American English Dialects

Here's yet another fascinating page about American English Dialects.

And yet, I've never seen one that explains why I pronounce "frog" as "frahg" instead of the more-common "fraug", but I pronounce "log" as "laug" and not "lahg". WTF kind of fucked up accent was I cursed with?

4 thoughts on “American English Dialects”

  1. Rob Caldecott

    Truly fascinating. I love this stuff.

    The dialects here in the UK are numerous. Travel 30 miles in any direction and I guarantee the local accents will differ.

    I was born to London parents, raised in Berkshire and have now spent 5 years living in Wiltshire so I’ve started to develop a bit of a farmer’s twang with some words (“all right?” tends to come out as “all reet?”) yet Berkshire for others (“girl” comes out as “gel” with a hard “g”). My son has only known this neck of the woods so sounds like a proper carrot-crunching bumpkin already.

    My sister-in-law is from Manchester where they pronounce words like “bath” as “baff” instead of “bar-th”. I’m always pulling her leg about it.

    I live in a town called Calne and the pronunciation of this marks you as either posh/recent arrival (“carn”) or a proper bone-fide local (“cow-n” – rhyme it with “town”).

    (I also spent a lot of time around Scots a few years a back so I tend to say “aye” instead of “yes” which my daughter finds most amusing. I say pronounce “bastard” as “bast-erd” instead of “bar-sterd” like most other people in the South.)

    Also, after spending years dealing with Americans at work I’ve come to recognise many more accents other than the obvious stereotypical New Jersey/Deep South/New England ones. I can usually tell a North Western accent (we have an office in Portland, OR) because there is a faint Canadian twang at times.

    1. cleek

      we’re used to a handful of standard “British” accents, here in the US: the standard one (which I guess is from London), a cockney accent (for criminals and comical low-lifes), and then Scotch and Irish. get away from those and we’re in trouble – even the Beatles’ accent is tough for us to decipher sometimes.

      my DVR has started recording episodes of the British “Antiques Roadshow”; and there are typically two or three people on there that neither me or Mrs can understand at all. i haven’t been able to figure out which accents they are, but they are heavy !

      we really need to get over there. someday. it will be fun to see if the innumerable places Robyn Hitchcock enumerates (ex Trams Of Old London) are as magical and romantic as he makes them sound. :)

  2. Rob Caldecott

    I must admit to struggling with the Scottish accent at times, especially Glaswegian. Liverpool (“Scouse”) can also be a challenge. People from the North-East (Newcastle – or “Geordies”), Sunderland, etc. have a very interesting accent. But please don’t watch “Geordie Shore” to find out. You’d die inside. It’s like “Jersey Shore” … but worse.

    London is an amazing city to visit, assuming you can afford it. You could spend weeks there. But my favourite part of the country is Cornwall (the far South-West). Best Cider in the world (proper alcoholic stuff), amazing coastline, great beaches, picture-perfect seaside villages and a great accent. If only we could rely on the weather. Wales is lovely too (a really lovely accent too, especially when spoken by a female, sadly Catherine Zeta-Jones has lost hers I gather), and Cumbria (North-West) is also beautiful.

    The countryside in my neck of the woods is the epitome of England’s “green and pleasant land”. Rolling hills, very rural and very pretty.

    And no bears, mountain lions, tornadoes, earthquakes or volcanoes!

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