Ireland is a small country but we have so many different accents. For example; if I drive 20 minutes down the road people speak with a completely different accent and this variance in accents continues from village to village and town to town and even across one city (we have small cities btw).
What is the US experience with this?
Just for a size comparison New York City has nearly double the population of the Republic of Ireland yet I can hardly understand some fella 20 miles down the road.
Come to think of it is there an accepted universal American accent?
What I mean is, is there an accent that is portrayed by your BIG media networks as being the accepted way to speak as an American?
We have it in the form of a our national broadcaster, which never represents regional accents across Ireland even the comprehensible ones. England has it in the form of the BBC - for instance you will never hear a Geordie or a Liverpudlian reading the BBC news!
We Americans donāt have an accent. Unless youāre from the far northā¦or the deep southā¦or the east coast. Unless you are one of those people, youāre accent-less.
[quote]Chip Duglass wrote:
We Americans donāt have an accent. Unless youāre from the far northā¦or the deep southā¦or the east coast. Unless you are one of those people, youāre accent-less. [/quote]
I pretty much agree with this. In Texas itself, there are different accents. If I travel to north Texas, people can tell Im from the south since Im a white guy who has an southern/mexican accent. Though I cant tell
[quote]Chip Duglass wrote:
We Americans donāt have an accent. Unless youāre from the far northā¦or the deep southā¦or the east coast. Unless you are one of those people, youāre accent-less. [/quote]
I pretty much agree with this. In Texas itself, there are different accents. If I travel to north Texas, people can tell Im from the south since Im a white guy who has an southern/mexican accent. Though I cant tell [/quote]
Texas is the one of the biggest states in the US so I would imagine there would be a difference in accents esp. from one end of the state to the next but in Ireland there is a noticeable difference when you travel even to the next town!
They find a neutral accent for national programs, one that can be easily understood by everyone. I suppose the accepted American accent would be the accent you find in most American films.
I have a neutral accent,basically because I went to a boarding school for my teenage years and so my original Cork city accent,although it was never very strong,got lost in the mix of all the other ones.So now I suppose I have no accent at all,just Irish.
I would say there are about 5 different regional accents in Texas, plus a particular way of phrasing things that is considered Texan. I saw this second part on a PBS special about US accents. Funny thing was they spent 40 minutes on Texas in the hour long program. Most of the rest was on California.
Each southern state has at least one distinctive accent, often more.
A friend of mine from London said I could be taken as a local in Western Ireland based on my accent, if that means anything to you.
[quote]goldengloves wrote:
They find a neutral accent for national programs, one that can be easily understood by everyone. I suppose the accepted American accent would be the accent you find in most American films.[/quote]
I figured as much but the main thing I am getting at is who decides?
Is a neutral accent the one that you are accustomed to hearing most often? There are a lot of acceents that are easily understood but are not mainstream, why not use one of those?
On a side note:
The same can be said for all the evil fuckers in movies, their accents are always either a English or German, what gives?
Remember the film āAlexanderā, they all had Irish accents! Weird wasnt it!
We are so accustomed to hearing classical greeks, romans whatever, speak with a specific English accent that anything to the contrary just doesnt fit.
[quote]goldengloves wrote:
They find a neutral accent for national programs, one that can be easily understood by everyone. I suppose the accepted American accent would be the accent you find in most American films.[/quote]
I figured as much but the main thing I am getting at is who decides?
Is a neutral accent the one that you are accustomed to hearing most often? There are a lot of acceents that are easily understood but are not mainstream, why not use one of those?
On a side note:
The same can be said for all the evil fuckers in movies, their accents are always either a English or German, what gives?
Remember the film āAlexanderā, they all had Irish accents! Weird wasnt it!
We are so accustomed to hearing classical greeks, romans whatever, speak with a specific English accent that anything to the contrary just doesnt fit.[/quote]
Iām thinking that the network decides to use a neutral accent since itās to appeal to such a broad variety of people and the words will be pronounced correctly, correct in the American sense anyway. I hear the neutral accent the most in my daily life.
The English and German accent just makes the villain sound much more sinister lol. I donāt know about that one, Iāve noticed it though.
The Indiana accent was considered the norm for broadcasting for quite a while, it was considered a non-accent. Funny that once accents became hip/acceptable here you started hearing more Texas accents from the male reporters.
I have quite a few students from the NYC area and there are different recognizable accents from the boroughs.
Just watched Valkire and was wondering why everyone had British accents. I guess it is that if you are really bad Germans you sound English. Whereas if you are a bad Englishman I guess you sound German.
