almost like a bit of southern sounds there too which is very different. For example "water" a lot of Americans pronounce "wad-der" but Philly is "wooder". In Philly creek becomes "crick".
Oh 2022 is off to a GREAT start
I'm from Kentucky and (after much trial and slowing down of my speech) realized that for the word "due" I use 2 syllables but so quick in succession it almost sounds like one. There is no "y" sound as I originally thought. It sounds like: Dee uu. So quickly you almost don't hear the "ee".
Hi Simon, I find this a fascinating subject as a person who hears and is able to replicate accents easily. I am from Wales but live in Nova Scotia and noticed an unusual use of breathing that older native Nova Scotians do at the end of sentences. They tend to inhale sharply towards an end of a sentence and then trail off sort of wistfully. I had never heard this before I came here but may have heard someone on a scottish tv programme also doing this. Have you ever heard of this? Nova Scotia is obviously New Scotland so it could be an old scottish trait even though people from the more isolated Cape Breton tend to sound more Irish to me. I know the Irish and Scottish were more connected at one time and so their accents may have more similarities. There is also the Acadians who may have contributed to this. Thanks for the videos
In 1900 Cape Breton had one of the largest Scottish Gaelic speaking populations outside Scotland and that affected the English spoken today. Irish English reflects the fact that most Irish people spoke Irish Gaelic before about 1850 so one might expect some similarities to C.B. On the other hand C.B. was dominated by a North American English dialect while Ireland was more influenced by English English.
I have noticed this too in people north of Bergen in Norway.
@@piynubbunyip interesting, I think there have a lot of Norwegian settlers here, also the closer proximity to Scotland may be a factor
Mentioning the "complexity of American T's" gave me flashbacks to trying to teach ESL kids the difference between "can" and "can't" in Midwest American English.
Because we don't pronounce a big pointed "T" at the end of "can't." It's not always even recognizable as a glottal stop either- yet "can" and "can't" are definitely still distinct.
It's almost like they're starting to transform into a tonal system, where the difference between "I can do it!" and "I can't do it!" is entirely expressed through intonation.
I'd almost describe the t in can't as a click.
oh damn i'm from the midwest and just tested this and was shocked to realize yeah we DO barely pronounce the t in can't. dang.
I wonder if we're difficult to understand for ESL in general.
I'm not sure about Midwest, but at least in California the vowel in "I can do it" is reduced to virtually nothing. "I can't do it" has a full nasalized vowel and a glottal stop. Here's my video on the subject: ua-cam.com/video/BW9grFf7Wy0/v-deo.html
or as length + a glottal stop at the end, but unreleased
I can do it [aɪ kʰən 'du it]
I can't do it [aɪ 'kʰɛənʔ du it]
Or something along those lines. In any case, the distinction is pretty clear.
Having been raised in the Southern US, but without the Southern accent, it was explained to me that the George Washington pre-revolutionary war rhotic accent subsequently changed in Britain to an affected non-rhotic accent by the upper crust. Then the second and third sons brought the non-rhotic affected accent to the American South where they came to establish plantations and seek their fortune. So the plain American midwest accent is more like the British accent before the affected non-rhotic accent was adpted. This was from a Southern history teacher. I've read books about this in my youth but it's been awhile.
I saw a video on the accent of the Outer Banks of North Carolina, which still has a very "archaic" form of English. I'm from Maryland, and this accent sounded a lot like lower-class Eastern Shore Maryland. To my ear it doesn't sound British at all, but a number of people in the comments were saying that their grandparents from Sussex or Norfolk sounded just like this. So apparently the southeastern English accent still has an affinity with some American accents.
Hi Simon, I was born in 1956 and raised in Michigan. I can tell you that to my ears your "Michigany" was very good!
I’ve lived in 3 American regions and 6 states. I can mimic all of the accents and dialects well. I can also distinguish between all of them. Because of this I’ve identified the single most ubiquitous American accent. It’s the one that journalism schools must be teaching their broadcast news students. It’s the accent which comes from the western part of St. Louis County, Missouri. The northern tier of states have some more distinctive characteristics, which tend to regionalize them, so I’d disqualify Michigan from that.
I've always found it intriguing how you can figure out so much about Americans just from their accent alone.
