Closest Accent to General American

bored guy   Tue Jun 27, 2006 2:17 am GMT
Kirk,

Just for my curiousity, what do you do for a living? or you don't have a job??
I took a look to the link you posted above and tried to read some of your posts and I notice that they are soooo long.
I don't want to be rude, but some of them are very boring.Do you really have so much free time? Even if you copy and paste, Is till believe it takes some time to do it.
Kirk   Tue Jun 27, 2006 3:12 am GMT
<<Just for my curiousity, what do you do for a living? or you don't have a job?? >>

I'm a college student--or actually, I was until I graduated a week ago. While I was in school (up till a week ago) I had three parttime jobs on-campus in addition to a full load of classes. Now I'm in the process of applying to full-time positions.

<<I took a look to the link you posted above and tried to read some of your posts and I notice that they are soooo long. >>

Nah, only a few of 'em are that long. That one I linked is long because I needed to cover a lot of things. That particular post was not done all in one sitting but something I wrote little bits of when I had free time.

<<I don't want to be rude, but some of them are very boring.>>

Sorry, some of the things we linguistics-oriented people love to ramble on about can indeed be quite boring to other people. That's ok--we're not offended. Just ignore what you don't find interesting.

<<Even if you copy and paste, Is till believe it takes some time to do it.>>

Haha! Since when did copy and paste take much time? What's it, like 4 seconds to copy and paste something?
bored guy   Tue Jun 27, 2006 9:58 pm GMT
Haha! Since when did copy and paste take much time? What's it, like 4 seconds to copy and paste something>>>
Kirk,

If your post is 2 page long, paste and copy would take long time :), that is what I was refering to.
And again for my curiousity, how is the job market in your area or the US in linguistics, beside teaching ?
I am interested in your field too, but I have never gotten so far as you, I mean getting a degree.

Thanks.
Steff   Sat Jul 01, 2006 7:49 pm GMT
It's fun watching everyone debating the accents. However, I have to submit that the Northeastern Ohio area (not Cleveland/Parma regional area, but areas around Summit, Mahoning, Trumbull, Stark and Portage counties) probably has the cleanest pronunciation of any so-called American accent.

I don't know any of the symbols, so I'll try spelling these phonetically.

Man=man
Bag=bag
Beg=beg
Vague=vayg
Cat=cat
Fight=fite
Tomorrow=Ta-mor-row or to-mor-row
Sorry=sorry (the 'o' is definitely an 'o')
Measure= meh-scher
Think=think

And a few others.

Freight= frayt
Father= father (or fahther)
Car= car
Faint = faynt

We do tend to muddle some words here or there... dunno, rather than don't know, kinda instead of kind of, etc. Still, for the most part, there just isn't much of an accent in this particular area. Now, as you go into Southern Ohio, you'll find some West Virginia creeping in 'warsh for wash' being a noticable difference... but that's another story.

Two mildly amusing notes: The only place I know of in the world where 'mango' does not mean the fruit, but instead of means 'green peppers' is in Tuscarawas County, in more south-central (though still considered NEO) Ohio. And even though we speak fairly cleanly here, the suburb of Youngstown, Campbell, is pronounced by its natives and those surrounding it as 'Camel'.

Sorry. Saw this and had to comment.
Kirk   Sat Jul 01, 2006 9:37 pm GMT
Interesting comments, Steff.

That's interesting you mention Northeastern Ohio because that's actually an area well within the reaches of the Northern Cities Vowel Shift, as shown on this dialectal map from Wikipedia:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Northern_Cities_Vowel_Shift.png


Northern City Vowels are very interesting but they're not considered a feature under the umbrella of "General American" (even as hazily as that's defined).

<<We do tend to muddle some words here or there... dunno, rather than don't know, kinda instead of kind of, etc.>>

Those are common all over North America and the English-speaking world :)

<<Sorry=sorry (the 'o' is definitely an 'o') >>

That's definitely a feature typically found in the Northern Cities. In fact, "sorry" and the "-orrow" words with [A] is one feature of so-called General American while rounded [o] or [O] is a regional feature especially in the Northern Midwest/Great Lakes region.