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Also in some cases it's more what they say than how they say it that indicates their state. I think some expressions are used in California that aren't used much elsewhere. So on occasion I can tell if people typing online are Californian even though I obviously don't hear them.
agreed.
things like hella, for example.
Quote:
Originally Posted by punkrocker27ka
perhaps the California pronunciations of "r" is related to the Spanish and Mexican heritage and the large Hispanic population we have? We were a Spanish colony while the East Coast was Dutch and British, etc.
na. i don't think its that.
Quote:
Originally Posted by desert sun
so does flat speech sound like an accent to people from the South or from the Northeast?
no.
basically, to ppl in the u.s., you aren't going to have an accent...but its ok, because you still have an "american" accent, so if you were to go overseas, ppl would know you were from the u.s. as soon as you spoke.
I don't notice the California accent as much as I notice, say, a Boston accent. However, being from the Great Lakes area with its own accent, I can usually tell when someone is from 'out west' as they have a different way of pronouncing things than the Midwest, South, or Northeast (which, of course, have a myriad of accents within those broad regions).
California is big enough I think it likely has more than one accent. The few Southern Californians I've met had a bit of an accent. I'm not sure how to describe said accent though.
Also in some cases it's more what they say than how they say it that indicates their state. I think some expressions are used in California that aren't used much elsewhere. So on occasion I can tell if people typing online are Californian even though I obviously don't hear them.
Not sure I agree with that. I'm not an expert, but I hear a common accent from natives of San Diego, all the way up the coast to Seattle. It's how the letter O is pronounced (think "Snake" on the Simpsons--though his is exaggerated.). Also the short U sound. "tub" is pronounced closer the "teb" than other parts of the country, and "money" is more like "menny" (pronounced "munny", in Upstate NY where I come from, and "mwunny" here in MN where I live now.)
I'm from Canada (Toronto) and when I hear people from CA speak, to me they don't sound like they have an accent, they sound the most like Canadians to me (which to me isn't an accent, but I know to everyone else it is ). That's compared to Americans from many other states.
No way! Never heard a Californian say oot and aboot!
Utahns have a very distinct characteristic to their accent (feel becomes fill,
deal becomes dill, etc) There used to be a wikipedia article on it, but it seems to have been deleted.
Ahhhh, thank you! I hear this accent from time to time but never figured out where it came from. Windshield = windshill, sale = sell, e-mail = e-mell, etc...
Native Californians, who have Native Californian parents, who are not too citified, have what I call the Southwestern Rural Twang. In other words, Cowboy.
Everyone on my father's side of the family are native Californians who all grew up primarily in either the Central Valley, Sierra Nevada, or the Northern or Central Coast(Oroville, Fresno, Portola, Santa Cruz, Arcata, etc). Not one of us sounds like a Southwestern cowboy... There is a slight "Valley" twang, especially from my cousins who grew up in Fresno...And from my younger cousins in the Central Valley there is a serious overuse of the word "hella". Oh, I reckon we're just all "citi-fied" though..
Ha, we under-pronounce and y'all over-pronounce. You act like everyone in Massachusetts talks like Peter Griffin.
Lol @ P-A-R-K getting changed to P-A-H-K, most Californians I know would say P-O-R-K. M-A-R-K would be M-O-R-K, etc. so don't even try it.
So don't try and front on us when a lot of y'all are just as bad lol.
I like Californian accents except that Valley Girl nonsense lol.
I am majoring in Communication Studies in college and many of my professors train people how to speak in public and they claim it is always better if you over pronounce. Your audience has a better chance of understanding you.
I live in California and I don't think I have ever heard someone call the Park P-O-R-K or Mark M-O-R-K In California we have the Cot-Caught merger. The sound change causes the vowel in Caught, Talk, and small to be pronounced like the vowel in cot, rock, and doll. However the change does not affect a vowel followed by r. So in California you would never hear a person call a Park P-O-R-K, it would be pronounced correctly. For example Barn and Born remain distinct out here in California. Park and Mark are bad examples because we actually do not change the vowel in those instances.
Last edited by kcee510; 10-14-2009 at 01:54 PM..
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In California we have the Cot-Caught merger. The sound change causes the vowel in Caught, Talk, and small to be pronounced like the vowel in cot, rock, and doll. However the change does not affect a vowel followed by r. So in California you would never hear a person call a Park P-O-R-K, it would be pronounced correctly. For example Barn and Born remain distinct out here in California. Park and Mark are bad examples because we actually do not change the vowel in those instances.