I grew up in northwestern Indiana, on the border with Illinois and not far from Chicago. Growing up, I mainly encountered two types of accents: the working-class Chicago accent, and the more conservative Northern American dialect (not unlike Speaker 5's accent from the previous video and containing many of the features you explained in this one). I patterned my own accent after the more generalized and conservative dialect, so I didn't pick up on the more Chicago-specific features (pronouncing "those" as "doze" and the city's name as "Chi-caw-go").
While I still lived in the Midwest, most people I knew regarded my accent as plain, if not slightly more proper-sounding than usual. However, after I moved to Texas in 2015, it became clear that my way of speaking set me apart from the locals. There was one time when a woman heard me speaking, then she came up to me and said, "You're not from around here, are you?"
Another time, I asked a friend if he would explain to me why my accent sounded different to him, and he mentioned the TRAP vowel as you explained in this video. To him, me saying "trap" sounded like "tray-app", and "class" sounded like "clay-ass". I always found that fascinating, because I previously never thought my accent sounded "distinctive" in any way.
The conversion of the " th " sound to just "t" or "d" is also common in NYC English.
Wow!!! I wouldn’t have guessed it was you speaking at all!!! Great video as usual!
As a Polish speaker, I can say thst the sound you made at 17:21 was pretty much correct for that vowel. Though I think that the polish "y" is more often pronounced as [ɘ] instead.
Dissection of a video? Did the VCR eat another tape, again?! 😱
Is no one else going to comment on how Simon, who is super serious and never seems to even make any jokes at all in his videos, used a clip from Auntie Donna? That really caught me off guard lmao. Or, should I say, it really cot me off guard. (Oregonian)
I have a New England American Accent and I pronounce "Cot" and "Caught" differently.
I would love a video on the different accents found in New England!
What I've found interesting about the voiced alveolar tap is that it is present in some words in Southern Hemisphere dialects where the voiceless plosive is used in General American English. I had a university professor from New Zealand who pronounced the "t" in "thirteen" and "fourteen" with the voiced tap, which is something I have never heard from American English or Canadian English speakers.
Yeah, I've heard that from many Australians too.
'Due' sounds the same as 'do' in most of Norfolk ( and probably Suffolk ) also 'tune' is not 'chewn' or 'choon' but 'Toon' I think both of these correspond with many US accents.
There is writing available by Peter Trudgill ( a Linguist Professor but also from Norfolk ) who wrote many decades ago, about why Southern US English or specifically Southern African-American English has similarities to East Anglian English.
Ref Anglian accent similarity to USA accent:
About ten yrs ago I was an amateur clothes historian. Searching on Google news or archive. I read an article from 1880 circa, complaining about the lose of the different rural uk, (edit: men's) dress, due to spreading standardisation of mens clothing.
I remember a writer, can't recall if the same saying emphatically paraphrasing," why! The USA accent is nothing more, than the Anglian whine"
(I can't remember if he wrote north or East Anglian). His declaration lways stuck with me. I remember I went looking for other instances of "Anglian whine", but didn't find much
@@jonbaker1697 - It would have been in reference to 'East Anglia' which is also just called 'Anglia' and it is not an official region name and has not been I think for 1000 years - but the general reference to that eastern part of England is 'Anglia' - which is really just Norfolk and Suffolk in accent, history and so on but there are leaks into Cambridgeshire of course on the border, where the west Norfolk accent can be found into Cambridgeshire.
'North' Anglia is technically, the entire north of England we could say, from the Midlands up - but the accents diverge a lot from East Anglia, to the Midlands to north west and north east.
I guess the 'Anglian' accent has some similarities at times to a Midlands or North east - but really when you listen, it is much more like other southern accents - but at the same time sounds very different.
The south east ( London area ) has changed a lot, migrations for work in industrial times, mixed accents, French pronunciation influence, meant the R was lost, which still exists in the 'West Country' another cultural area not an official area ).
The East Anglian, rather like the West Country, has kept some older forms of speaking say going back to the 1500s onwards.
East Anglian grammar and pronunciation was affected by Flemish and French.
Some dialect words like 'dwile' are basically Flemish and Dutch 'dweile'
Other words like 'kiderer' are unclear in origin but appear to be related to Brythonic and it is similar to the Welsh word for 'butcher' and means the same thing.
Interesting, I never heard that said about the US accent but I guess the US accents also fossilised some older forms of speaking as well as, mixed in with other things.