Also, I was told that if I left Texas I would need to kill my accent and it was pretty true until recently. That said, on several of my teaching evaluations from students I was told to knock off the cowboy schict (sp?). So, some people still have issues.
[quote]Tex Ag wrote:
I would say there are about 5 different regional accents in Texas, plus a particular way of phrasing things that is considered Texan. I saw this second part on a PBS special about US accents. Funny thing was they spent 40 minutes on Texas in the hour long program. Most of the rest was on California.
Each southern state has at least one distinctive accent, often more.
A friend of mine from London said I could be taken as a local in Western Ireland based on my accent, if that means anything to you.[/quote]
Some Irish accents do have a heavy american sounding twang to them (like Northern accents or down in the South East so I can understand that completely. Western Irish accents for the most part are much higher pitched than most over here and sound very melodic, like part singing (somewhat) esp. Cork & Kerry.
[quote]Tex Ag wrote:
The Indiana accent was considered the norm for broadcasting for quite a while, it was considered a non-accent. Funny that once accents became hip/acceptable here you started hearing more Texas accents from the male reporters.
I have quite a few students from the NYC area and there are different recognizable accents from the boroughs.
Just watched Valkire and was wondering why everyone had British accents. I guess it is that if you are really bad Germans you sound English. Whereas if you are a bad Englishman I guess you sound German.[/quote]
I think movie accents have an historical basis to them. The US is the movie making capital of the world and your (US) experience with different countries is mirrored in the various stereotypes depicted in the movies.
From the 30ās - 40ās onwards Germans were percieved as evil bastards so it makes sense to have the villain with a German accent. The same can be said of the uppercrust English accent. Considering they were ousted from the US during the War of Independence and were a colonial super power back in the day it would make sense to portray them as the bad bastards. A lot of countries would think along the same lines.
[quote]Tex Ag wrote:
The Indiana accent was considered the norm for broadcasting for quite a while, it was considered a non-accent. Funny that once accents became hip/acceptable here you started hearing more Texas accents from the male reporters.
I have quite a few students from the NYC area and there are different recognizable accents from the boroughs.
Just watched Valkire and was wondering why everyone had British accents. I guess it is that if you are really bad Germans you sound English. Whereas if you are a bad Englishman I guess you sound German.[/quote]
I think movie accents have an historical basis to them. The US is the movie making capital of the world and your (US) experience with different countries is mirrored in the various stereotypes depicted in the movies.
From the 30ās - 40ās onwards Germans were percieved as evil bastards so it makes sense to have the villain with a German accent. The same can be said of the uppercrust English accent. Considering they were ousted from the US during the War of Independence and were a colonial super power back in the day it would make sense to portray them as the bad bastards. A lot of countries would think along the same lines. [/quote]
I think that while the authenticity of the accent is questionable the ability for an American to fake an English accent is rather easy so that might influence their choice. That and the English accent fits pretty well with some sophisticated super villain.
[quote]Tex Ag wrote:
Also, I was told that if I left Texas I would need to kill my accent and it was pretty true until recently. That said, on several of my teaching evaluations from students I was told to knock off the cowboy schict (sp?). So, some people still have issues.[/quote]
Thatās kind of ridiculous, itād be funny if you could tell them āIt aint no shtick, son.ā. I didnāt know teachers would have to tame their accent, unless itās really thick of course.
Thereās massive differences in the accents here, even among a small state like NJ- probably close to the size of Ireland.
Some people tell me I talk like Iām from Jersey City- which is distinct and seperate from talking like youāre from Bayonne, or Staten Island.
In South Jersey, some folks actually have southern accents, which still amazes me. And the further you get towards Pennsylvania, the less New Jersey you hear at all- i.e. they say āCoffeā instead of ācough-eeā as we say where I am or āWaaterā instead of āwuderā which is how weād pronounce it.
Generally I think the media speaks with an East Coast accent. Nothing I hear on TV ever sounds like it has an accent to me, and Iām pretty perceptive about that.
In Canada the east coasters talk in an accent all their own. The rest of Canada sounds the same imo. Newfies are hard to understand, funny as hell though.
Iāve always wondered why news announcers in the US sound like me, very Canadianā¦no offence.
I know someone who lives in Pittsburgh and they donāt pronounce their Wās. Downtown sounds like dawntawn lol.
New York City has nearly double the population of the Republic of Ireland yet I can hardly understand some fella 20 miles down the road.