Accent Strength And Regional Accents

Accent Strength And Regional AccentsAt a party unmatched night a visitor from a nonher country remarks that You dont charter so strong an set phrase as your friends. You had previously conceptualized that you had no emphasize and that you spoke worry your friends, exclusively the statement helps you to realize that you carry a regional dialect, just like every iodine else around you. What accounting could you offer your visitor for why you never recognise that fact before and why you really do adopt an speech pattern just like the virtuoso your friends have?What explanation could you offer your visitor for why you never realized that fact before?What explanation could you offer your visitor for why you really do have an tension just like the one your friends have?1) wherefore I never realised thata) I had no tenseness.b) My accent is not as strong as my friends.c) I have an accent just like one of my friends.WHY I NEVER REALISED THAT I HAD AN ACCENT.Most hatful dont realize that they have an accent because they are habituate to the pronunciation and rhythm of speech in their country. It sounds normal hearing different Trinidadian emit.Whenever I adjoin foreigners, it intrigues me to hear their accent and I try to figure out which country they are from.Hearing a foreigners accent sounds strange to me because it is not the norm in my interpose of abode.Although most people have an accent they do not ack without delayledge this greatly.We live in a society where mostly everyone utters and sounds the same, with the exception of foreigners and those with speak difficulties.We al modes consider the main accent as normal and any other accent as funny or strange.I never realized this because I lived my entire in Trinidad and never travelled or lived abroad where my accent was not the popular.Hearing you speak to me makes me realize that the means I speakCUNNING LINGUISTICSEveryone has an accent.some(a) readers might think, No shit Thats obvious barely its not obvious, trendy arse.A survey held in Britain in 2005 revealed that 7% of respondents dont believe they have an accent.I would claim that the veridical figure is even off much higher than that.Were all prisoners of our own culture.Living indoors a society, were adjoin and bombarded by a majority accent.To us, that accent sounds natural and other accents sound different.Sometimes we confuse the well-known(prenominal) accent as being right, and the different ones as being wrong.It may sound silly, plainly I never realised I had an accent until I set foot in England at maturate 25.Having lived in Trinidad for my whole flavour, to me when Trinis spoke it sounded normal.But in England, as soon as I state something people would look at me.The funny thing too is that I had to learn what my accent sounded like by listening to my other Trini friends, and smooth I didnt think they had an accent.Then I realised I had to listen to intonations of how Trinidadians spoke.S ome people change their accents to blend in. However, I think my accent got even thicker, as my way to hold on to my Caribbean identity, and I revelled in phrase Trinidadian Creole (which is a expression that was formed by slaves mixing face with their own langu come along, and includes unique words and sayings). People say Trinidadians accent sounds happy. To quote a previous boss, she said it sounded like a lilt.When I speak Standard side of meat people understand it quite an well. Like Paull says, it depends on how its delivered its the slang/ dialect that basis confuse people. Ive utter with Paull, and another Aussie and had no problems understanding them. Seems they understood me quite well also, and our accents are quite different.Ask A Linguist FAQWhat is an accent?An accent is a way of pronouncing a language. It is in that respectfore impossible to speak without an accent.Some people may think they do not have an accent. Or you may think that there are other people who do not have an accent. Everyone has an accent. The term accent slight is sometimes used (by non-linguists) about people who speak one of the high prestige reference accents ( much(prenominal) as ecumenical Ameri throne or, less commsolely, RP), which are associated with people from a fairly unspecific region and with people of high social class. But these are also accents. I depart mention them again later in this FAQ.MY ACCENT IS non AS STRONG AS MY FRIENDSCUNNING LINGUISTICSAccents dont just take off at the level of nationality (e.g., Aussie) or region (e.g., Boston). They also vary with the individual (e.g., you). Your accent is a fingerprint, a totally unique, distinctive way of raging (linguists call this an idiolect). It isnt fixed though. It can change, with the right combination of influence and interest.Recently, some twit asked me, Why dont you sound American yet? Okay, Ive been in the States for two and a half years now, and my accent now sounds a little diffe rent to me. But, by contrast, this fight is generally imperceptible to Americans (and non-linguists). Your accent does leave a Hansel and Gretel-like trail of where youve been. Obviously, it takes awhile for a current accent to kick in. Other factors can influence this change too, whether you want to adopt an accent (convergence) or dont want to adopt it (divergence).Accents are like tracking devices that can reveal where youve been. The field of Forensic Linguistics investigates this area. In August 2005, a militant video of an groundwork fighter was found. A forensic linguist was able to determine several aspects of the fighters identity, that he had been raised in Australia and possibly had parents of Middle Eastern descent. This area is useful in legal cases, especially for identification, transcription and in au indeedticating recordings.Accent (linguistics)PrestigeCertain accents are perceived to carry more prestige in a