the valley girls

Valley Girl accent is more pleasant than any Southern accent will ever be!
If you want to hear some ugly Southern accents, try the Jerry Springer Show...

And do you necessarily believe that most/all individuals who speak various Southern American English dialects are like the individuals which are shown on the Jerry Springer Show? I myself, at least, would prefer a Southern dialect over Valley Girl-speak any day, and it's less a matter of how it's pronounced that matters or the intonation patterns than it is of the incredibly excessive use of certain words and expressions, especially "like" and "totally", that is rather irritating, to say the least.

I find the Californian accent to be highly irritating. The -L always comes across as sluggish with the tongue touching the front teeth and sounds most irritating during the pronunciation of "Los Angeles". Words such as "talk", "thought", "broad", "lost", "long", "dog", and "off" are pronounced with an ä vowel that sounds very awkward. All of the words that end in -r as in "here" always sound exaggerated.

Adam,

I don't think that there is simply a single Californian accent. As a Californian, however, it's always amusing ot hear the above mentioned words pronounced in a more 'British' style--the "o" or "a" sounds affected or pompous to many a Californian ear.

I think a lot of people's conceptions about Valley Girl speak come from movies, songs, and TV shows that have caricaturized it, exaggerating it beyond how most people would ever speak (as is often the case when caricatures of accents), altho surely some of the features are based in real-life. To me, what is traditionally known as Valley Girl speak doesn't sound like hardly anyone I know in real life--it sounds like an outdated thing from the 80s (one crucial difference I think is that 80s Valley Girl speak sounds outdated to me because it is largely pre-California Vowel Shift or only in the preliminary stages of it...I'm not from the San Fernando Valley but the people I know from there have participated in the CVS just like people from other areas and for the most part aren't readily identifiable as being from the San Fernando Valley per se). Now, certain intonation patterns like high-rise terminals are present in much (especially young females, but to a certain extent in males as well) Californian speech but that hardly qualifies them as "Valley Girl" speakers.

And Adam L., besides enlightening us with your highly subjective (and I think, overgeneralized) statements, would you care to be more specific when describing things like vowels? If possible, try to use antimoon's system or, much better yet, XSAMPA, instead of vague things like "ä", which means little to most people here (including me...I'm somewhat puzzled as to what you mean). When describing sounds in writing it's best to stick with internationally recognized standards such as XSAMPA/IPA so we can understand what you're talking about...and thank God there's just writing on this forum, or you might even have to hear my apparently "irritating" accent :)

correction: "as is often the case with caricatures of accents"....

I myself know that it's been heavily caricatured and exaggerated myself, but, for example, the one example of it which was linked to from here earlier in this thread pretty much is like what I myself saw it as, when not being deliberately exaggerated or like. And as for Adam, well, to me at least, he's horribly vague, and ought to use X-SAMPA, in my opinion as well.

''talk", "thought", "broad", "lost", "long", "dog", and "off"

ä = a:

/ta:k, th:at, bra:d, la:st, da:g, a:f/


the vowel in LONG is not a: because it is somewhat nasalized...

Well, here (in southern Wisconsin), "talk", "thought", "broad", "lost", "long", "dog", and "off" all share the vowel phoneme /O/. However, in "talk", "thought", "lost", and "off" it is realized as [O], in "broad" and "dog" it is realized as [O:], and in "long" it is realized as [O~:]. Mind you that I'm using X-SAMPA for my transcription, which you don't seem to be using.

Hey, Trav, I'm a slow learner...what's the difference between [O:] and [O~:]

[O:] is long, [O~:] is long and nasalized.

''talk", "thought", "broad", "lost", "long", "dog", and "off"

all share the same vowel for me (I'm cot-caught merged)...they've all merged to [A] or possibly slightly in the direction of [O] or somewhere in between the two,, depending on how I'm speaking. Kess, I don't see how "long" wouldn't have the same place of articulation just because it's nasalized...at least it's not that way for me. I would just mark it [lA~N] if I were really wanting to mark nasality (which is not contrastive in this context anyway).

For the record, I am *not* "cot"-"caught"-merged, and yet they all share the same phoneme for me nonetheless.

Hmm...and you're from near Milwaukee? That's interesting...

Yep, and in the Milwaukee area, and the whole of /at least/ southern Wisconsin, if not the whole of Wisconsin altogether (I'm adding this caveat because I've not been in northern Wisconsin for any extended period of time, besides being on vacation there), is not cot-caught merged, besides people who are not native to the area.