Certainly, when I listen to Virginian accents of the early 1900s of old men, they sound much like a kind of southern England accent.
I think the Anglian accents shares some similarities to Australian ( but sound different still ) but then that is just because it is older English.
Like in Jamaica, they used some 16th century styles.
They also use 'man like 'them' 'they or 'humanity' very commonly which is older English style and in German, they still use 'mann' in the same way.
Who would have thought that German and Jamaican are so similar !
Interestingly, now with genetics, it backs up anecdotal history that west Norfolk and around the Fens area, was an enclave of Brythonic people possibly much later and even into Norman times. It is evidenced in place names, often Anglicised but rooted in Brythonic. Eg the town( Kings) 'Lynn' is 'Llyn' in modern Welsh. A large town next to an inland sea, 'the Fens' that made Cambridge, Peterborough and Downham, almost seaside towns.
Interesting that in Slavic langauges and few others in Europe, they use 'Anglia' for 'England' the 'ia' being a Latin / Italian ending of course.
@@jonbaker1697 I should say 'North Anglia' is not used but in south England there are many references in pubs or company names or street names to ' Saxon'.
You get that in East Anglia but the north is too seperated into various sub groups despite the historical link
The dialects in the US are more complex than simple surveys indicate. Mennonite Platt DItsch left some artifacts that I can recognize in my own Kansas native voice. While traveling in the UK, I learned that not one Brit I met-including a few linguists-could identify where in the States I came from. On the other hand, I could not pronounce "Wigan" without getting snickers, despite repeated efforts. I learned to almost pronounce a great many place names in England by asking myself "How would a Back Bay Maine speaker say this?".
To be fair, most Brits wouldn't have a clue where most Americans were from, and vice versa.
I'd imagine you might get something similar to accents influenced by Pennsylvania Dutch, there is an interesting accent in English among them
@@skepticalbadger Most of my Brit friends have traveled a lot in the USA. Generally they have nailed every American's accent they have met .
Just a tiny tip Simon, for the modern American English, you pronounced vowels very phonetically, while in practice we very very slightly devoice or “unpronounce” them compared to the video. Hopefully we don’t end up like Portugal!
Your [ɨ] sounded more like [ɪ] to me in this video. I remember the very first time you pronounced it in "Trying to Learn some Polish using Google Translate" in a word "dęby" it sounded perfectly ;)
I always thought that most of the differences came from people from different countries agreeing (more or less) on speaking English together. And also that the Irish English accent had a huge influence. I'm a German native speaker and when I took a course in RP English pronounciation I was told that I articulate most sounds more in the middle of the mouth while RP speakers speak very far in the front. At school in Germany I had also developped my own theory that some differences derive from German trying to speak better English and therefore changing some sounds so they sound "less" German - so in a process of overcorrection. That's what German school kids tend to do when they learn English and somehow most seem to end up with a more American English pronounciation.
A couple of interesting questions:
-When do individual differences become regional? Growing up in New Jersey in the 1960s, I had a grade school teacher who insisted that "wh" words had a different initial sound than "w" words; the former starting with some sort of aspirated "h" sound. I thought she was full of nonsense, because I made no such distinction.
-How much does spelling influence pronunciation? E.g. I do not pronounce the "t" in "often", but my father's mother (born in the US but with ethnic German background) did. I'm not sure that I pronounce do, due, and dew the same; I think I'm more likely to include an initial "ih" as part of a diphthong in the latter two.
I knew someone from California that did not have /æ/ breaking before nasals. It was really unusual, and I don't think I've heard anyone else speak like that anywhere I've been in the US.
Will you ever cover the northern cities vowel shift which is on going in the US?
In Maryland and Virgina, the way in which older generations pronounced certain words was very interesting. "out" and "house" almost sounded like "ayte" and "hayse". "know" was pronounced "naywe". These pronounciations were interesting because they were thrown in with other twangy southern words like "yawl" (you all). Depending on how far to the west or east, the way these words were pronounced was slighty different. In areas to the middle and west of these states, a word like "house" might sound slightly more Scottish versus the middle to the coastal areas where it would sound more British. This makes perfect sense because there were a lot of Scotch Irish settlers in the western part of these states vs poorer English settlers in the middle to more well to do high society English plantation owners in the coastal areas of these states. In Baltimore Maryland there are areas of the city where the accent almost sounds Welsh.
