April 05, 2004
It's not what you say, but how you say it.
Two great linguistic-geek websites, both courtesy of Penny Arcade, of all places:
The Harvard University Dialect Map Survey "What do you call the big clumps of dust that gather under furniture and in corners?" and The Speech Accent Archive "Please call Stella. Ask her to bring these things with her from the store: Six spoons of fresh snow peas, five thick slabs of blue cheese, and maybe a snack for her brother Bob. We also need a small plastic snake and a big toy frog for the kids. She can scoop these things into three red bags, and we will go meet her Wednesday at the train station."
Two great linguistic-geek websites, both courtesy of Penny Arcade, of all places:
The Harvard University Dialect Map Survey "What do you call the big clumps of dust that gather under furniture and in corners?" and The Speech Accent Archive "Please call Stella. Ask her to bring these things with her from the store: Six spoons of fresh snow peas, five thick slabs of blue cheese, and maybe a snack for her brother Bob. We also need a small plastic snake and a big toy frog for the kids. She can scoop these things into three red bags, and we will go meet her Wednesday at the train station."
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Psst.
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d'oh. And I searched and everything. Ah well. ONE of them's new.
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I'm working on a play right now ("Terra Nova") that has a Norwegian accent. Too bad both examples are women.
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Weezel:Do men and women have different accents in Norway?
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Ah...I love this stuff! From the Speech Accent Archive, I can only vouch for what I know, but the New York accents all sounded pretty accurate to me, with the exception of the one where the woman says "for her brother Bawb." Oh gawd. They make Brooklyn out to be Long Island. And, hey, why not give us folks from Westchester our own audio clip? It was fun hearing the Athens accent (my dad is from Athens and sounds very much like that), and the Israeli accents sound very much like some friends of mine currently living stateside. I'm still wading through that Harvard link, but thanks for the post, it's interesting stuff.
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And fun, forky -- thanks.
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over 86% of people in michigan say "pop". my current and former lab-mates (one from boston, one from NYC) like to ridicule me for saying "pop" rather than "soda". to a michigan person, soda is something you cook with. pop? you drink that. now i have proof that i wasn't just making this up. of course, i do have some weird pronunciations myself. i grew up in montana, and as a result i say "an-tan-uh" (rather than antenna). unless i'm talking about an insect - in which case it's pronounced "an-ten-uh". that word didn't make the survey... and "coupon" comes out "cyoo-pon" rather than the "coo-pon" that appears to be standard in michigan. oh well. i blame by small-town out-west upbringing. also proud to report that most michiganders don't have dumb nicknames for grandparents - we just say "grandma" and "grandpa". no nana, gamma, pop-pop, etc. for us, by golly. that's baby talk.
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what kinda coke do you want?
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Beats the cat hairs outta me why ya'll think we'uns talk so funny. I cain't yimmer-yammer with yuns about this here follderoll, I gotter do my Monday warsh. Outten the light when you leave.
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beeswacky: I suppose not, but men and women (i find) do tend to have slightly different speech patterns. And our male actor had trouble reconciling the female voice. Still, good point.
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what kinda coke do you want? yup, welcome to the south. next up the great late night eats debate: an in depth examination of where to go when its 3am and your drunk. Me, I'm a waffle house kid.
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I was about to ask if anyone knew if the raw data from the Harvard survey had been analyzed any further when I decided to take a quick look around for myself. Sure enough [pdf]. More news about the recent work of this guy at his apparent new home.