CringeFest 7: I don't have an accent

>>>> he matter with conservative GA is that it retains distinctions that have been lost in most modern NAE dialects overall, and it still retains the old phonemic vowel length system whereas most dialects spoken today away from the eastern seaboard have discarded phonemic vowel length. <<

Hmm. What vowel length is this? I thought NAE had allophonic vowel length.<<

Much if not most of NAE today has allophonic vowel length, but that does not apply to the whole of NAE. More easterly dialects, such as Lazar's, are, as a whole, more likely to conserve historical phonemic vowel length.

In what way does conservative General American preserve the historical phonemic vowel length, and does it also have the allophonic vowel length.

>> Ah, you misunderstood. I was referring to the difference between Seattle and Milwaukee English, which to me looks very minimal. I doubt whether speakers from those places would be able to pick out each others accents, or even notice them--barring the trained linguist like yourself. <<

Yeah, there's pretty much no difference between the accent spoken in Wisconsin and Washington. I sure couldn't tell the two accents apart, so I doubt that people from those places would be able to either.

Travis, Damien is using the word 'pavement' to mean 'side-walk', not paving in general, as you seem to have taken it. Thus, the meaning of 'kerb' is the same in both places, even if the spelling varies.

<<Wow, the drinking age is really only 18 there? I can't believe they let kids drink and go to pubs.>>

Hehe, because in America university students never drink until they are 21. :)

>>Ah, you misunderstood. I was referring to the difference between Seattle and Milwaukee English, which to me looks very minimal. I doubt whether speakers from those places would be able to pick out each others accents, or even notice them--barring the trained linguist like yourself.<<

For starters, I'm not a trained linguist - my day job is as a computer programmer, and I studied computer science in school, actually.

That said, while there are similarities between Seattle and Milwaukee English, there are most definitely not the same. (And I would certainly be able to pick someone out from Seattle as not being from here - I can already often pick people from Chicago out as not being here, and the speech there is certainly far, far closer to that here than that in Seattle is). As for points of similarity, the main ones are:

1. Having Canadian Raising (even though the details of such may differ significantly); however, sociologically these differ between Seattle and Milwaukee, in that such seems to have gotten weaker over time in Seattle while such seems to be getting stronger over time in Milwaukee.
2. Preferring monophthongs rather than diphthongs for historical /eɪ̯/ and /oʊ̯/, at least in non-hiatus environments; in more GA-like varieties in the Milwaukee area, though, diphthongs can be heard for such in non-hiatus environments.
3. Having allophonic vowel length; it can be argued, though, that in Milwaukee such is already breaking down and giving rise to a new phonemic vowel length independent of historical phonemic vowel length (due to elision masking the original conditioning environments for allophonic vowel length).
4. Having a range of mergers common to most modern NAE dialects away from the East Coast, such as that of /w/ and /ʍ/, that of /ær/, /ɛr/, and /eːr/, and that of /æŋ/, /ɛŋ/, and /eɪ̯ŋ/; note that such does not take into consideration loans, isolated survivals (such as the non-merger of /ɛŋ/ in "penguin" and "Genghis Khan"), and subsequent sound change.
5. Having a clearly rounded vowel rather than an unrounded vowel in "sorry".

However, as non-East Coast NAE dialects spoken in the US, though, the above seems to be the limit of the similarities between the dialects spoken in Seattle and Milwaukee. The main innovations present in the Seattle dialect not present in the Milwaukee dialect are:

1. Having the cot-caught merger.
2. Having influence from the Californian and Canadian Vowel Shifts; this is significant because this increases the vowel-space distance between the Seattle dialect and the Milwaukee dialect when combined with the latter's NCVS.
3. Merging /æg/, /ɛg/, and /eɪ̯g/ as [eːg]; this incidentally largely does *not* show up in Milwaukee even though one can find incidental individuals here (such as my fiancée) who may have such for certain words (such as "bag").

