Californian Dialect

Can anyone give me some differences between the Californian dialect and Standard Midwestern American English? I saw a documentary a while ago and the linguist mentioned certain phonetic differences ("fewd" instead of "food" or something similar). As a transplant, I've noticed that Californians seem to have much more exaggerated inflections - ie. their voices go up and down quite a bit.

I'm a transplant as well and I have to say - I don't really notice a siginificant difference in their accent from mine. But then, I also couldn't tell you if mine was Standard Midwestern or not. It probably isn't though no one (from the Midwest too) has ever told me I have a non-standard dialect. What I do notice are the expressions - but you see that everywhere you go. Maybe I just have the same accent as people in California (even though I'm from Miami) None of them can tell I'm not native - except when I get lost!

The girl in the American Pie movies who says "and one time, at band camp...", what accent does she have?

<<The girl in the American Pie movies who says "and one time, at band camp...", what accent does she have? >>

Oh, sure. That's one of the most famous movie lines LOL
But I'd say she probably has a valley girl accent.

Which Valley? Remember I am not American!
The line may not be so famous, but most movie lines are said in very standard American, so you don't remember them for their accents.

The "Valley Girl accent" is what most people commonly think of as the Californian dialect. It is exaggerated, for sure, but I think it retains features of the true Californian dialect. I think the most notable characteristic of the Valley Girl accent is the inflections; they go up and down wildly.

Thank you, Katherine, I couldn't have said it any better.

The people I have met from California make fun of this "Valley Girl Accent" - because this is what everyone thinks they sound like and it's not true. I'm not sure about the inflections Katherine. I don't hear that they speak any differently from me. As for "Valley Girl" - you might have better luck with this by describing the accent of a space cadet - like Paris Hilton or Jessica Simpson or the fabled Cher on Clueless. This is certainly not a standard accent here.

Perhaps these links will be helpful (if you like vowel charts).

http://www.ling.mq.edu.au/units/ling210-901/phonetics/vowelgraphs/USE_Monophthongs.html
http://www.ling.mq.edu.au/units/ling210-901/phonetics/vowelgraphs/USE_Diphthongs.html

Altho "standard general American" is a vague and hard-to-define variety, there are some systematic changes happening in California English, most notably (in my opinion), the emerging vowel shift which is changing the position of several vowels in the mouth. Penny Eckert has done research into this area in the San Francisco Bay area (Northern California)

http://www.stanford.edu/~eckert/vowels.html

I've also read from other sources that the same process is being noted in Southern California as well. Of course, the degree to which the shift has occurred depends on the speaker, and not surprisingly, it's stronger amongst younger people. I'm from California and, after learning some about phonetics and phonology, realized that some of the characteristics of the vowel shift are present in my speech and a lot of my friends' (such as the highly fronted and unrounded [u] and [oU] as in "food" and "foe").

Katherine was right on about Valley girl being a highly exaggerated stereotype, but that, like many stereotypes, it's based on at least some truth. Besides describing Cal. English in general terms like vowel shifts and intonation differences, I'm not sure what else distinguishes it from other dialects on a consistent basis (there are some lexical differences, too)...it's kind of hard to think of every aspect of possible differences between CE and other varieties but if someone asks me or anyone else from California a question in particular maybe we can think of more specific examples :)

PBS has a very good site on American accents which we have been talking about on other subjects. Here is the one on California English

http://www.pbs.org/speak/seatosea/americanvarieties/californian/

It goes through all kinds of California accents like Valley Girl, Surfer Dude and Chicano English (don't laugh they are all real recognized accents).

Good reading.

I'll listen more carefully. The only striking thing I've noticed so far (only been here for a few months) is that they say "for sure" a lot and the "for" is pronounced "fer" for them, not as I pronounce it [fo:r]

I'm currently in California, and I do find that Californians do indeed have exaggerated inflections. They make an extensive use of long -r, -l, -w and schwa sounds as in "victums" and "evul". However, since my area is composed of Russian and Hispanic immigrants, I don't regularly hear the WASP Calfornian dialect. WASPS in California will eventually be extinct, anyway.

Well, California's a big state, so I doubt that WASPs will be extinct in California for some time. Plus, with the US film, television, and recording industries primarily based in Los Angeles, immigration of wannabe actors and musicians from the all across the US will continue unabated.

However, I will agree that with the flood of new immigrants from Mexico, Central American, Russia, and Armenia to SoCal (particularly in Los Angeles), I'm hearing more and more Chicano-inflected English, and Russian-inflected English, and less of California/General American English.

In both Californian English and Midwestern English there are vowel shifts taking place...These accents are moving away from the ''Standard pronunciation''.

Low back merger is common in Californian English ( caught = cot = [ka:t], lost [la:st]...) but the vowel is becoming more O-like in Valley Girl accent (Mom, God being pronounced as [mO:m, gO:d] and not [ma:m, ga:d]) /Roseanne Barr & Jenna Elfman (Dharma)/ like saying [mO:m, gO:d] instead of [ma:m, ga:d].. So Valley Girl!/
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As for ''Standard Midwestern'' becoming less ''standard'':

''The Northern Cities Chain Shift is a series of innovations in the vowels of the English spoken in the urban centres that surround the American side of the Great Lakes. First described by Labov, Yaeger, & Steiner (1973) and investigated further by Eckert (1989), its linguistic consequence is a new vowel system, characteristic of cities like Chicago, Detroit, Cleveland, and Buffalo. Some aspects of it are detectable farther afield, in cities like Milwaukee, Pittsburgh, Columbus, and Indianapolis.''

http://www.ic.arizona.edu/~lsp/Northeast/ncshift/ncshift.html