My American accent still has optional monophthongal realizations for the "face" and "goat" vowels, which I think is characteristic of certain Canadian dialects and neighboring dialects on this side of the border. I can say [ðə gɹeːt mədʒoɹəɾi əv voːɾɚz] pretty much like Taft said (just with a different stressed vowel in "majority").
Canadian, can confirm
I think I might have a bit of a missing link if you’d like to know of it. Folk musician in his 90s and even the other old timers in the community say he talks pretty old fashioned. Dudley Laufman has been interviewed a few times for various things and if you listen he has almost exactly what you’re going for.
Thank you! That makes the previosu video more understandable. It's fascinating.
As an American English speaker, the exaggerated "velar L" as you pronounced it reminds me of Russians speaking English. In my own pronunciation it seems to be more moderately velarized. I wonder if Americans who vocalize the postvocalic L (which is fairly common) tend to use a clearer or darker L in the prevocalic positions.
I tend to vocalize my L's, though mostly after front vowels for some reason, and I'd say my 'clearer' L is still relatively moderate in velarization. When I do pronounce the L, it is darker then the L in onsets but is weaker? The coda L isn't fully vocalized but the tongue tip isn't making full contact for me. In areas where I am velarizing it fully, the tongue is even further down.
I don't think my onset L is light with me just not realizing it, because when I speak German which only has light L's, those are markedly different than my English ones.
Well, that particular way of pronouncing " L " may have been more common in earlier eras
Russian has two L's, hard (Л) and soft (ЛЬ). English L is considered equivalent to soft L, so "hotel" is отель not отел, and "Bill Clinton" in Russian has soft L's. Hard consonants are "velarized" but hard L not the same as English dark L.
My (American) Vermon(t) daughter says ‘winner’ for winTer.
@@sluggo206 Albanian also has two L's, "ll" (velarized) and "l" (palatalized), and English postvocalic L's generally get rendered by Albanians speaking English as "ll".
Love the fact that Aunty Donna is now canon in the Roper Cinematic Universe.
I wish I found your channel before I started doing narrations by Poe and Lovecraft. Their stories being set in the 19th century and early 20th century, mostly New England, much of the dialog would have been greatly aided by having a better idea of how these accents should be. Sometimes the author writes an accent into the text, which helps, but more can be done with even more information. Ah well.
Awesome. Where can I hear these recordings?
Greetings from Canada.
My narrations are here on my youtube channel :)
I also have a bitchute channel, as there are a handful of stories that use certain 19th century words that youtube does not permit, like Poe's "Goldbug" and a few others, so if you can't find your favorite Poe or Lovecraft story here on my youtube channel, it'll probably be over on my bitchute channel. Although I'm still working on Lovecraft's library, so it's possible I may just not yet have gotten around to that story if you don't see it on either site.
If you're looking for an example of a dialogue where the author wrote an accent into the text, try Chapter 3 of The Shadow Over Innsmouth, which I published just last week so should be easy to find.
Zadock is, I believe, supposed to have an early to mid 19th-century New England accent. But even with the accent written into the text, some words I still was completely clueless what to do with. "Onct" instead of "once" - what does that 't' mean, as far as pronunciation goes? I had absolutely no idea.
In chapter 1 of the same story, there's a character with extensive dialog who is from northwestern Vermont. No accent was written into the text for him, and I made no attempt at an accent. I did listen to some Calvin Coolidge speeches (since he is from Vermont, born in 1872, so close enough to the right time and place to match the character in the story), but his accent wasn't sufficiently striking in any regard that I felt it worth the effort.
i'm yankee but i lived in manchester, u.k. for 2 1/2 years. the alveolar tap is commonly thought of as north american but in reality it's heard all over the english speaking world. when i was in england i was actually surprised at how often i heard it it even pops up in RP periodically.
i would definitely say, though, that north america is where you hear it the most and words like "detect" where it's pronounced as a clear "T" are far in the minority. and i, too, wonder why it's so common in australia and new zealand and if that's a case of american media influence or simply dual evolution because it most definitely is quite common in the antipodes.
So good how you covered up the evident difference between British and American 'oo's. As a Scot myself, I pronounce that definitely as a Frenchman would do with his 'u's, though much longer... the only places in Britain where they pronounce 'oo' the American way are Wales and Newcastle (alone).
