Modern London vowels

Damian in Edinburgh   Sat Mar 27, 2010 4:18 pm GMT
That's OK, Pete - nae probs. I hope some of these clips are of assistance to European as well.

I wish I could be more helpful with regard to the aspect of the Blackpool lady's speech that seems to be puzzling you....I really can't detect anything really unusual about her "t's" and "d's" but maybe it's because I am a native Brit and cannot perceive what you appear to.

I wouldn't worry too much about not knowing about Blackpool - I've never been there myself and from what I have read about it I have no plans to go there anyway...some people call it the Brighton of the North (Brighton being on the south coast of England) and I really can't believe that Blackpool can compare with Brighton, a city I have been to and I liked it very much indeed. It's just that Blackpool has a reputation for attracting a lot of chavs, or neds as we call them up here in Scotland, from the metro areas of North West England.....lager louts and addicts of the new "drug" craze mephedrone.....legal in the UK because it's actually meant to be a plant food but which can have devastating effects when ingested by people.

Our elderly American friends will surely know by know the difference between Piccadilly Circus and Leicester Square.....the two are actually visible from each other at either end of Coventry Street which runs from one to the other.

Our London School of English hero actually managed to find more native Brits now living in London.....it's strange how many of them seem to have been there for just two weeks, but it's a fact that some parts of inner city London do tend to have very transient populations, at least he managed to interview some who have lived in London all their lives so a further chance to examine their vowels, if that doesn't sound too medical.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0VIzQEBVmNI&feature=related
Kendra   Sat Mar 27, 2010 5:54 pm GMT
I don't know about NF, but in Tucson, the vowel is low back not low central, which would really stick out here--if we noticed such things, which we don't. How many people in Tucson did Labov analyze? 2?

//!!!!

I will believe professor Labov and not you:
http://rs515.rapidshare.com/files/288560529/LA-363.rar

on the page 109


''In a few of the areas
where /o/ and /oh/ are merged, like Tucson, Arizona, and St. Johnʼs, Newfoundland, we find red symbols, indicating that the merger takes place at a relatively front position''
Niña   Sat Mar 27, 2010 5:56 pm GMT
Why would you want to imitate the sounds of peasantry?
When you learn French you want to imitate the finest Paris French not some lock class byproduct.
Niña   Sat Mar 27, 2010 6:08 pm GMT
Why would you want to imitate the sounds of peasantry?
When you learn French you want to imitate the finest Paris French not some low class byproduct.
European   Sun Mar 28, 2010 4:26 pm GMT
Thanks for information and the clips Damian, I'm so lazy ...I've realized that I should know something about Southern British dialects - especially when I'm a big fan of British r'n'b and grime music...For example Craig David is a Londoner -maybe my memory is sometimes like a giant warm hole! :P

Oh, and I have a very interesting question to Damian - I like listening to Amy Macdonald, but her accent get me puzzled when she sang 'go' with monophthong ( /go:/).. Is it a typical feature of Scotish English ?
ellachan91   Thu Apr 08, 2010 6:53 am GMT