4 ms·

Slightly bemused by the reaction. From what I can make out, this is is the same as when someone speaks in a thick accent and you can't understand them until som

by alan_cx 12y ago

Slightly bemused by the reaction. From what I can make out, this is is the same as when someone speaks in a thick accent and you can't understand them until something else prompts you as to what they are saying, then suddenly more of what they say becomes clear. Maybe here in the UK, accents are much wider apart than they are in the US.

exodust 12y ago
I think you're correct. If you played several samples to the audience, they'd start to recognise more words. Actually, I think she influences the outcome by telling her audience the spoken sentence has been "transformed into gibberish". By doing this she has planted the expectation to not comprehend the sound, since "gibberish" by nature cannot be understood.
bane 12y ago
It depends where in the U.S. For big swaths of the country you really only have to deal with 1 or 2 accents: the local and the mid-west neutral (used on the National News). But on the coasts it's about (but not quite) as complex as London might be. New York may be the king of all accent centers in the U.S. (followed maybe by D.C. or L.A.) You get all the various New York accents (not unlike London's various native accents), various native ethnic accents (like AAVE, which even has accents within), regional accents, the various north East Coast accents (every city from Boston to D.C. all have different native accents) as well as rural accents, you also get all the various local accents from the U.S. and Canada since everybody ends up in NYC, then you get all the foreign accents (at various levels of English attainment) from immigrants and tourists and finally you also get all the various native-English accents, including many (but not all) of the ones from the UK. To be fair, the distance between native accents in the U.S. is generally not quite as far as between native accents in the U.K. I've been in the U.K. and Ireland a few times and there really were places I ended up where the local accent was not intelligible to me, and I struggled at times in London. I also notice generally wider distance between the various accents in London that I assumed were native London accents than I've experienced anywhere in a single place in the U.S.

by alan_cx 12y ago

exodust 12y ago

I think you're correct. If you played several samples to the audience, they'd start to recognise more words. Actually, I think she influences the outcome by telling her audience the spoken sentence has been "transformed into gibberish". By doing this she has planted the expectation to not comprehend the sound, since "gibberish" by nature cannot be understood.

bane 12y ago

It depends where in the U.S. For big swaths of the country you really only have to deal with 1 or 2 accents: the local and the mid-west neutral (used on the National News). But on the coasts it's about (but not quite) as complex as London might be. New York may be the king of all accent centers in the U.S. (followed maybe by D.C. or L.A.) You get all the various New York accents (not unlike London's various native accents), various native ethnic accents (like AAVE, which even has accents within), regional accents, the various north East Coast accents (every city from Boston to D.C. all have different native accents) as well as rural accents, you also get all the various local accents from the U.S. and Canada since everybody ends up in NYC, then you get all the foreign accents (at various levels of English attainment) from immigrants and tourists and finally you also get all the various native-English accents, including many (but not all) of the ones from the UK. To be fair, the distance between native accents in the U.S. is generally not quite as far as between native accents in the U.K. I've been in the U.K. and Ireland a few times and there really were places I ended up where the local accent was not intelligible to me, and I struggled at times in London. I also notice generally wider distance between the various accents in London that I assumed were native London accents than I've experienced anywhere in a single place in the U.S.