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> Whenever I'm traveling in areas where people speak with an accent Nit-pick, but everyone speaks with an accent :) (I'm not sure if you meant it that way, bu

by Osmium 10y ago

> Whenever I'm traveling in areas where people speak with an accent Nit-pick, but everyone speaks with an accent :) (I'm not sure if you meant it that way, but I have met people who genuinely think that they don't have an accent and are 'unaccented', and it's just other people who do...)

TillE 10y ago
But there's a neutral General American which a majority(?) of Americans speak, with very minor variations. Most accents that deviate strongly from it are slowly dying out. This is in stark contrast to the UK, or just England, where you have an incredible amount of linguistic diversity in a very small geographical area. RP is theoretically "standard", but in reality it's a niche upper class thing.
- Osmium 10y ago
  > But there's a neutral General American which a majority(?) of Americans speak, with very minor variations. So this was actually the kind of thing I was hoping to address with my comment. The idea that there's a "neutral" accent is, linguistically speaking, nonsense. That said, there probably isn't too much harm in it, in that if you're an American talking to other Americans there's probably not much ambiguity. The problem is more that it could create the mistaken idea that, say, "General American" is somehow "normal" and therefore anybody speaking with a different accent becomes "the other", for whatever that may mean. It becomes a reference point to judge other accents against, when that's not necessarily helpful. And there's a lot of accent prejudice out there... ask anyone who's gone for a job interview, for example, who's been very well-qualified but has an accent that the interviewer didn't expect (this can be due to regional or social backgrounds, or even gender – e.g. so-called "valley girl speak"/high rising terminal). Just something worth thinking about, that's all. I know I've dismissed someone before off-hand based on how they sound, which is not a good thing, and something I'd like to be more aware of myself.
  - psyc 10y ago
    There's too much appeal to consequences here. I'd rather see someone make an argument for why a set of pronunciations can't be canonical. I certainly know exactly which pronunciations are the "neutral" ones, even the ones I don't use myself. So how did those pronunciations receive their status? What does it mean for us to hear them as "unaccented", and why exactly is that misguided?
    - WorldMaker 10y ago
      The armchair linguistics as I know it: Accents (and languages in general) are typically social, tribal. We use them as one of the markers of "our tribe" versus "not our tribe". Things that sound neutral/unaccented to us are things that sound like they come from "around us", from within our tribe. Things that sound foreign are clearly not from our tribe. The misguided part here is that thinking because it sounds neutral/unaccented to you means it is the "right" one. That path potentially leads to xenophobia and tribalism.
      - psyc 10y ago
        I grew up in a region with a strong, distinctive regional accent and dialect. Every member of my family, teachers, friends, literally everyone all spoke with that accent. But even from a very young age (like 3-4) I knew it was an accent. I didn't pick it up. I understood what canonical pronunciation was, and opted for that. So, what, I just decided that newscasters were my tribe for some reason? I'm just very suspicious of the idea that its completely relative, and just depends on what you're used to hearing. If you were being taught a foreign language by a native speaker, I think you'd be much less likely to doubt them when they told you "this is how it is pronounced." And you ended with another appeal to consequences.
        foldr 10y ago
        The problem with this view is that there are instances where the 'canonical' pronunciation in one group is the 'noncanonical' pronunciation in another, and vice versa. For example, in British English, 'r' deletion is part of the 'canonical' pronunciation and it's only nonstandard dialects that are rhotic. In American English it's the other way round. So in general, it can't be that features of the pronunciation itself somehow determine whether or not it is canonical. I doubt you really know what accent you spoke with when you were three or four. As to why you picked up an accent somewhere close to SAE, it's most likely for reasons of prestige.
- hx87 10y ago
  General American is still an accent, albeit a neutral one, and it's hard to find people who still speak it on a daily basis outside the Pacific Northwest. Even in the region where it was allegedly first spoken (Iowa), the average person today speaks with an Inland Northern accent, or central Canadian further north.
- WorldMaker 10y ago
  I think a better name than "General American" is possibly the American Television Received Accent in that I think the key to the homogenization of a lot of the American English accent landscape is unintentionally a result of mass media consumption (primarily American TV) over a handful of generations now. Personally, though I tend to think of it as the "American Chameleon" accent as I, like the poster above, find that it trends to adapting to regional variances (often without a conscious intent to do so). I have a hunch that this is a feature of the "accent" rather than a weakness in the speaker, but this is merely lay speculation. It's weird to think of a defining characteristic of an accent being its flexibility rather than rigidity to preferred forms, but I think that helps account for why this "General American" accent is so common in America at this point, because it seems to be sort of an American "Borg" accent: your regional distinctions will be assimilated.
ArkyBeagle 10y ago
I have been told that the least accent is the flat Nebraska pronunciation of say, Johnny Carson. I believe it's called General American. It's at least semi-mythic - but some variation of it is used frequently in broadcast.

by Osmium 10y ago

TillE 10y ago

But there's a neutral General American which a majority(?) of Americans speak, with very minor variations. Most accents that deviate strongly from it are slowly dying out. This is in stark contrast to the UK, or just England, where you have an incredible amount of linguistic diversity in a very small geographical area. RP is theoretically "standard", but in reality it's a niche upper class thing.

