Californian Dialect

mjd,
That's the same link that Julian pointed out earlier.

I detest the "standard" American dialect. It is painful for my ears to be surrounded by it at school for seven hours daily. This dialect sounds immensely distorted and bewildering. I prefer the Scotish and Irish dialects far more than this standard American one and even come close to prefering them over the standard Anglo one. However, I would classify the majority of colloquial and regional Anglo dialects as incoherent rubbish.

LOL at the Valley girl recording... cute accent.

Elaine,

I wasn't aware of that. Oh well, there it is again.

Adam L.,

Then close your ears.

Could you make a short list of Hollywood actors that use Californian accent...

Thanks!

Many of the sounds found in the Northern California vowel shift are also present in standard Canadian English, at least the one spoken in and around Toronto. The exaggerated mooom for mom-type sounds especially. I'd say that a portion of the population, young and old do use the infamous "oot" for about sound but the closer you get to the downtown core the less you're bound to hear it.

It's funny because while watching TV in Toronto, one can really hear the difference between "standard Broadcast / California" English which probably resembles urban Canadian English the most vs. the North East vowel shift dialect which can be heard everywhere on the Buffalo TV stations most of us receive via cable.

So for instance, switching back and forth between a local Toronto new broadcast and say, a Buffalo 6 o'clock newscast, one can really hear the "mam" type sounds from our neighbours in Buffalo and Ro(a)chester!!!

What I noticed and again, this is my own personal perception, is that the Toronto newsperson will often have an accent sounding closer to a US national newscast than the person broadcasting from Western NY an hour and a half down the road!!!

Funnily enough, many Canadian TV personalities (John Roberts is an example) end up on national American TV shows be it the news or VH1 etc because of their perceived "standard" accent and talent I guess!!

Moreover, I used to live in Montreal and the difference between Montreal TV English and Plattsburgh, NY / Burlington, VT TV English (which definitively has less of a Northern Cities sound to it) was less drastic or at least, from what I can remember or hear!

It seems to me that English Montrealers use the Canadian raise sound to a lesser degree than their counterparts in Ontario thus diminishing the differences between the Montreal and Platsburgh dialects...

Anybody else noticed what I noticed?