Pedantic question about standardisation

BrianShaw · Sep 2, 2012

Gerald C Koch said:
What's worse than a fake English accent is a fake southern accent.

I was once working with a couple of Texans in England. The Texans kept using a fake British accent and the local lingo, so one day our English host started faking a Texas accent, using Texas sitcom expressions, and wearing a 10-gallon hat. The Texans had no idea what taht retaliation was about... they were clueless until it was explained to them. HILARIOUS!

BrianShaw · Sep 2, 2012

blansky said:
For those who don't know "the Valley" means San Fernando Valley, an area of LA that is over the hill from the Westside ...

Damn right it does... but that moniker has, to the utter dismay of the fine people of the Valley, been adopted by many other places with mountains surrounding them. How rude that is.

Photo Engineer · Sep 2, 2012

I must be on Blansky's ignore list. I have brought up the "valley girl accent" here before.

More recently it has devolved into a more nasal clipped form of speech and is found mainly in people of the female persuasion. I hear it a lot on TV lately.

PE

Steve Smith · Sep 2, 2012

Photo Engineer said:
I must be on Blansky's ignore list. I have brought up the "valley girl accent" here before.

I remember that. It was a few years ago though.

Steve.

zsas · Sep 2, 2012

Photo Engineer said:
I must be on Blansky's ignore list. I have brought up the "valley girl accent" here before.

More recently it has devolved into a more nasal clipped form of speech and is found mainly in people of the female persuasion. I hear it a lot on TV lately.

PE

Nasal accent.....we know nothing about that here in Chicagoland

blansky · Sep 2, 2012

Actually, I don't do ignore lists.

But after a 45 page thread, I alzheimer the first 42 pages.

This also enables me to only have to own one book and one DVD.

Sorry about that.

cliveh · Sep 2, 2012

Until I read Blanskys post I had never heard of Valley Girls. The video was quite entertaining although couldnt bring myself to watch all of it OHMYGODDDDD.

Vaughn · Sep 2, 2012

BrianShaw said:
I was once working with a couple of Texans in England. The Texans kept using a fake British accent and the local lingo, so one day our English host started faking a Texas accent, using Texas sitcom expressions, and wearing a 10-gallon hat. The Texans had no idea what taht retaliation was about... they were clueless until it was explained to them. HILARIOUS!

This happens to me. If I am around folks with a different accent, I'll start talking like them without being conscience of it. I was on a grey dog from Modesto to LA, sitting next to a Jewish gas station owner from NY. By the time we hit LA, I was talking in what probably sounded like a fake NY Jewish accent. I packed mules for ten years -- get me around folks talking in the cowboy drawl, and I'll be using the same drawl and idioms before you can get your string on the trail.

I was hitch-hiking in NZ with my girlfriend -- I had been in NZ for 5.5 months, and she just had flown in from the States. She is from Oz, but had been working in the States for about a year. From our accents, people thought I was the Aussie and she was the Yank. Really pissed her off!

PS -- my nephew married a 'Valley Girl" from San Jose, CA. What a piece of work...

BrianShaw · Sep 2, 2012

Vaughn said:
This happens to me. If I am around folks with a different accent, I'll start talking like them without being conscience of it. I was on a grey dog from Modesto to LA, sitting next to a Jewish gas station owner from NY. By the time we hit LA, I was talking in what probably sounded like a fake NY Jewish accent. I packed mules for ten years -- get me around folks talking in the cowboy drawl, and I'll be using the same drawl and idioms before you can get your string on the trail.

I was hitch-hiking in NZ with my girlfriend -- I had been in NZ for 5.5 months, and she just had flown in from the States. She is from Oz, but had been working in the States for about a year. From our accents, people thought I was the Aussie and she was the Yank. Really pissed her off!

PS -- my nephew married a 'Valley Girl" from San Jose, CA. What a piece of work...

For many to whom this happens, it seems both autonomic and well-intentioned... to make communication more comfortable and effective. I've never had that talent, but when I get back in New England my old accent starts re-emerging... but always with a west-coast accent. Accent upon accent = ??? I think ??? = outsider. ha ha ha. I don't fit in here and I don't fit in there anymore.

When I was in England I would sometimes become so aware that I sounded "different" that I basically imitated a mute person. I spoke little yet everyone would come up to me and tell me that I was American. I don't know how they could tell. Maybe it was the Levi's... IDK.

Steve Smith · Sep 2, 2012

It's not just accents. My brother has an adopted son, his real father is German and often visits for a couple of weeks at a time. Whilst he is here he seems to pick up an English sense of humour and when he gets home he is told off for being sarcastic.