Also, the matter is that the dialect here in Milwaukee has a lot of more, and often quite distinctive, innovative features which are not shared with that in Seattle, such as:

1. Having the NCVS; while that in Milwaukee typically does not have nearly as strong diphthongization of /æ/ as many more easterly Inland North dialects, it typically shifts it to an (often undiphthongized) overall position centered upon [ɛ̞], which makes it easy to confuse with historical /ɛ/ (but that is actually shifted to [ɜ], so as to not merge with it, here).
2. Having the *generalized* vocalization of historical /l/ as [ɰ(ˡ)] and [w(ˡ)] prevocalically, as [ɯ̯] and [w] postvocalically and intervocalically, as [ɯ] and [ʊ] when syllabic, and as [ɰˡː] and [wˡː] when geminate; the rounding or lack thereof of such is largely dependent on the rounding/labialization of the preceding vowel or consonant, even though one often will hear [wˡ] word-initially.
3. Having a uvular approximant or weak voiced uvular fricative realization of /r/ except after coronals, where a more mundane postalveolar approximant is found; note that such is the most closed prevocalically and the most open intervocalically and when syllabic, with postvocalic positions being in between with respect to openness.
4. Having the widespread elision of /t/ (incl. in /rt/), /d/ (incl. in /rd/), /n/, /nt/, and sometimes /nd/ intervocalically when not before stressed vowels in the same word; one note is that such varies significantly with respect to age, with it being more frequent in the speech of younger people than older people, and the particular individual, as there is wide variation even within the same age group and social background. I am not going to get into the details of this further, though, as I already have written a lot on this recently here.
5. Having very significant assimilation of consonant clusters like /st/, /nd/, /d(V)n/, /b(v)m/, /dl/ /tk/, /dk/, /tg/, /dg/, and so on as geminates, particularly intervocalically (but also often word-finally and even across word boundaries, even though such is less consistent there); I am not going to get into such further, though, as I have already discussed this in length on here.
6. Having a very strong level of realized vowel length variation, much moreso than the typical NAE dialect with allophonic vowel length; this, along with similar variation in pitch, is incidentally not shared with the dialect in Chicago, and consequently how I myself am able to pick out Chicagoans from Milwaukeeans.
7. Having final devoicing, particularly when there is not a following word-initial vowel, which in itself is rather typical for an English dialect, but with commonplace final fortition of sibilants, frequent final fortition of /v/, and sporadic final fortition of /d/.
8. Having a consistently voiceless /dʒ/ (but still distinct from /tʃ/), which often undergoes fortition to [tʃ] word-finally; this is distinct from the commonplace final and initial devoicing of plosives and voicing assimilation of the same in NAE dialects in that it remains consistently voiceless even intervocalically.

The kinds of things listed above are really what makes the Milwaukee dialect rather distinct from the Seattle dialect. For similar reasons, more GA-like varieties spoken in the Milwaukee area may be closer to the Seattle dialect through lacking or toning down some of the features listed above.

>>Yeah, there's pretty much no difference between the accent spoken in Wisconsin and Washington. I sure couldn't tell the two accents apart, so I doubt that people from those places would be able to either.<<

That depends on what part of Wisconsin you are talking about. I myself am talking about the dialect, and not local variations upon GA, spoken here in Milwaukee, which has more in common with that spoken in Chicago than that spoken throughout much of Wisconsin as a whole. The dialects spoken in much of the rest of Wisconsin today are almost certainly closer to that spoken in Seattle aside from things such as having even stronger Canadian Raising than down here in Milwaukee until you get rather far Up North, where the people are considered to be quite strongly accented here in Milwaukee. Many dialects in Wisconsin used to be more distinctive, but in much of the rest of Wisconsin the general trend seems to have been more towards an Upper Midwesternized version of GA whereas the trend in Milwaukee has been away from GA amongst the middle class. (Honestly, I am probably far more heavily accented to most Americans than the average randomly chosen Wisconsinite due to this kind of thing.)

[>>Yeah, there's pretty much no difference between the accent spoken in Wisconsin and Washington. I sure couldn't tell the two accents apart, so I doubt that people from those places would be able to either.<<]

Good God, who said that, Travis? If she were a European, I think I could grant her some latitude.

The differences in speech between Wisconsin and Washington are immense--immediately distinguishable, to my mind. To be fair, I probably have a better ear for accents than most other people.

