4 ms·

>that nobody hearing their American accents presumes that they are less capable, less ambitious or less honest than if their R’s had a nicer trill I don't know

>that nobody hearing their American accents presumes that they are less capable, less ambitious or less honest than if their R’s had a nicer trill I don't know if i'd say...less capable personally, but I'm a Urban-Modern-Australian english speaker, as distinct from what I'll call the lower-class suburban australian, rural-strine, or "snooty adeladian-recieved". I've included 4 accents there where most older australian academic literature seems to recognise 3, and I'm not including the various ethno-tinges based on how you might pronounce the phrase "fully-sick sub-woofer" for example. I've been personally told my accent sounds "upper-class and educated" from an american perspective, which I find hilarious considering I think i sound like an absolute bogan whenever in the presence of americans/english. However, I've also been told by non-english speaking persons that they really like the way myself and my wife speak: something to do with clear annunciation or something. Anyway, back to the main point: I question whether this is true, because you can bet I pick up on and have various aesthetic opinions on the various english accents. I find it very hard to believe that there are not connotations attached to how various english speakers speak and pronounce other languages. This would make english some kind of "magical" language that overcomes social-regional-contextual interpretation, and I simply do not believe that can be the case. And i know enough american friend's experiences overseas. I know there were parts/towns of the middle east while travelling I was advised not to stay in for very long with my accent, and I am well aware of the general advice for certain american accents to take advantage of the ambiguity and identify as canadian while travelling. For the record, the non-exhaustive list of accents I identify and their subjective opinion are something along the lines of (keeping in mind, I'm not saying these are my explicit-acted on opinions, they're the subjective-connotations I recognise them as carrying in my own subculture): > Californian: loud, extroverted, a little bit of extroverted stupidity, annoying. > New-york: loud, extroverted, annoying in a different way. > Boston-twang: personally, a bit humorous, not exactly intellectual (park the car in the harvard yard) > Various-southern US: slow, naive but friendly > English-RP: snooty, but never hear anyone who actually talks like this, except on some BBC programs, where sometimes it comes across as a bit comical like someone's taking the piss. > English-other: pretty friendly/approachable in general, obviously can't list all the many english-native accents > Scottish: cool, though stronger ones border on unintelligible until you get used to it > Irish: extremely cool + attractive > New Zealand: its practically urban-australian except for a handful of fish and chips-esque give-aways, basically one of us > Wog-english (using the term in a friendly way, not as a put-down): generally to cover the greek, lebanese, italian accents. Does have lower-middle class connotations for better or worse.

AnimalMuppet 8y ago
For those of us from the wrong part of the world, could you define "taking the piss"?
- flashman 8y ago
  It's short for "taking the piss out of (someone or something)." To make fun of, but in a light-hearted way that implies the speaker has the advantage of the target. In the instance above, it means "using an exaggerated British accent to lampoon people who genuinely speak that way." The "piss" in question is seriousness, authority or importance (compare "piss and vinegar"), but you can take it from someone with the aid of humour. Piss-takes can be a form of speaking truth to power.
  - sudosteph 8y ago
    Huh, thank you for explaining that. Prior to this I had only recognized the phrase "Are you taking the piss?" from watching Misfits, and from that context had always assumed it meant "are you out of your mind?". Seems more like "Are you screwing with me?" or "are you serious?" would be the more accurate meaning given this definition.
    - vorg 8y ago
      "Taking the piss out of someone" has the same meaning as "taking the mickey out of someone". Perhaps that's the expression in the English you speak.
hermitdev 8y ago
I'd had quite a bit of experience in my time with different US accents by the time I hit college. In my experience, I generally don't have a problem understanding anyone I'm listening to from the US. Sometimes they have a hard time understanding me, or don't get the slang or vernacular I'm using. When I first got to college, I was suddenly emerged in hundreds of foreign accents (for an undergrad school of ~1200 students, I think we had at least 180 different nationalities represented). Hardest for me to understand were the mainland east-Asian accents. I think because they natively just don't have some of the same sounds we use in English. For instance, my 1st semester, I had a Chinese native professor for Calculus 2. It took me a good 6-8 weeks to figure out what the hell "arfa" was (possibly adding to the confusing was his hand writing was atrocious). Finally figured out he meant "alpha" after he wrote the symbol slightly different one lecture (normally in his handwriting, "alpha" looked more like "<" than "α"). Anyways, I learned a lot about how to understand and interpret various accents while I was in college as I worked as a door guard in the dorms, so I was forced to interact with a lot of different nationalities than I otherwise would have. It has served me pretty well professionally as I've been able to easily work understand colleagues from other countries pretty easily (although they cannot always understand me). One of my favorite encounters was when I worked at a hedge fund that had several multinational offices, but had an all-hands on-site IT gather in the US. I gravitated towards the Brits, as they were a fun lot and I got along with them great. I could understand them perfectly, but they could hardly understand a word that came out of my mouth. Cracked me up to no end at the time, but I was eventually able to communicate to them once I was able to sloppily fall into their vernacular. May not have been perfect, but I made contact. Certainly helped cross-ocean cooperation and communication.

AnimalMuppet 8y ago

For those of us from the wrong part of the world, could you define "taking the piss"?

flashman 8y ago
It's short for "taking the piss out of (someone or something)." To make fun of, but in a light-hearted way that implies the speaker has the advantage of the target. In the instance above, it means "using an exaggerated British accent to lampoon people who genuinely speak that way." The "piss" in question is seriousness, authority or importance (compare "piss and vinegar"), but you can take it from someone with the aid of humour. Piss-takes can be a form of speaking truth to power.
- sudosteph 8y ago
  Huh, thank you for explaining that. Prior to this I had only recognized the phrase "Are you taking the piss?" from watching Misfits, and from that context had always assumed it meant "are you out of your mind?". Seems more like "Are you screwing with me?" or "are you serious?" would be the more accurate meaning given this definition.
  - vorg 8y ago
    "Taking the piss out of someone" has the same meaning as "taking the mickey out of someone". Perhaps that's the expression in the English you speak.

hermitdev 8y ago

I'd had quite a bit of experience in my time with different US accents by the time I hit college. In my experience, I generally don't have a problem understanding anyone I'm listening to from the US. Sometimes they have a hard time understanding me, or don't get the slang or vernacular I'm using. When I first got to college, I was suddenly emerged in hundreds of foreign accents (for an undergrad school of ~1200 students, I think we had at least 180 different nationalities represented). Hardest for me to understand were the mainland east-Asian accents. I think because they natively just don't have some of the same sounds we use in English. For instance, my 1st semester, I had a Chinese native professor for Calculus 2. It took me a good 6-8 weeks to figure out what the hell "arfa" was (possibly adding to the confusing was his hand writing was atrocious). Finally figured out he meant "alpha" after he wrote the symbol slightly different one lecture (normally in his handwriting, "alpha" looked more like "<" than "α"). Anyways, I learned a lot about how to understand and interpret various accents while I was in college as I worked as a door guard in the dorms, so I was forced to interact with a lot of different nationalities than I otherwise would have. It has served me pretty well professionally as I've been able to easily work understand colleagues from other countries pretty easily (although they cannot always understand me). One of my favorite encounters was when I worked at a hedge fund that had several multinational offices, but had an all-hands on-site IT gather in the US. I gravitated towards the Brits, as they were a fun lot and I got along with them great. I could understand them perfectly, but they could hardly understand a word that came out of my mouth. Cracked me up to no end at the time, but I was eventually able to communicate to them once I was able to sloppily fall into their vernacular. May not have been perfect, but I made contact. Certainly helped cross-ocean cooperation and communication.