American Accents in the Golden Era

[NeilA]

Be sure to read The Story of English.

The best surviving example of Elizabethan English is to be heard today in parts of Rural West Virginia, in the USA.

Jean Harlowe's accent is Hollywood's version of a tough New York dame.

Got that book. I always knew that english was pretty special, but this book threw a whole new light on it.

Slightlyfftopic:

I grew up in Washington on the Puget Sound. My mothers fathers family is Scadanavian. My mothers mothers is kentuckian. My fathers family is from MO. I have a pretty bland accent. Or lack of accent. Although I pernounce the h in what, why, where, white, whale, ect. When I moved to Texas, my first grade teacher on the first day after the math lesson told us to "put up our books". I spent the next 5 min with my text book in the air as my teacher went over vocab words. I also thought "y'all" was somones name, so when my teacher said, "Y'all come back inside now", I didn't. I had always used, "You guys". I can throw that texan accent around pretty well now though.

 

[Widebrim]

The New York accent is dead even in New York. When I was a kid, there were guys in the neighborhood that still used 'kern' for 'coin' and 'earl' for 'oil'.

(a.k.a. Ed Norton from The Honeymooners.)

 

[Widebrim]

And even by natives who aren't from the valley (including Chinatown:eusa_doh.

While a college student in L.A., I heard Zappa's "record," Valley Girl, and was shocked to realize that some of the phrases I was using were considered "Valley." Examples: Like, totally, whatever. Needless to say, I began cultivating a rockabilly vocabulary...lol

 

[Lincsong]

The New York accent is dead even in New York. When I was a kid, there were guys in the neighborhood that still used 'kern' for 'coin' and 'earl' for 'oil'. Use that accent now, even as an homage, and no one understands what you're saying.

Sad huh? I got a kick out of hearing things like; "football weddings", "gavone" and my favorite; "what's up with her mulage freind? She she thnks we're a couple of maniacs or something?" bahahhahahahahahah

 

[Thunderbolt]

Found some more info

I was horsing around on youtube and stumbled on a lovely lady named Amy Walker who did a video of 21 Accents. The last accent she did was "Trans Atlantic" which she "was trained in 1945". I looked it up in Wikipedia and found that it was a trained accent. Its also known as Mid Atlantic. Very interesting. Take a look. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transatlantic_accent Also, for the 21 accents http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3UgpfSp2t6k

 

[Ed]

Originally Posted by Senator Jack
The New York accent is dead even in New York. When I was a kid, there were guys in the neighborhood that still used 'kern' for 'coin' and 'earl' for 'oil'.

(a.k.a. Ed Norton from The Honeymooners.)

And Archie Bunker who also said "terlet".

 

[John in Covina]

I recall the NYC accent where some sounds are "swallowed" like in the word Bottle became Bah-ill, the t's vanished. Was it specific to city regions or perhaps the children of specific country immigrants.

My dad coming over from Norway at about 7 had from his family travels some dialectic stylings. One such was five dollars was never said as FIVE dollars but always fi'dollars, something I do too. (I also say suntines or suntimes instead of sometimes, which may be a residual from the NYC influence.)

Friends up at college had some special pronuciations from the Albany area I think. Mike and Ice became Moike and Oice. (Soda was pop.) One friend that came from Malone which is between Plattsburgh and Potsdam said Pa-day-dah for potato. As a little kid one of the guys that worked for my dad's uncle had some southern drawl that was so thick I could not understand him 90% of the time.

 

[Widebrim]

As a little kid one of the guys that worked for my dad's uncle had some southern drawl that was so thick I could not understand him 90% of the time.

When I went to Army Basic Training in Missouri, many of the drill sergeants at the "Reception Center" were Southerners, and I remember writing to my parents that I could barely understand them. I also recall a Texas recruit looking at me oddly when I said the word "dude," repeating the word to me with an air of incredulity. (Hey, being a southern California boy, I thought that Texas boys used that type of "cowboy" lingo in normal conversation...lol )

My father came from a very rural area about 20 miles south of Scranton, one which during the Depression was mostly populated by old-Anglo families, as well as some Italians, Czechs, Germans, and a few Spaniards. My dad's slightly older relatives (some of whom came here as children from Italy), used words such a "gooms" instead of "gums," "crick" in place of "creek," and "beer garden," instead of "bar."

My mother, a product of the Bronx (off of Fordham Road, where Alexander's Dept. Store used to be), still uses "aah-mund" instead of "aw-mond" (almond), and "daresent" in place of "dare not," but her grammar is excellent. She looks down on Brooklynites, though, because of their awful "accent."lol

 

[Flat Foot Floey]

As I'm from germany and have never visited the US (yet) I don't have a clue about american accents. But I always loved the gibberish they talk in old comics and cartoons. There are quite a few european words in it.

Do you know the comics?

For example: The Katzenjammer Kids, The Kin-Der Kids or Krazy and Ignatz.

 

[Carlisle Blues]

As I'm from germany and have never visited the US (yet) I don't have a clue about american accents. But I always loved the gibberish they talk in old comics and cartoons. There are quite a few european words in it.