>> The differences in speech between Wisconsin and Washington are immense--immediately distinguishable, to my mind. To be fair, I probably have a better ear for accents than most other people. <<

Interesting. What does a Washington accent sound like to the average Wisconsinite? How closely would they be likely to guess where the speaker was from? Would it be immediately recognizable as a distinct Washingtonian accent, or simply sound like a far Western accent? Or would they be likely to confuse it with say, a Canadian or Californian or Idahoan accent?

-Damien is using the word 'pavement' to mean 'side-walk'-


In Baltimore, people say PAVEMENT instead of SIDE-WALK.

<<<Closest to the accent known as General American, a vaguely defined conservative Midwestern accent, that people that are trying to lose their regional North American accent tend to strive for in tv and radio. The closest dialects to General American spoken today are those in the Western and Midlands US and Western and Central Canada (according to Labov's ANAE). Newfoundland English itself is not very close to General American, however newscasters from that area use an accent that is close to General American--and thus sound less accent to people from all around North America. If that is true, the reason could be that they undergo more accent reduction than people from say, Chicago, or Toronto, or Seattle who don't think that they have a strong regional accent, and thus undergo little or no accent neutralization.>>>

Thank for the clarification, I understand better now.

I find that New Yorkers have differing accents depending on which part of NY they were raised in. Maybe it's due to the strong accent influence from the Italian, Irish, Spanish and the Jewish further back in time. Though much of the next generations of the way back immigrants have retained the accents of their great grandparents, they usually can only speak in english now.

The NY accents that seem to be popular for characters for shows, and that I like most, are the ones in "Everybody loves Raymond", "The Nanny" main character herself, Bugs Bunny and Fred Flintstones, and most of the pink ladies and T-birds from the movie Grease.

<<In Baltimore, people say PAVEMENT instead of SIDE-WALK.>>

That's also the case in the UK and parts of the US, I believe. I was just saying it was not used to mean 'paving'. :)

>> I find that New Yorkers have differing accents depending on which part of NY they were raised in. <<

According to Labov, it's actually a class accent. The reason people think that different areas have different accents is because different areas are associated with various classes--as well as there being a large immigrant population which has some influences on the accent.

[Interesting. What does a Washington accent sound like to the average Wisconsinite? How closely would they be likely to guess where the speaker was from? Would it be immediately recognizable as a distinct Washingtonian accent, or simply sound like a far Western accent? Or would they be likely to confuse it with say, a Canadian or Californian or Idahoan accent?]

A Washingtonian would notice the Wisconsonite accent right away, unless she had no ear for accents. A Wisconsonite may or may not notice-- you'd have to ask Travis. But this discussion is a diversion from the original statement, to wit:

[>>Yeah, there's pretty much no difference between the accent spoken in Wisconsin and Washington. I sure couldn't tell the two accents apart, so I doubt that people from those places would be able to either.<<]

I submit to you that while there might be some merit to the second half of the original equation, the first part of it--the part about there being "pretty much no difference"--is absolutely false!

>> A Washingtonian would notice the Wisconsonite accent right away, unless she had no ear for accents. A Wisconsonite may or may not notice-- you'd have to ask Travis. <<

That's weird. Why is it an asymetrical relationship? Why would an Wisconsinite not notice a Washingtonian accent?

>>That's weird. Why is it an asymetrical relationship? Why would an Wisconsinite not notice a Washingtonian accent?<<

To us a Washingtonian accent would largely just sound like a northern, somewhat Canadian-like variation upon the typical modern Western accent, which generally does not sound strongly accented to most Americans, including most Wisconsinites. This is as opposed to many Upper Midwestern dialects, which are classically quite accented to most Americans, and which very often remain so today - especially in the case of the rural dialects of the far north of the Upper Midwest and the urban dialects of southeastern Wisconsin and northeastern Illinois. While some of the previously more distinctive substratum features in such dialects have been worn down over time, there have been newer innovations such as the NCVS which have made up for such in the dialect significantly affected by such.

That should be "in the dialects significantly affected by such" above.