Always find these videos fascinating!
It's interesting that you tried to go for a vaguely Michigan accent when people from Michigan have a pretty non-typical American accent.
The accent that you ended up going with reminds me more of a central Indiana accent or Oregon accent.
My hunch is that the diminishing of the alveolar tap for "t" in British English was a side-effect of the pressure to turn glottal-stop "t" into [t], to sound less low-class. Canadians of the 20th century were likelier than Americans to make "t" [t] in places where Americans were willing to make it alveolar taps and glottal stops. In general, Canadians of that time seem to have a more spelling-based pronunciation of consonants than Americans bothered with (e.g., being sure to enunciate clearly the last consonants of "not" and "and" and many other words, as in "anD we do noT wanT thaT"), which seems to me to have been the result of pressure both to sound not 'too' American and to prove themselves capable of 'speaking well in the British Empire'. (A scene in the movie _My American Cousin_ (1985), set in British Columbia of the 1950s, has the protagonist, a teenaged girl, being chastised by her Canadian grandmother for saying "water" in a much too American and not nearly R.P. enough way. (At least that's my memory: the only time I saw it was when it was on Channel 4 late one night in the early summer of 1995.) I don't know whether this also is the reason why so many Canadians put a glottal stop right before a [t] "t" that is followed by a consonant, as in making "catch" not [kætſ] but [kæˀtſ]; this pronunciation of "t" is rare in the U.S., but common in England (e.g., in the "that's" of "if that's O.K. with you" in Sophie Ellis-Bextor's song "I Won't Change You").
An interesting (and to me annoying) new feature of some younger Americans' English is insisting on spelling-pronunciations for "en" and similar clusters in such words as "garden" and "wooden", where for centuries the norm has been to go straight from the preceding consonant to the nasal one (as in "gard'n", "wood'n"). Americans generally don't say British "sev'n", but they also generally don't say "woo-den". "Often" with "t" pronounced was bad enough, in my opinion; but "wood-en" is worse. Even more annoying than "woo-den" is insertion of a distinct vowel in some contractions, as in making "didn't" not [dɪdnt] but [dɪdɪnt]: maybe in some crazy way this comes from the erroneously bisyllabic pronunciation of "aren't" and "weren't" as if they were not "are" and "were" plus [nt], but "ar-ent" and "wer-ent" (which is how the knock-knock joke that asks "Orange you glad I didn't say 'Banana'?" can work). On the other hand, maybe Britons find Americans' pronunciation of the first "L" in "vulnerable" 'too spelling-y', the way I find some young Americans' failure to silence "e" in "wooden".
I think a good gauge in many cases is the dominant educated national English that one learns at one's mother's knee (if one is so fortunate). By that standard, it's right to say the first "L" in "vulnerable" in America, and right to omit it in England. By that same standard, though, it's wrong to say the "e" in "wooden": I don't think _anybody_ picked this up from his parents or childhood peers; it seems to me to be something that twenty-somethings who feel insecure put on to try to sound 'perfect' (yet they simultaneously adopt the hypercorrection of mispronouncing "biases" as if its singular were "biasis").
I did not predict an Aunty Donna/Simon Roper crossover for 2022!
You should try looking into Ben Franklin's phonetic alphabet (some of the reconstructions on UA-cam based on that by other creators sound way different than yours). I personally think that they might be wrong.
I liked your first two speakers, although I think later on, it became a little too modern-sounding (especially if you compare it with my playlist of "Earliest Sounding Americans"), some (but not all) of their accents are super strange. I wonder if AZ Foreman, Atun-Shei, and Ace Linguist's version of 18th century English and yours could have somehow coeexisted at the same time (and AZ and Ace's two versions are the prestige dialects taken from earlier 16th and 17th century speech and your's the more everyday speech (like the 87 year old farmer's speech from 1929)). Or if Ben Franklin's phonetic alphabet is inaccurate.
My American dialects playlist go as early as people born in 1807 and Canadian playlist as early as 1855 (1841 if you include Canadian Governors born in Britain).
