Where is this speaker from?

<<Interesting. I just listened to some samples from California (Los Angeles), and they sounded about the same to me. What parts would you say sound non-Californian?>>

My overall impressions from the beginning were that the speakers were not from California--it doesn't sound like how people talk here (also, you'll notice I made that comment earlier on in this thread before we found out where they were from--I didn't know where they were from but I could tell they weren't from here). I haven't taken a lot of time to analyze the recordings on a technical level (I could tell they weren't Californian just by my intuition based on overall feel without resorting to technical analysis) but listening again I could tell by the "ask her to bring" in the first recording that it wasn't Californian. The vowel in "ask" sounds a bit different than the one we use here. Also, the way the female says "bags" doesn't sound like the vowel we use here either.

<<I'm very surprised. There shouldn't be. The west coast supposedly all sounds the same, except for San Francisco of course. Maybe Kirk is from San Francisco?>>

Nope. I've lived in northern central California and southern California. Also, while the West Coast is as a whole more uniform dialectically than the East Coast, it is not homogenous by any means. Traditionally, it was more the case that everything west of the Mississippi River was classified as the same dialect in US English but now that significant settlement has occurred in the West and been sustained long enough, regional differences have been enabled to emerge and will undoubtedly continue to do so.

<<Kirk is not from SF. But that voice sample didn't sound Californian to me.>>

Yeah, you've lived in California before so you have a pretty good idea of what to listen for.

Also, I'll stress again that while scripted recordings (with "reading voices") can be interesting to listen to, recordings of spontaneous, everyday speech are much more accurate in determing accents, as people read quite differently when they're reading. The phonology is almost guaranteed to be more conservative and formal as compared to the true everyday spoken language. I know this is hard, but if we could get samples of, say, BCers chatting together in a restaurant or, say, Californians hanging out in a cafe, the differences would be much clearer and (I think) more interesting as they would be of natural spontaneous speech.

Anyway, thanks for the interesting recordings, Rom. Just curious--where are you from in BC? I have relatives there :)

>>Also, the way the female says "bags" doesn't sound like the vowel we use here either. <<
Yes, I just noticed that after listening to the California speaker again. She said it more with an 'a' sound and they said it more with an 'ay' sound. I wonder where geographically the change from 'a' to 'ay' occurs. Also, I saw a dialect map somewhere that divided the west into the Pacific Northwest (which looks like it includes a small part of northern California, and small portion of southern Victoria island), the Pacific Southwest (basically California without the SF urban area, and maybe includes a little of Nevada), San Francisco Urban, Southwestern (which only includes a small part of the southern area of the west coast), and the Rocky Mountain region (which borders all of those regions and has a small transitional area to Upper Midwestern, and Northern Midland and is eveything else in the west excluding the southern-most states). So it looks like the West actually has 5 distinct dialect regions!

Well, the Cascades do descend into Northern California -- Mt. Shasta and Lassen are the southernmost peaks, and both are in CA. So it could be included in Cascadia.

<<So it looks like the West actually has 5 distinct dialect regions!>>

At least :)

"I wonder where geographically the change from 'a' to 'ay' occurs."

Check this map from the ANAE:
http://students.csci.unt.edu/~kun/shorta.jpg

Look at the magenta boundary around most of Canada and the Western US: the area inside it is where most people make their short A's more tense before G, as you heard in that recording. The magenta stars represent such people. Scattered around there you also see light blue stars: those are people who pronounce "bag," "tag," "flag," etc. so that they rhyme with "vague" or "plague."

>>The woman speaker certainly has a very strong lisp :-)<<
I read somewhere that the Pacific Northwest is known for it's overpronunciation of the letter s.

>>I read somewhere that the Pacific Northwest is known for it's overpronunciation of the letter s.<<
Really? I don't think the s here is stronger than anywhere else. The lady from the Californian sample also had a strong s.

Hmm. Actually you might be right. I listened to the Californian again, and her s's were a little weaker. I also found a sample from Washington state, and this speaker also has a bit of a strong s. http://accent.gmu.edu/browse_language.php?function=detail&speakerid=163

This article mentions the strong PacNW /s/:

http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/local/225139_nwspeak20.html

(someone put this article up here on antimoon a few months ago so it'll be familiar to some of you).

Nice article. But there is one thing I don't quite understand. What exactly is the "creaky voice"?

"This article mentions the strong PacNW /s/:

http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/local/225139_nwspeak20.html

(someone put this article up here on antimoon a few months ago so it'll be familiar to some of you)."


I remember when it appeared a few months ago. I find this topic of NW accent really fascinating. As I said a few months ago, I always knew that something was going up there - if you listen to tapes of Kurt Cobain speaking, he sounds nothing like a Californian!

<<Nice article. But there is one thing I don't quite understand. What exactly is the "creaky voice"?>>

Here's a good basic definition:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Creaky_voice

You can hear the creaky voice on this radio archive. The show also features Jennifer Ingle and other people from the Pacific Northwest speaking so you can hear the Seattle accent.
http://www.kuow.org/DefaultProgram.asp?ID=9198

Edit: You need RealPlayer to an MP3 player to play the file.

Wow. I just listened to some of the Californian samples. They sound similar to Washington, but there is definitely an accent there. The Oregon and British Columbia samples didn't sound any different than we speak here in Washington. I'm thinking maybe it's the California Vowel Shift that makes California sound a little different.