Californian Dialect

american nic   Saturday, January 15, 2005, 05:16 GMT
It's amazing that even though the media is supposedly making up all identical in how we speak, English everywhere is drifting further and further apart. So who wants to put bets on how long Midwestern, Southern, Californian, Northeastern, etc. are all mutually unintelligible?
Cro Magnon   Saturday, January 15, 2005, 06:39 GMT
Well, I've never heard a Californian accent (that I know of), but Southerners and Northeasterners talk strange. But not as strange as British & Austrailians. Midwesterners, OTOH, speak English the way it should be spoken. ;)
Someone   Saturday, January 15, 2005, 07:35 GMT
"The only striking thing I've noticed so far (only been here for a few months) is that they say "for sure" a lot and the "for" is pronounced "fer" for them, not as I pronounce it [fo:r]"

I'm in California. I don't say "for sure" that often, but I do pronounce "for" that way. I pronounce it as "fer" when it's not the end of the sentence, and "for" when it is. It's just much easier that way.
Someone   Saturday, January 15, 2005, 07:48 GMT
BTW, I noticed something that no one mentioned here. At dictionary.com, it lists many words with a shwa where I would I have an /i/. For example, I say /..me:rikin/ instead of /..merik..n/. I always hear it pronounced that way too. Many words are like that...
mad madder   Saturday, January 15, 2005, 23:06 GMT
Like the girl in American pie was also on buffy and she lived in GA and attended middle school with some ppl I like know from high school. This is like so totally true, you know.......
mad   Saturday, January 15, 2005, 23:12 GMT
how could jessica simpson be valley, shes from texas and speaks with a southern accernt
american nic   Saturday, January 15, 2005, 23:24 GMT
Jessica Simpson has sort of a Texan accent, but uses Valley Girl words.
Tiffany   Sunday, January 16, 2005, 01:13 GMT
That's because she's dumber than a rock! Anyway, this is not a teeny board, but I caught an episode of Newlyweds a while ago and I was aghast that anyone could be so dumb. I wondered if she was pretending to look cute or something.
Ed   Sunday, January 16, 2005, 15:52 GMT
Tiffany wrote:


That's because she's dumber than a rock! Anyway, this is not a teeny board, but I caught an episode of Newlyweds a while ago and I was aghast that anyone could be so dumb. I wondered if she was pretending to look cute or something.


Oh no, dear, she's smarter than we think. That's all an act that she puts on because she's realized that's what makes her popular. Before that show and her stupid remarks, nobody cared about her. In the summer of 2003 he released an album that did extremely bad in sales in its first few weeks, but after the show took off, it sold millions of copies. I actually think she's smart. Her sister Ashlee, however, now she's the human form of dumbness and dorkiness all in one person.
mad   Sunday, January 16, 2005, 16:13 GMT
oh my gah, nieeck you luvv mi stannky ahss- jessica simpson- first season of her tv show
Mxsmanic   Monday, January 17, 2005, 04:16 GMT
The differences between regions in spoken English throughout much of North America are too slight to be of interest to anyone except phonologists. They certainly don't impair intelligibility, and with the mobility of the population and widespread, high-speed communication, they become more alike every day.

It's especially pointless for students of English to care about the minuscule differences between regional forms of English in North America while they still cannot render the phonemic differences of English correctly. If you can't hear and pronounce the difference between two regional forms of English, you don't need to care that they exist.
Mike   Monday, January 17, 2005, 23:47 GMT
I don't know if this is California dialect or not, but when we talk about freeways Californians say "the 5 (freeway)" but in Oregon they say "I-5" or just "5".
Kirk   Tuesday, January 18, 2005, 02:08 GMT
That's actually one of the differences between Northern and Southern California....in so-cal "the" often goes before the freeway name, such as "take the 405" "I'm on the 5", etc, whereas the further north you go the less likely people are to do that. By the time you're up at the San Francisco Bay Area or Sacramento it's usually just "take 680" "I'm on 5". This is one of the few lexical differences I've noticed between nor-cal and so-cal English...I go to UC San Diego and all the people from the Bay Area who come here saying stuff like "take 805" or "I'm on 5" get ridiculued by those from so-cal...a stupid debate, for sure, but it happens.
Kirk   Tuesday, January 18, 2005, 02:30 GMT
Mike, you are stupid. What kind of moron are you? Go do some research on dialects before you embarass yourself by posting any more nonsense on this forum. Idiot.
Julian   Tuesday, January 18, 2005, 05:08 GMT
<<Well, I've never heard a Californian accent (that I know of), but Southerners and Northeasterners talk strange.>>

Here's a link to 2 long audio samples of the Southern California accent:

http://www.ku.edu/~idea/northamerica/usa/california/california.htm

Since I grew up in the Canoga Park/Woodland Hills area where "California One" is from, hearing her speak made the hairs on by back stand straight up. OMG! She reminded me of all those annoying chatty cathies who sat around me throughout junior high and high school. Pretty young things, but they would never shut up.

The link below is a British transplant's perspective on the California accent/dialect:

http://www.caldrive.com/words.html