How do you pronounce in English?

[Big Ewis]

yeah for me the American accent takes a lot from the Irish accent. The hard R as one of the backbones. Thing is for whatever reason the American neutral accent became one that decided to stay true to the language in the most consistent way. Unlike the Welsh, Irish, Northern Irish, all the English ones, Aussie, NZ..etc...it's the one that picks the written language and then enunciates with consistency. If I were to imagine a neutral accent for the English language, like, if English had to be shown to aliens in its most generic form without being tainted by subjective accents and local pronunciations, it would be the neutral American accent.

 

[Tony Manx]

yeah for me the American accent takes a lot from the Irish accent. The hard R as one of the backbones. Thing is for whatever reason the American neutral accent became one that decided to stay true to the language in the most consistent way. Unlike the Welsh, Irish, Northern Irish, all the English ones, Aussie, NZ..etc...it's the one that picks the written language and then enunciates with consistency. If I were to imagine a neutral accent for the English language, like, if English had to be shown to aliens in its most generic form without being tainted by subjective accents and local pronunciations, it would be the neutral American accent.

Careful! You are showing signs of an intelligence that many posters on here would not associate with you!!!!

 

[LittleGuy]

That claim is made quite often, but not really true. Consider the breadth of 'American' and 'British' accents.
In reality, both have seen great changes and none are really 'closer' to the past language, as it has always been changing. Living conditions, culture changes, etc all contribute to this. The United States saw huge immigration from dozens of countries, all contributing to the accent.

Well the Rhotic example is completely true and it is probably one of the biggest differences between the two, I do agree with much of what you've said though about all the immigration etc. but languages usually change faster in an urban society than in a rural one, and Britain was a more urban society than the United States for a lengthy period of time. Perhaps I've stretched with the "much" closer or chosen a poor term there but it's not like we've been sitting here trying to think of weird ways to pronounce things.

I should also clarify that I was more disscussing the general American accent, obviously the Southern accents are a much different breed as are other more local ones like Boston etc.

 

[Big Ewis]

Careful! You are showing signs of an intelligence that many posters on here would not associate with you!!!!

I have a feeling "many posters" just means you in this instance !
Say, what's the Manx accent like ? Tried to find stuff online but found nothing good. What is it, like, close to Irish or Welsh or English ?..

 

[ratsapprentice]

That's only because the American accent has developed for about a third of it's lifetime in an age where there has been audio recording and accessible long distance transportation.
It hasn't developed in isolation over hundreds of years in many different locations and has a far narrower range of influences.

The reason "English" accents aren't consistent is because there isn't really one single accent.
So English accents (plural) are generally consistent, it's just there are a great many of them.

I'd imagine places like Germany and Italy also have the same regional variations, although possibly not to quite the same extent given the fewer linguistic influences?

Is this not the case in France?

 

[Big Ewis]

no, no...I'm talking about a one singular accent being consistent in itself. Obviously you go to California, then North Carolina, then Baaahhston or Nu Yoyyk and they're all vastly different, although all "American".
I'm talking about one accent being consistent in itself as to its linguistic basis, i.e. pronouncing the written language in a consistent way. "Regular" French is that way, the neutral American accent is that way. Those two do not contain variations in pronunciation of a same letter, and don't modify/adapt in relation to context. An 'R' is always going to be pronounced ARRRE. The Rhotic/non-Rhotic thing.
When you listen to those automatons/recorded voices speak, the American one is consistent, rigid. The English, even neutral, has variation in pronunciation. The American still is 'subjective' of course, but seems closer to the notion of a "neutral" accent for the English language than the neutral one from England does. That's my point.

And in France, there's a sovereign accent that dominates almost the entire territory, with the Southeast and Southwest being clearly different (more Spanish or Italian sounding). Some small differences from region to region, but globally it's all about the same.

 

[TRF_Olyy]

Say, what's the Manx accent like ? Tried to find stuff online but found nothing good. What is it, like, close to Irish or Welsh or English ?..

Sounds similar to a mild scouse accent to me. Or at least Mark Cavendish does:

 

[ratsapprentice]

I'm talking about one accent being consistent in itself as to its linguistic basis, i.e. pronouncing the written language in a consistent way.

This is what I'm saying though... the way people speak in different parts of the country varies hugely, the written language is the best approximation of a common language we have.
We have an enormous vocabulary as it is... if you were t try and strictly express pronunciation in the written language you would have to come up with thousands of new variations of the same words.

 

[Tony Manx]

Sounds similar to a mild scouse accent to me. Or at least Mark Cavendish does:

He has the perfect Manx accent and, yes, scouse is heavily present as it should be due to the immense ties between us for many, many years even if they are slackening a bit now!!

 

[Draggs]

Yep, you are entirely correct on the rhotic statement. I have heard the "american accent is original" comment many times and just like to clarify it. Reality is that both have constantly evolved. Newfie and Maine accents are very peculiar; take a look at Tangier Island, Virginia as well. It sounds like an American hillbilly-English West Country hybrid.

