How do you pronounce these disputable words?

LL   Sat Jan 31, 2009 7:54 pm GMT
It's called "Appa-latch-cha" by some people.
Lazar   Sat Jan 31, 2009 7:56 pm GMT
I pronounce it "appa-lay-tcha".
Uriel   Sat Jan 31, 2009 8:45 pm GMT
Oh no! I'm afraid it'll have to be over between us, Lazar.....
asdf   Sat Jan 31, 2009 9:45 pm GMT
>> What interests me the most about the Southern/Northern dialect dichotomy the most is how those dialects sound so mutually nasty to each other. I suspect there's some cognitive dissonance going on in the brain due to mutually incompatible sounds. <<

How does the Western accent sound to them in comparison? Equally nasty, or not?
Lo   Sat Jan 31, 2009 10:16 pm GMT
New York City, New York
Toronto, Canada.

1. A anti- = a) antai (an-ty) / b) anti (like 'auntie')
2. B coupon = a) ku-pan / b) kyu-pan
3. Neither, I say d@-R\EKT
4. A
5. A
6. B
7. A
8. B
9. A
10. A
11. Neither, I say rI-ZOR\S
12. A
13. A
Uriel   Sat Jan 31, 2009 10:32 pm GMT
There's a Western accent?
Travis   Sun Feb 01, 2009 6:40 am GMT
>>I don't know, Travis -- i can't picture a lot of German influence in Appalachia.<<

No, I mean the parts of Pennsylvania with significant Pennsylvania Dutch influence (which can be stronger than, say, German influence in the Upper Midwest).
asdf   Sun Feb 01, 2009 3:57 pm GMT
>> There's a Western accent? <<

I meant the Western *American* accent. Spoken in the far Western states of the United States. Defined as being rather similar to conservative General American, but with some differences. According to Labov's ANAE, almost entirely cot-caught merged. Different from the North in that there is no Northern cities vowel shift; different from Canada in that far fewer people have the Canadian shift or Canadian raising. /u/ is extremely fronted after consonants like t, and d. There's some variation within the West. There's a continuum from North to South that determines the amount of fronting of /u/ and /o/, where the Northern areas have very little, and California, Arizona, and New Mexico have the most. Also some areas near Canada have -ag raising (like in "bag"), and certain other Canadian pronunciations (like some Canadian raising, and different vowels in words like "tomorrow", etc.) California as well as most of the rest of the Southwest probably have the most innovations, like the CVS. The closest area to conservative General American be the areas that are not in the extreme Northern part (due to the Canadian influences), or the extreme Southwest (due to the massive California influence). Somewhere like Denver would probably be closest.

So anyway I was wondering how the Western accent sounds to people from the North and the South, since according to Jasper, "What interests me the most about the Southern/Northern dialect dichotomy the most is how those dialects sound so mutually nasty to each other."
Jasper   Sun Feb 01, 2009 5:20 pm GMT
ASDF, I don't know exactly how to answer your question. I moved out of the South in 1980, and Western American speech has changed a lot since then (CVS), and besides that, we really did not have much exposure to Westerners except through TV. I remember thinking that the then-California dialect sounded cloying, but nowhere near as nasty as the dialects from the North. (I don't know what Southerners today think about CVS; for that matter, I don't know what Northerners think about CVS, either.)

I believe there is a much wider gulf between the Great Lakes Dialects and Southern Dialects than there is with California-speak, because of the dipthongization issue and the situation with vowel-raising. This wider gulf probably explains why speakers of the dialects hate each others speech so much.
Uriel   Sun Feb 01, 2009 7:49 pm GMT
I'm a Westerner, and I don't notice much of an accent out here. And I was once an Easterner.....
Dude Who Knows   Mon Feb 02, 2009 5:04 am GMT
Los Angeles, California

1. anti- = a) antai (an-ty) / b) anti (like 'auntie')
2. coupon = a) ku-pan / b) kyu-pan
3. direct = a) diREkt / b) daiREkt / c) DAI-rekt
4. either = a) ai-ther / b) ee-ther
5. February = a) febyuari / b) februari
6. forehead = a) forrid / b) four-head
7. grocery = a) grossary / b) groshery
8. library = a) laib-rary / b) lai-berry
9. mischievous = a) MISchivus / b) mis-CHEE-vious
10. often = a) ofen / b) off-tn
11. resource = a) RI-sorce / b) RI-zorce
12. route = a) ru-t (root) / b) raut
13. suggest = a) sujest / b) sug-jest

1. a
2. a
3. a (c sometimes for emphasis)
4. both, depends on context
5. a
6. b
7. b
8. neither, I say "lai-brary"
9. b
10. b usually, bu a when speaking quickly
11. a
12. both
13. b
asdf   Mon Feb 02, 2009 5:47 am GMT
>> 13. b <<

I'd really like to hear someone actually pronounce it like that (especially in rapid speech). I don't believe it.
Travis   Mon Feb 02, 2009 7:13 am GMT
I myself have very different perceptions of non-Californian Western American English (WAE) and Californian/Californian-like English (CE). On one hand, WAE aside from its cot-caught merger generally sounds quite careful to me, to the point of almost coming of as a bit fake - as obviously real people do not speak like that outside of television sets. On the other hand, CE has a very distinct sound to my ears, quite different from that of WAE, due to a number of sound shifts, most noticably the general fronting of rounded back vowels, and lacks the perceived carefulness of WAE. Hence CE does not sound "fake" subjectively to me, but at the same time it sounds, well, Californian - which is honestly not much better at times due to what California is often associated with.

That said, one important note is that CE is genetically actually very close to dialects spoken throughout the Lower and Upper Midwest, due to present-day CE not being descended from the English brought there during its original settlement by English-speaking colonists but rather being descended from the dialects brought from throughout the Midwest by internal immigrants during the mid-20th century, which essentially drowned the preexisting English dialects there. Hence CE dialects actually have a much higher degree of familiarity here than one would expect, relative to the far less familiar WAE dialects, but which at the same time increases the noticeability of the particular innovations separate from those of Midwestern dialects that it does have.
Jasper   Mon Feb 02, 2009 6:13 pm GMT
"I'm a Westerner, and I don't notice much of an accent out here. And I was once an Easterner."

Uriel, Westerners dipthongize vowels less frequently, (and monopthongize other vowels less frequently) and vowel-raising exists only to a minimal degree. (The CVS actually seems to feature vowel-lowering.)

I can spot the difference between a Midwestern dialect and a Western one almost immediately—unless the speaker is from Nebraska or Iowa, in which case there seems to be little difference at all. (Once again, this caveat does not apply to CVS speakers.)