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COCKNEY SOUNDS AMERICAN!!!
And that's the second time. Must be a trend.
You can keep saying it, but I'm not sure I believe it, since I'm American, and Cockney's pretty damn near unintelligible to me....
Well thanks everyone for your replies.
And yes now that I think about this it's true. It sounds much like Australian, but anyway I don't really think it's similar to the rest of English accents. I don't think it's unintelligible. In fact, most of English accents seem quite clear to me, even cockney. Maybe that's because I'm quite used to those accents. But anyway I still don't like cockney, it's the only one I don't like. In fact, some american accents are quite unintelligible to me. I would say "I'm sorry?" or "I beg your pardon?" or things like that a couple of times before really getting what they say. It must be because most of the americans I meet don't speak a very "educated american" anyway. Well, I don't really know. And don't think I said that about cockney just to cause controversy, it was what I honestly thought. I must be a bit crazy.
It says:
cockney american It shoud say: Cockney American Sorry if this was offensive in any way.
>>Well thanks everyone for your replies.
And yes now that I think about this it's true. It sounds much like Australian, but anyway I don't really think it's similar to the rest of English accents. I don't think it's unintelligible. In fact, most of English accents seem quite clear to me, even cockney. Maybe that's because I'm quite used to those accents. But anyway I still don't like cockney, it's the only one I don't like. In fact, some american accents are quite unintelligible to me. I would say "I'm sorry?" or "I beg your pardon?" or things like that a couple of times before really getting what they say. It must be because most of the americans I meet don't speak a very "educated american" anyway.<< What do you mean by "educated" here? Also, you should remember that there really is nothign analogous to RP in the context of North American English, with "General American" being very vague (and widespread, precisely due to its vagueness) and not really linked to social class in the way that RP.
I should have added onto my previous post that most English-speaking North Americans simply speak the English they learn at home, so to speak, rather than speaking any "learned" sort of English, despite how some dialects, such as Southern American English, are stigmatized to some degree or another. Also note that such stigmatization is the exception rather than the rule; most NAE dialects are not stigmatized at all, but rather the people who speak them think that they are "accentless", speak "standard" English, or if they are aware of how their dialect differs from other dialects, do not generally view such as being negative. Besides some speakers of some stigmatized dialects trying to "reduce their accent", which really is a not that common in and of itself, there really is no idea of people *in general* actually *learning* anything analogous to RP in the UK at all, in the way that people learned such at the "public schools" in southern England at least.
"It must be because most of the americans I meet don't speak a very "educated american" anyway."
Yeah, Pete, you're right; it's only the raging morons with the third-grade education who can afford a plane ticket to the UK. Really. We just send the janitors and the guys who shoot rats at the city dump.
Uriel: When you come to the UK I will go down to London to meet up with you and I will act as your interpreter in Cockneyland.....I've had the experience which opened my mince pies as my plates of meat took me up the apples and pears to have a rosie lee.
What Travis said is right---there is no uniform rigidly defined "educated American" accent analogous to RP. While it's often easy to tell who's well educated and who's not, it's not usually done by accent. Right now I have a professor with a thick "from-the-streets" sounding Bronx accent yet he's clearly extremely intelligent, and with a PhD from UC Berkeley, falls under the "well-educated" category :)
<<What Travis said is right---there is no uniform rigidly defined "educated American" accent analogous to RP. While it's often easy to tell who's well educated and who's not, it's not usually done by accent. Right now I have a professor with a thick "from-the-streets" sounding Bronx accent yet he's clearly extremely intelligent, and with a PhD from UC Berkeley, falls under the "well-educated" category :)>>
That's equally true in England as well, many of my professors have had noticeable accents. I do understand what he means when he mentions an educated accent and for all the protestations, on this site, about there being no equivalent to RP, there are accents which distinguish the wealthy and educated from those who speak GA. Think about the way Mr Burns speaks in The Simpsons, for example. Yes, I'm aware it's only a cartoon, but he is never-the-less a parody of a wealthy east coast Yale graduate.
>><<What Travis said is right---there is no uniform rigidly defined "educated American" accent analogous to RP. While it's often easy to tell who's well educated and who's not, it's not usually done by accent. Right now I have a professor with a thick "from-the-streets" sounding Bronx accent yet he's clearly extremely intelligent, and with a PhD from UC Berkeley, falls under the "well-educated" category :)>>
That's equally true in England as well, many of my professors have had noticeable accents. I do understand what he means when he mentions an educated accent and for all the protestations, on this site, about there being no equivalent to RP, there are accents which distinguish the wealthy and educated from those who speak GA. Think about the way Mr Burns speaks in The Simpsons, for example. Yes, I'm aware it's only a cartoon, but he is never-the-less a parody of a wealthy east coast Yale graduate.<< The matter is that in practice there really does not seem to be any such thing in North American English. Maybe the closest one could possibly get would be the "Boston Brahmin" accent, like that of John F. Kennedy, but even that is not very widespread at all in practice, and such being linked to any kind of social status is more historical than current. In general, in English-speaking North America, there is no real link between accent and social status, besides certain dialects which are stigmatized, today. And you should also remember that Mr. Burns is just a character in a cartoon, rather than an actual person today.
Well by "educated" I mean: someone who has had a proper education and do not use ghetto slang all of the time. Someone who speaks carefully without making gramatical mistakes or using unpleasant expressions (such as: ain't, yo, f***, ya noe, sh*t like dat). Eg:
Educated American Accent: Hugo Weaving (the guy man appeared in Matrix as Agent smith, very nice American accent) Not Educated American Accent: Sean William Scott (the guy who appeared in American Pie as Stifler, Worst American ever heard...) I hope those examples were clear.
<<Someone who speaks carefully without making gramatical mistakes>>
Native speakers, by definition, don't make grammatical mistakes so that point is moot. I recommend a beginning linguistics class or book... <<or using unpleasant expressions (such as: ain't, yo, f***, ya noe, sh*t like dat). Eg:Educated American Accent: Hugo Weaving (the guy man appeared in Matrix as Agent smith, very nice American accent) Not Educated American Accent: Sean William Scott (the guy who appeared in American Pie as Stifler, Worst American ever heard...)>> What is "unpleasant" is entirely subjective--you're saying it like those are universally agreed-upon things. They're not.
>>Well by "educated" I mean: someone who has had a proper education and do not use ghetto slang all of the time. Someone who speaks carefully without making gramatical mistakes or using unpleasant expressions (such as: ain't, yo, f***, ya noe, sh*t like dat). Eg:
Educated American Accent: Hugo Weaving (the guy man appeared in Matrix as Agent smith, very nice American accent) Not Educated American Accent: Sean William Scott (the guy who appeared in American Pie as Stifler, Worst American ever heard...) I hope those examples were clear. << But again, as I had said, besides certain dialect (group)s that are specifically stigmatized, such as AAVE and Southern American English, there really is no such distinction *within* NAE-speaking areas (I can tell that your view here is an outside view of English-speaking North America, not an inside view of such, and as I would guess you're from the UK, it seems as if you're trying to fit NAE dialects into the dialect scheme at home in the UK). In most contexts, trying to overtly sound "educated" by modifying one's accent will just make one come off as being stilted or snobbish instead, as most English-speaking North Americans don't speak in such an "educated" fashion in the first place, whatever their social class may happen to be. As a whole, dialect in the US is associated with where one grew up, not what social class one is in, with the sole real exception of AAVE, which is often very highly associated with social class in many areas. |