 

[ratsapprentice]

First time I heard a Newfoundland accent I was profoundly confused.

Never heard the Tangier Island accent before... very odd.
It's fairly comfortably American, then smashes into full on Ed Grundy mode for a word or two.

 

[LittleGuy]

Yep, you are entirely correct on the rhotic statement. I have heard the "american accent is original" comment many times and just like to clarify it. Reality is that both have constantly evolved. Newfie and Maine accents are very peculiar; take a look at Tangier Island, Virginia as well. It sounds like an American hillbilly-English West Country hybrid.

Yeah I certainly wouldn't go anywhere near that far.

Vocabularies have also changed considerably, the Carribean in many places has an "older" vocabulary, words that have gone into disuse or rare use in much of the English speaking world are still very present in parts f the Carribean.

As for the written language(not a point you raised Draggs) isn't the prounouciation of the English language "off" compared to much of the spelling due to the great vowel shift occurring just at the time/right after much of the spelling was formalized, hence the large amounts of silent letters in English which were once pronounced but now aren't.

 

[Big Ewis]

This is what I'm saying though... the way people speak in different parts of the country varies hugely, the written language is the best approximation of a common language we have.
We have an enormous vocabulary as it is... if you were t try and strictly express pronunciation in the written language you would have to come up with thousands of new variations of the same words.

yeah I know what you're saying. Written language is just a way to conserve spoken language, which itself is a living evolving thing. It's like if we think about it with the notion of "order", the spoken language comes first and the written one is just its *****, and so that order shouldn't be inverted where the spoken language has to obey the rules of the written language...
But it remains there is a hard, rigid backbone to every language. Stable, solid rules that appear necessarily and logically. Languages aren't abstract entities, although they're a living thing. They are constrained to rules. But if that's what you were talking about, it's true. The original reality of a language is its spoken entity, it is only conserved by written language and therefor there isn't really a "neutral accent for the English language", but looking at it differently, like I said de facto rules appear (tonic accents, rhotic/non-rhotic inconsitencies...).
Like in French, there's definitely a "neutral accent"; the 'intelligible form' objectively perfect phonetic entity - that can be transgressed.

 

[ratsapprentice]

We agree - the trouble is that modern English doesn't have a single "backbone" it has Germanic, Romance and to a lesser extent Celtic languages as it's framework. So in a lot of situations there are conflicting rules that you could feasibly apply to any given word.

 

[Jaguares]

And what about Sam Burgess? BUR-GESS

Is like Bur (Bee) Gees

or like Bur "Guess"?

 

[TRF Mr Fish]

And what about Sam Burgess? BUR-GESS

Is like Bur (Bee) Gees

or like Bur "Guess"?

Bur-Jess I believe.

 

[Big Ewis]

We agree - the trouble is that modern English doesn't have a single "backbone" it has Germanic, Romance and to a lesser extent Celtic languages as it's framework. So in a lot of situations there are conflicting rules that you could feasibly apply to any given word.

oh yeah but it's still one unified language today, and that's all that matters here. I meant "backbone" not as etymological roots but rather as the natural, spontaneous rules that make a language possible as it springs to life. Just like in sports, a sport may be man-made (so, artificial) but it'll eventually see logical rules surrounding it de facto. There's a sort of "skeleton" that materializes, a spinal cord. I do not believe (not what you're saying though) a language is just the sum of its many dialects and accents and that's that, like it's all in the open, abstract, 100% subjective. There are natural rules that determine a kind of exact science of that language, a perfect model right in the middle of it all.
Of course as far as we're concerned here, English - was developed from various roots into a form of common English and then one thing led to another and now we have Americans, Canadians, Aussies etc...who speak it and each have their multitude of accents and sounds and all. To be tangible, "correct" English is only the language the English crafted themselves...but it's just interesting today to see through all those accents there is that one spinal chord that materializes.

And what about Sam Burgess? BUR-GESS

Is like Bur (Bee) Gees

or like Bur "Guess"?

oh uhm, that's "Mass Purchase". Like Maaass, pur-chiss.

 

[Tony Manx]

We agree - the trouble is that modern English doesn't have a single "backbone" it has Germanic, Romance and to a lesser extent Celtic languages as it's framework. So in a lot of situations there are conflicting rules that you could feasibly apply to any given word.

Do not forget the French (and therefore Latin) influence following the Norman conquest which sees many, many words in English derived from French.....for instance, every word in English ending in "..ion" replicates the French word (other than three) where only the pronounciation is different!
The three that are different being vacation-vacances, translation-traduction and explantion-explication!!

Also words ending in English ending in -ic come from the words ending in -ique...viz politic-politique, economic=economique!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_English_words_of_French_origin

 

[ratsapprentice]

French is a Romance language

 

[Jaguares]

Bur-Jess I believe.

Like Jessica? Sam Bur - "Jess-ica"?