Steve.

Steve Smith · Sep 2, 2012

BrianShaw said:
I don't know how they could tell. Maybe it was the Levi's... IDK.

We have those here. For many it is part of their uniform of non-conformity.

Steve.

blansky · Sep 2, 2012

I was at a week long photography course/seminar/workshop back in the 80s and hung around a guy from Tennessee. Within a few days I had started talking with a slight drawl and also slower.

There is something in the human makeup where we unconsciously mirror the people around us.

Probably some primal defense mechanism to fit in or something.

I saw an interview with some guy who once worked for Microsoft. He said he walked late into a meeting of upper level guys and it was common knowledge that Bill Gates sort of rocks back and forth in his seat. What astonished him was that most of the people around the table were now doing the same thing. It was unconscious and fairly subtle but nobody was sitting still.

Sirius Glass · Sep 2, 2012

Of course, ya know, some people, ya know, keep inserting like things, ya know, " ya know", ya know.

Leigh B · Sep 2, 2012

Photo Engineer said:
...of the female persuasion.

Aha... talkin' Calipornia again.

- Leigh

Photo Engineer · Sep 2, 2012

Yes, on my several trips to London for EK, I found myself picking up small idioms such as "smashing" and "hello?" among others. By the end of the trip I was doing quite well, but I think Chinese food in the US is better than in London, but I love Bangers!

PE

Gerald C Koch · Sep 2, 2012

My family is half German. That being said German humor is rather strange. What they consider to be back-slappingly funny really isn't very funny. However, it doesn't seem to be only the Germans as I have a humorous book entitled 'Scandinavian Humor and other Myths ' The humorist Garrison Keillor uses the fictional town of Lake Woebegone, Minnesota selltled by Norwegians to poke gentle fun at their lack of a sense of humor.

BrianShaw · Sep 2, 2012

Leigh B said:
Aha... talkin' Calipornia again.

- Leigh

Ha ha. Greetings from The Valley -- not only home to the original Valley Girl (Val) but also the porn capital of the US of A.

Vaughn · Sep 2, 2012

Coming of age in Humboldt County in the early 70's, I speak fluent Hippy...much to my kids' dismay and embarrassment. Right arm, brother! Farm out!

Sirius Glass · Sep 2, 2012

Gerald C Koch said:
The humorist Garrison Keillor uses the fictional town of Lake Woebegone, Minnesota selltled by Norwegians to poke gentle fun at their lack of a sense of humor.

My chiropractor is the son of Swedes and grow up in Minnesota. He told me that, "Norwegians are not fuuuny; Swedes, yah, they very fuuuny!"

blansky · Sep 2, 2012

A couple of my favorite scenes from Fargo:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=Oy2HfixB9_8#!

benjiboy · Sep 3, 2012

I was talking to my youngest son recently, he spent a few years studying at U.C Berkeley a few years ago, he was telling met he some other English lads in San Francisco who were from Newcastle and had very broad Geordie accents , they told him all the Americans they tried to speak to either couldn't understand them at all, or thought they were Dutch .

blansky · Sep 3, 2012

benjiboy said:
I was talking to my youngest son recently, he spent a few years studying at U.C Berkeley a few years ago, he was telling met he some other English lads in San Francisco who were from Newcastle and had very broad Geordie accents , they told him all the Americans they tried to speak to either couldn't understand them at all, or thought they were Dutch .

An American would not know the difference in someone from Holland or from Mars.

Photo Engineer · Sep 3, 2012

Valentine Michael Smith for example?

Leigh B · Sep 3, 2012

Of course we know the difference. Martians are purple; Dutch are green. So as long as the lights are on...

- Leigh

BrianShaw · Sep 3, 2012

blansky said:
An American would not know the difference in someone from Holland or from Mars.

Well, I'm not sure that is limited to Americans. We were recently in Las Vegas and there was a group of loud, drunk guys with distinctively "foriegn" look, speech, and mannerisms cavorting around the pool. They weren't offensive in any way but they were very "visible". We were relaxing with some Canuks wondering where theyse guys wree from. We speculated German, Finnish, then Afrikaners. We sere both wrong -- they were Dutch. Fortunately we guessed that, and were confirmed by one of the guys, before we got to speculating that they were from Mars. I'll bet guys from Mars don't wear tight speedos and drink cheap beer! But none of us would have known for sure since we are all Amercians.

Pedantic question about standardisation

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