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21 Accents
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3UgpfSp2t6k
Amy Walker does a little tour of 21 accents in 2 1/2 minutes. From the UK and Ireland to Italy, Germany, Czech Republic, Russia, France, Australia, New Zealand, and around North America.
Yeah, right; she's from the West coast for Pete's sake. How could her California accent not be spot on? Her London accents were terrible though.
Her pronunciation of '25' was weird when she said she was from California. The Texas one was a little campy. I know I'm being nit-picky, but I was in San Diego for four years (2 hours south of LA) and I know what someone from LA sounds like, and hers wasn't quite right.
>> but I was in San Diego for four years (2 hours south of LA) and I know what someone from LA sounds like, and hers wasn't quite right. <<
But she *is* from the West Coast so by definition how could her accent be any less than perfect?
<<But she *is* from the West Coast so by definition how could her accent be any less than perfect?>>
Lol! Good point!
Seattle is a good 19 hours from LA... Their dialects are not identical.
Halou, ai em eimi wO:ka frVm d3: ju: es ei
Hello, I am Amy Walker from the U.S.A. I guess this rough IPA sentence would be what comes out from an average Joe like me in the southern flank of China, that is to say, "I" show a non-rhotic foreign accent by not contrasting vowel length, without a lot of vowel reduction, with weird intonation patterns to the average European ear. I'm not quite used to consonantal clusters, voiced consonants, and the numerous English vowels in either Am or Br English. So, indeed, for whatever reasons, to get a good accent, or one that you like, it's necessary to learn from a good model. Then, we need a lot of audios and, more preferably, contact with real people (native speakers), and... imitation is the key.
>> Seattle is a good 19 hours from LA... Their dialects are not identical. <<
Considering that someone posted an accent sample on another thread, and so far nobody on this site has been able to narrow it down any further than "somewhere on the West Coast or Canada", somehow I doubt there is any noticeable difference in West Coast accents. see here: http://antimoon.com/forum/t10955-0.htm And if that's the case then wouldn't San Diego have a different accent than LA? Anyway, I've lived in Orange County which is right in between the two, and her accent sounds perfectly passable for there at least.
Her pronunciation of "25" is definitely not southern Californian. It sounds more like an English person speaking it. This could be due to the fact that she is running through 21 accents in 2 1/2 minutes, but it is noticeably different from how everyone else in California pronounces "25."
The San Diego accent is, as far as I can tell, identical to the Orange County accent, same with LA. But when you get up to SLO the lexicon begins to change (think "hella"). http://www.geocities.com/yvain.geo/dialects.html both of the maps on that site not only have the Pacific Northwest as having a dialect different from California, and Southern California having the same dialect as Phoenix, Sante Fre, and El Paso. My experience is that that's probably accurate.
>> both of the maps on that site not only have the Pacific Northwest as having a dialect different from California, and Southern California having the same dialect as Phoenix, Sante Fre, and El Paso. My experience is that that's probably accurate. <<
The map that you linked to is based on obsolete lexical data rather than phonology. In William Labov's "Linguistic Atlas of North American English", based solely on accent, both dialects are within the large Western dialect region, which covers the entire Western US. Based on my experience, there are only extremely minor differences in pronunciation between those areas, and even those overlap. For example, most people from Seattle would use a vowel almost like "ay" (as in play), (but not quite), in words such as bag, tag, etc., whereas people from LA would probably use a vowel identical to the "a" in "bad". However, I have also heard some native Seattlites use the latter vowel, and some Californians (at least in Orange County), use the former vowel. So, based on the pronunciation of that vowel sound, you could try to guess where someone is from (if you only have a choice between those two places), but it would not be 100% reliable. Probably more like 65% reliable. The same with the 2nd vowel in "tomorrow": oh in Seattle; ah in OC. However again, I have heard it both ways from people born and raised in both places. The only other difference that I can think of would be that /u/ and /o/ are more front in California. But I have heard people in California use the back and rounded ones as well. Most people that I interviewed from Arizona, had even more back /u/ and /o/ than either people from Orange, or Seattle. So I think it's extremely problamatic distinguishing accents in the Western US, as there are no clear boundaries within the West. Even the lexicon overlaps as well, as many people from all over the West use words such as "hella".
Her English accents are faultless, especially the upper class one, which I speak with myself.
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