Why are Antimooners so obsessed with accents?

Rob   Tue Mar 24, 2009 9:51 am GMT
I can understand some people asking how their English sounds to native speakers, but then there are some posts that get rather wacky and really go overboard with the hairsplitting. What is the reason fo this?
321   Tue Mar 24, 2009 2:13 pm GMT
I'm guessing you have an American accent. But a non-rhotic one. You don't seem to pronounce your r's: "What is the reason fo this?"
Lazar   Tue Mar 24, 2009 2:29 pm GMT
321, I think it's far more likely that Rob just made a typo by not hitting the R key hard enough.
Trimac20   Tue Mar 24, 2009 2:34 pm GMT
Because accents are interesting.
cucu   Tue Mar 24, 2009 2:58 pm GMT
American and British people seem to be rather obsessed with foreigners' accent but I wonder whether English speaking people know that they never lose their strong accent when they speak foreign languages
Pat   Tue Mar 24, 2009 4:20 pm GMT
What does an English accent sound like in other languages? Is it possible to tell whether the speaker is from Britain, North America, or Australia, or New Zealand? Or do we all have the same sounding accent?
Serg   Tue Mar 24, 2009 4:52 pm GMT
cucu,

You're wrong. Recently I've had a chance to watch on Russian television an hour-long interview with US ambassador to the Russian Federation John Beyrle. I was amazed by how well he spoke Russian. Of course he made occasional grammatical mistakes or chose wrong words. But he did that very rarely and overall his Russian was extremely good. To me it sounded 99% native and most of the time I didn't hear even a slightest trace of his English accent. His intonation and rhythm were genuinely Russian. He was even able to use correct idioms spontaneously. Here's the link where you can watch his interview online: http://www.1tv.ru/pr/si=5756&fi=417

And by the way, the interviewer - host of the show Vladimir Pozner - came to Russia from the US with his parents when hew was, I think, 18. So Russian isn't his native language but he speaks it fluently after having lived in Russia for most of his life.
Jasper   Tue Mar 24, 2009 6:49 pm GMT
I think Antimooners are obsessed with accents because they affect how we're perceived by others.
Kess   Tue Mar 24, 2009 7:55 pm GMT
Are you Cot Caught merged?
cheese   Wed Mar 25, 2009 12:24 pm GMT
I'm still struggling with the difference between "Cot" and "Caught" in pronunciation
wk   Wed Mar 25, 2009 3:22 pm GMT
@Cheese,

That's not a problem, since people from Canada and the Western US all have the bother-father-cot-caught vowel merger.
+   Wed Mar 25, 2009 4:28 pm GMT
Wk, not all Westerners and Canadians have the LOT-THOUGHT merger. It is very common (probably at least 90% in the West and 95% in Canada), but you are always going to run into a few sporadic natives that make the distinction. As a rule, the older the speaker, the less chance of a LOT-THOUGHT merger. I have personally met speakers from California, Washington State, and Toronto that do not have the merger.

Regional dialects are fascinating. If you are passionate about something, it is normal to split hairs every now and then.
Lazar   Wed Mar 25, 2009 5:33 pm GMT
Traditionally, San Francisco was an island of LOT-THOUGHT distinction in an otherwise merged West, but I think the merger has become common there as well.
Jasper   Wed Mar 25, 2009 6:02 pm GMT
"Traditionally, San Francisco was an island of LOT-THOUGHT distinction in an otherwise merged West, but I think the merger has become common there as well."

I recently interviewed two 20s-something Bay-area natives; neither speaker retained the cot-caught distinction, although an older speaker whom I'd previously interviewed still retained the distinction.

I think it's safe to say that the distinction is disappearing even there.
Caspian   Wed Mar 25, 2009 7:49 pm GMT
I don't have a bother, father, cot or caught merger - but it does appear that I have a law-lore merger. How is is possible for these two to be pronounced differently?