society than other accents. This is often due to the ir association with the elite part of society. For example in the get together Kingdom, Received Pronunciation of the English language is associated with the traditional upper class.I HAVE AN ACCENT secure LIKE ONE OF MY FRIENDSCUNNING LINGUISTICSAnother twit drives around with a bumper sticker on his SUV proclaiming Welcome to America. Nowspeak English or get out What a funny fundament This pseudo-patriotic, prejudiced twit has no control over who speaks what and where. This is a dynamic process that he can only witness. American English may be the fastest get downing version of Englishbut Spanish is the fastest growing language in AmericaSo, accents can reveal our regional origins, but they can also suggest what kind of social circles we move in. Compare the Queen of Englands accent to that of a miner in Yorkshire. Accent can also provide info about your economic flat coat and education. Stop practicing your accentI can hear you right nowAccent (linguistics)As gentlemans gen tleman beings spread out into isolated communities, stresses and peculiarities develop. Over time these can develop into identifiable accents. In northeasterly America, the interaction of people from many ethnic backgrounds contributed to the formation of the different varieties of North American accents. It is difficult to step or predict how long it takes an accent to formulate. Accents in the USA, Canada and Australia, for example, developed from the combinations of different accents and languages in various societies, and the erect of this on the various pronunciations of the British settlers, yet North American accents remain more distant, either as a result of time or of external or foreign linguistic interaction, such as the Italian accent.In many cases, the accents of non-English settlers from Great Britain and Ireland affected the accents of the different colonies quite differently. Irish, Scottish and Welsh immigrants had accents which greatly affected the vowel pronunc iation of indisputable areas of Australia and CanadaSocial factorsWhen a group defines a standard pronunciation, speakers who twist from it are often said to speak with an accent. People from the United States would speak with an accent from the point of horizon of an Australian, and vice versa. Accents such as BBC English or General American may sometimes be erroneously designated in their countries of origin as accentless to indicate that they offer no obvious clue to the speakers regional background.Groups sharing an identifiable accent may be defined by any of a wide variety of common traits. An accent may be associated with the region in which its speakers reside (a geographical accent), the socio-economic term of its speakers, their ethnicity, their caste or social class, their first language (when the language in which the accent is heard is not their native language), and so on.Regional accents of EnglishLocal accents are part of local dialects. Any dialect of English h as unique features in pronunciation, vocabulary, and grammar. The term accent describes only the first of these, namely, pronunciation. See also hark of dialects of the English language.Non-native speakers of English tend to carry over the intonation and phonemic inventory from their mother vernacular into their English speech. For more details see Non-native pronunciations of English.Among native English speakers, many different accents exist. Some regional accents are easily identified by certain characteristics. Further variations are to be found within the regions identified below for example, towns located less than 10 miles (16 km) from the city of Manchester such as Bolton, Oldham and Salford, distributively have distinct accents, all of which form the Lancashire accent, yet in extreme cases are different enough to be noticed even by a non-local listener. There is also much room for misunderstanding amidst people from different regions, as the way one word is pronounced i n one accent (for example, petal in American English) volition sound like a different word in another accent (for example, pearl in Scottish English).Your accent results from how, where, and when you learned the language you are speaking and it gives impressions about you to other people. People do not have a single fixed accent which is determined by their experiences. We can control the way we speak, and do, both consciously and unconsciously. Most people vary their accent depending on who they are speaking with. We change our accents, often without noticing, as we have saucy life experiences.How accurate people are in knowing about you from your accent depends not only on the features of your accent, but also on who the listener is, and what they know about the other people who speak with a identical accent to you.Your accent might be one that is associated with people from a particular ass (for example, with being from New York, capital of the United Kingdom, or Delhi). Some people might just hear you as alone being from the US, England, or India. Your accent might give the impression that you spoke some other language before the one you are speaking at the moment (you might speak French with an English accent, or English with a Korean accent). Its impossible to speak without conveying some information through with(predicate) your accent.All languages are spoken with several different accents. There is nothing unusual about English. And not everyone who comes from the same place speaks the same in any place there is a variety of accents. expression changes over time. We get new-fangled words, there are grammatical changes, and accents change over time. If you listen to recordings do by people from your own language community 100 years ago, you will hear for yourself that even over that time accents have changed. Try out some of the links from the Spoken Word