Have you done a video on Canadian English? I watched a documentary once that in Ontario we speak a west Yankee dialect with some Scottish added in
Would you ever do a video on the various Canadian accents?
unfortunately they are very underresearched (especially "nonstandard" north-central dialects and eastern dialects )
Non-rhoticity is more than just "city specific". It is "region specific" (that doesn't change you point however, but it does seem that you are mostly focused on cities, though I supposed that there is less data on rural American accents).
Yep, it’s safe to say that many Greater New England accents are arguably metropolitan in origin and spilled out from the cities, but they’ve largely settled in more distant areas. And when you get to Northern New England, the accents are very much rural accents and not (as far as I can tell) centered on any particular city… in fact, I’d say that the further you get from cities in Vermont and Maine, for example, the more prevalent those regional accents become.
Yeah, in the North, non-rhoticity is specific to eastern New England and the New York metropolitan area. In the South, non-rhoticity is most prominent in the southern half of Louisiana and the Tidewater zone of Virginia, as well as in the vernacular accent of African Americans.
give us linguistic rain asmr king
can’t say i expected to hear aunty donna in this video
Could u please so a video on the historical Australian accent
Hii Simon Love frm India,,God bless U.
Fav channel on UA-cam 😍😍 you’re amazing Simon!!!
8:40 big claim about sheep phonetics here. Do we have any direct evidence for the precise realization of /æ/ in early 17th century scotts-ovine? Or are we just assuming because modern sheep dialects tend to agree on this pronunciation?
The "mistake" in pronunciation you mention at 12:50 isn't a mistake at all, Simon! At least not for modern GenAm. Sounded very natural to me! --Sincerely, a native GenAm speaker
At 12:19 if I'm understanding you correctly you seem to posit something that sounds as strange to me as it does to you. I took a course in Gaelic and something I had to practice, due to it violating my native sound system, was using "dark L" in initial position. For me the "L" in 'love" and "full" are quite different. These two "L" sounds have phonemic value in Gaelic and words can start with either for example "laoi" (dark L) and "leibh" (light L).
I love your videos so much, very interesting.
Stress patterns also differ, quite noticeably in some cases. Americans say conTRIBute, Englishmen say CONtribute.
True but better examples would be things like centriPEtal and corOllary in the U.K versus cenTRIpetal and CORolLAry in the U.S as there’s been regional variation in the U.K as regards the pronunciation of ‘contribute’ (CONtribute in the North and Midlands, conTRIbute in the South - though Simon is himself an exception to this rule).
I'm from Texas, U.S. your american accent is really good! I have heard that what has effected modern southern U.S. is influenced by Victorian era, southern England even though most of descend (majority percentage, not exclusively) from Scottish and Irish settlers. I have heard the generalized southern accent is essentially a British accent spoken a bit slower. Your thoughts?
As an american from the pacific north west who’s heard general english, you’re spot on, although it’s not exactly my accent you do sound exactly like someone from L.A.
I have a question about some words in a family will from the mid 1700s in America. I can't find any information about where they were from before Pennsylvania, but the word "sterling" was written "starling". I know it's not much to go by but I thought you might know or have a good guess. I was told they might have been Welsh.
Finally! Dr. Who: assistant to Tom Baker & Peter Davison. That's what I've seen him from!
I say "L" basically the same everywhere, in the potion of d (which is slightly further back then t)
Regarding water vs wader for water in NZ... it's American Television. That's what's going on there rather than independent evolution of a isolated dialect. The younger you are in NZ, the more like an American you speak, including in vocabulary.
Until I saw "Dissection of the American English Video", I assumed that these were actual transcriptions someone had written down in 1766, 1826, etc. I feel kind of foolish now. No wonder the language seemed surprisingly modern. For instance at 2:19, no one in 1766 would have said "at some stage", at least according to Google Ngram viewer. Likewise "were a problem" (2:56) is a 20th-century collocation. "The interesting thing" (3:28) might have been "what was singular" in 1826. "Looking for an excuse" (4:10) is mostly a 21st-century collocation.
I guess it might have been hard to find transcriptions of people talking naturally, as opposed to making a formal speech.
Your "overly velarized" dark l is definitely not excessive for (some speakers of) modern American English. I in fact don't have a velar*ized* l at all - mine is simply velar, with no alveolar articulation whatsoever.
The trap vowel breaks before nasal consonants in many varieties of Canadian English as well.
In Websters homeland, we EXPECT a gearjammer to speak one way, a jewish upholsterer to speak another, a cabbie to speak his, quick, and a salesman to speak carnival.