Osmium 10y ago
> But there's a neutral General American which a majority(?) of Americans speak, with very minor variations. So this was actually the kind of thing I was hoping to address with my comment. The idea that there's a "neutral" accent is, linguistically speaking, nonsense. That said, there probably isn't too much harm in it, in that if you're an American talking to other Americans there's probably not much ambiguity. The problem is more that it could create the mistaken idea that, say, "General American" is somehow "normal" and therefore anybody speaking with a different accent becomes "the other", for whatever that may mean. It becomes a reference point to judge other accents against, when that's not necessarily helpful. And there's a lot of accent prejudice out there... ask anyone who's gone for a job interview, for example, who's been very well-qualified but has an accent that the interviewer didn't expect (this can be due to regional or social backgrounds, or even gender – e.g. so-called "valley girl speak"/high rising terminal). Just something worth thinking about, that's all. I know I've dismissed someone before off-hand based on how they sound, which is not a good thing, and something I'd like to be more aware of myself.
- psyc 10y ago
  There's too much appeal to consequences here. I'd rather see someone make an argument for why a set of pronunciations can't be canonical. I certainly know exactly which pronunciations are the "neutral" ones, even the ones I don't use myself. So how did those pronunciations receive their status? What does it mean for us to hear them as "unaccented", and why exactly is that misguided?
  - WorldMaker 10y ago
    The armchair linguistics as I know it: Accents (and languages in general) are typically social, tribal. We use them as one of the markers of "our tribe" versus "not our tribe". Things that sound neutral/unaccented to us are things that sound like they come from "around us", from within our tribe. Things that sound foreign are clearly not from our tribe. The misguided part here is that thinking because it sounds neutral/unaccented to you means it is the "right" one. That path potentially leads to xenophobia and tribalism.
    - psyc 10y ago
      I grew up in a region with a strong, distinctive regional accent and dialect. Every member of my family, teachers, friends, literally everyone all spoke with that accent. But even from a very young age (like 3-4) I knew it was an accent. I didn't pick it up. I understood what canonical pronunciation was, and opted for that. So, what, I just decided that newscasters were my tribe for some reason? I'm just very suspicious of the idea that its completely relative, and just depends on what you're used to hearing. If you were being taught a foreign language by a native speaker, I think you'd be much less likely to doubt them when they told you "this is how it is pronounced." And you ended with another appeal to consequences.
      - foldr 10y ago
        The problem with this view is that there are instances where the 'canonical' pronunciation in one group is the 'noncanonical' pronunciation in another, and vice versa. For example, in British English, 'r' deletion is part of the 'canonical' pronunciation and it's only nonstandard dialects that are rhotic. In American English it's the other way round. So in general, it can't be that features of the pronunciation itself somehow determine whether or not it is canonical. I doubt you really know what accent you spoke with when you were three or four. As to why you picked up an accent somewhere close to SAE, it's most likely for reasons of prestige.
hx87 10y ago
General American is still an accent, albeit a neutral one, and it's hard to find people who still speak it on a daily basis outside the Pacific Northwest. Even in the region where it was allegedly first spoken (Iowa), the average person today speaks with an Inland Northern accent, or central Canadian further north.
WorldMaker 10y ago
I think a better name than "General American" is possibly the American Television Received Accent in that I think the key to the homogenization of a lot of the American English accent landscape is unintentionally a result of mass media consumption (primarily American TV) over a handful of generations now. Personally, though I tend to think of it as the "American Chameleon" accent as I, like the poster above, find that it trends to adapting to regional variances (often without a conscious intent to do so). I have a hunch that this is a feature of the "accent" rather than a weakness in the speaker, but this is merely lay speculation. It's weird to think of a defining characteristic of an accent being its flexibility rather than rigidity to preferred forms, but I think that helps account for why this "General American" accent is so common in America at this point, because it seems to be sort of an American "Borg" accent: your regional distinctions will be assimilated.

ArkyBeagle 10y ago

I have been told that the least accent is the flat Nebraska pronunciation of say, Johnny Carson. I believe it's called General American. It's at least semi-mythic - but some variation of it is used frequently in broadcast.