history Group , for example.Why do languages develop different accents?Human nature. In al l sorts of ways, we behave like those we mix with. We are members of social groups, and within our social group we like to behave in similar ways and show that we belong. We do this in language as well as in other ways (e.g. what we wear, what we eat).When groups become distinct, the way they speak becomes distinct too. This happens socially and geographically, but is easiest to illustrate by geographical differences. If a single group splits into two (imagine that one half goes to Island A and one half to Island B), then once they have separated, their accents will change over time, but not in the same way, so that after just one generation the accent of Island A will be different from the accent of Island B. If they stay completely separated for centuries, their dialects may become so different that we will start lacking(p) to say they are speaking two different languages.Why are the accents a particular place like they are?Separate development accounts for some accent variation. But sometimes we need to talk about the first generation of speakers of a particular language brought up in a new place. The first pincerren to grow up in a new place are very important. The children who grow up together are a peer group. They want to speak the same as each other to express their group identity. The accent they develop as they go through their childhood will become the basis for the accents of the new place. So where does their accent come from?The first generation of children will nurse on the accents of the adults around them, and will create something new. If people move to a new place in groups (as English speakers did to America, Australia and New Zealand) that group usually brings several different accents with them. The children will draw on the miscellanea of accents they hear and create their own accent out of what they hear. The modern accents of Australia are more similar to London accents of English than to any other accent from England this is prob ably because the founder generation (in the eighteenth century) had a cosmic component drawn from the poor of London, who were transported to Australia as convicts. The accents of New Zealand are similar to Australian accents because a abundant proportion of the early English-speaking settlers of New Zealand came from Australia.The mix found in the speech of the settlers of a new place establishes the kind of accent that their children will develop. But the first generation born in the new place will not keep the diversity of their parents generation they will speak with similar accents to the others of their age group. And if the population grows slowly enough, the children will be able to absorb subsequent children into their group, so that even quite large migrations of other groups (such as Irish people into Australia) will not make much difference to the accent of the new place. Most parents know this. If someone from New York (US) marries someone from Glasgow (Scotland, UK) , and these two parents raise a child in Leeds (England, UK), that child will not speak like either of the parents, but will speak like the children he (I know of such a child) is at school with. just about AccentsBy Shiromi Nassreen, eHow ContributorWhen we hear a voice, one of the first things we might notice is a persons accent, especially if that accent happens to be different from our own. If we cant see the person, we may even come to conclusions based on the accent. Accents can give us perceptions about a person that are not always accurate, such as how intelligent the person is or how much money he makes.What is an Accent?1. An accent is the way in which a person pronounces a word in a language. Accents are caused by a number of factors, primarily the region that someone is from, where he learned to speak the language and his social background. However, scorn that fact that accents tend to give away information regarding a persons background, accents can be changed. In fact , people will often unknowingly change their accents to fit their current location and social group. Some believe that they dont have an accent because it is a more commonly known accent such as the General American accent or the British Received Pronunciation typically seen on television however, it is still an accent.The Origin of Accents2. Accents develop and change naturally over time. However, a primary cause for the changing of an accent is when groups of people migrate to new locations. People will usually speak with the same accent as their peers. This helps to create a group identity. When groups migrate, such as the settlers of North America, they find themselves among a group where a variety of languages and accents is being spoken. The children of that group will draw on the accents spoken around them and develop a new accent.Accents and Development3. Accents are often developed during childhood. Generally, children often find it easier to pick up accents. If a child who se parents are from England moves to Australia, the child is unlikely to speak with an English accent, speaking instead with the accent of the childs peers. However, should the child as an adult later wish to change her accent, that is also possible.Accents and Social Factors4. Accents can not only indicate a region that a person is from but also that persons social background. Often certain accents are stereotypically associated with a certain class. British Received Pronunciation is usually associated with the upper class and a well-educated person. According to a study at Bath Spa University, the Brummie accent of Birmingham is thought to be the least intelligent of all the British regional accents studied. However, a person unfamiliar with these stereotypesan American, for examplewould not have the same perceptions of the accent.