I knew an elderly lady from Gillingham in Kent, UK (born about 1910) who used the D sound in words with a T. She'd lived there all her life, never travelled, and never even liked going to "Chad'um" (Chatham) just down the road. She pronounced water as "warduh". Whenever we spoke she never used the glottal stop you might expect in an area that's predominantly Estuary English. It was like she'd kept aspects of the older Kentish accent. So I guess that sound would have easily have travelled to the New World a few hundred years before to give "budder v butter" . A very unscientific sample of one I know!
You're doing work few have tried. Keep up with it, please.
South Africans do NOT tap their t's. South African t is typically moderately aspirated plosive, and unaspirated plosive in an st cluster, it is never tapped - that would be interpreted as an American accent by a South African.
Do you ever do work for like solving fraud cases where people are pretending to be someone else... I'd be interested to see what you could do with cases like that; where you have to identify a side by side recording for authenticity.
It's interesting to me as an American who grew up British (My father was in the Air Force) and being the only person in my family having a British accent. Then when we moved back to the US when I was 14 I eventually took on my now distinctive Wisconsin accent. I totally lost my British accent and I'd really have to practice a lot to get it back. I do however still sometimes use words, terms, or phrases that are British and have some inflections that don't sound American.
In the movie A Thousand Clowns, Murray (Jason Robards) and Nick (Barry Gordon) can mimick dozens of New York City and New Jersey accents. Buffalo New York has an accent that can put an eggbeater to anybody's theory, and it comes straight from the rubbish can. California has a double loud R, but a Billy Joel immigrant, New England, or Westchester accent have muted or absent r's. Kentucky has either a strong southern drawl, or a broadcast perfect Websters. Texas has and had it's very own sounds and emphasis. See the movie Old Yeller.
I wouldn't say there is a cohesive American english even today. The "American' speech patterns Brits would have noticed in the 18th century were regional. 18th century New Englanders spoke very differently from Carolinians, for example.
If you need a sample of an older speaker of general American, I was born in Chicago, raised there and Dearborn Michigan. The cot caught merger is highly regional, although I noticed my eldest grandchild from Michigan age 9 may not be distinguishing them. Amusing fact, my brother and I do not have the Chicago cat vowel (roughly kiat) while my sister, the middle child, has it. The Ls of Lull are definitely different for me.
I wish you would help locate who (Dubya ?) or how the alternate uses of the article 'the' where if the noun starts with a vowel it affects how we educated Brits automatically change how 'the' is altered.
EG: The ( thee)alternative is NOT the (Thuh).
Most commercial newscasters go to the wrong expression and sound stupid to me.
Simon: What do you think of A.Z Foreman's reconstructions in comparison to your own? You guys should do a podcast!
How long does it take you to research these accent transformation videos?
as a canadian, i tend to assume that general canadian and general american are the same, and they are for the most part, but it seemed to me that your american pronunciations were exagerated, almost like a caricature of an american dialect;; americans feel free to correct me tho
I thought the "almost-too-perfect-sounding" sound fitted the idea of an older and experienced New England-ish man, which is what he was going for. But that's more my feeling on the matter than a coherent thought.
I'm from rural Virginia so I ride the line between Southern/Appalachian and General American I think, so there's more contractions and slurs in how I and my family speak.
@@toothpastereal When I was in High School, the rule in Speech was-If Walter Cronkite says a word, say the word that way. He and Dan Rather got their on air start in Texas, I think.
@@Kitsaplorax Very interesting, in looking it up Dan Rather had an interesting story about a possibly drunk English teacher correcting his pronunciation of "variable," which I found funny.
I once read that southern Ontario English was the most unaccented English in the world, and I wish I'd kept the reference. Having said that, I can spot an American almost instantly by the way they say 'pop', even if they're from just over the border from me.
I've been noticing the America pronunciation of the word "mirror" recently. To my British ears, it sounds like "meer". Brits tend to pronounce it as "mirra". So both diverge from the spelling unless spoken by a real stage acTOR. (Yes, I need to learn proper phoenician notation!)
MIR-ur
Is there linguistic interest in how words are shortened in everyday speech? Dropping r's completely appears to be quite common.
Of course, non-rhotic American accents say it the more British way " miruh"