Do you know the comics?

For example: The Katzenjammer Kids, The Kin-Der Kids or Krazy and Ignatz.

Clearly, there is an influence: Rudolph Dirks created The Katzenjammer Kids in 1897 for the American Humorist, the famed Sunday supplement of the New York Journal. Inspired in part by Max Und Moritz, the famous German children's stories of the 1860s...

 

[LizzieMaine]

As I'm from germany and have never visited the US (yet) I don't have a clue about american accents. But I always loved the gibberish they talk in old comics and cartoons. There are quite a few european words in it.

Do you know the comics?

For example: The Katzenjammer Kids, The Kin-Der Kids or Krazy and Ignatz.

Krazy and Ignatz are wonderful for fans of dialect -- they tended to speak a strange amalgamation of Yiddish and southern black dialect, with bits of Mexican Spanish thrown in. George Herriman, the creator of the strip, was a Creole from New Orleans who had been exposed to a lot of different accents growing up.

The Katzenjammers spoke Vaudeville German, or "Dutch" dialect -- sort of a stage comedian's idea of how a German immigrant would speak. The '30s radio comedian Jack Pearl used this same sort of dialect.

Another good source of comic strip dialect is the work of Milt Gross, whose characters spoke in a highly exaggerated sort of New York Yiddish accent.

And yet more -- the work of Al Capp in "Li'l Abner" and Billy DeBeck and Fred Lasswell in "Barney Google and Snuffy Smith" pretty much fixed the permanent image of Applalachian hill-country dialect. Walt Kelly's work in "Pogo" did the same for Southeastern swamp country talk.

A good example in a contemporary comic is the use of Maine dialect in Wiley Miller's strip "Non-Sequitir," which is pretty close to the way it's actually spoken, ayuh yessah.

 

[Maguire]

Hi,

Up until about the early 1970's each of New York City's 5 boroughs had it's own very distinctive accent. And having grown up in NYC I could easily tell what borough someone came from as soon as they said something.

Sometimes, if you knew a borough well enough, you could even tell what section a person was from by their accent - like Coney Island sounded different than Bay Ridge. We could also quickly peg someone who was from New Jersey, or from out on Long Island.

When I drove down south once in the early 1970's I had a hard time even understanding people from the deep south. Not surprisingly, when I got to Florida the accent was closer to the NYC accent I was used to, but that's because half the people there were originally from NYC I think.

My guess is that before TV and nation wide broadcasts, every neighborhood had its own accent.

I sort of miss that.

Tony

PS: I agree with Delthayre that greater mobility was also a big part of the reason for the loss of very distinct local accents.

Well you still DO here various accents, you can still tell one one is from the bronx or brooklyn or whatnot (even for my generation i know folks who have strong brooklyn/bronx accents). I don't know what a queens accent sounds like, but i can say that Ireland is host to dozens of accents, one can tell a clare man from a kerry man from an antrim man. From what i've noticed the close to a town you get, the more easy it is to understand the accent- Dublin accents, for example, are very easy to understand for those not familiar. Ulster accents to me sound much like vaguely Scottish, and Donegal.. well i can't understand Donegal accents in the least. In my fathers time one could tell if someone was from the next town over judging by the accent. Naturally this is all changing, for the reasons mentioned.

The drawback.. of mass media and everyone getting "closer" as they say, is of course, everyone sort of develops a sort of neutral accent across the board.

funny enough, i've been traveling with a friend from New Jersey and some folks who asked us where we were from said we spoke with a considerably different accent/could tell we weren't from the same area. For me, the we sound the same.

 

[Lincsong]

Then there's the Cajun dialect. I remember I was in a gas station in Alexandria, LA in 1995 waiting in line and one Cajun was telling this guy something about him going to Houston for a funeral. That's all I could make of the conversation.

 

[John in Covina]

As I recall there was a time when all of the Ma Bell long distance operators were in the midwest like Nebraska because their accent was the most neutral.

 

[Atomic]

American accents are quickly becoming what West Coast accents are: a lack there of. Thank you, Hollywood. I've been up and down the US coast and the only difference between Washingtonians and Californians (just using them as North vs. South) I can tell is CA says "soda" and WA says "pop". That one word difference has made for many a conversation. Otherwise, we all sound the same. I really wish there was more lingual English diversity over here...

Canada, however, keeps me entertained. Besides the stereotypical "Eh" that a bunch of my buddies from Canada use, I remember being at some restaurant and asking for mayonnaise on my burger and the waitress asked me to say it again. I pronounce it like "mannaise" and the waitress said I sounded like a "rich person". I found that funny considering I was technically saying the word wrong!

 

[Flivver]

Sadly, most American accents are being homogenized-out with time. We still have an interesting variety of accents here in New England, but it's not like the old days when I was a kid.

To hear a prime example of the Boston accent from the 1960s, here is a great ad from local car dealer Ernie Boch in 1966. As a kid I loved these ads with the "window smashing sticker price":

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=82gUYeSivR8

 

[John in Covina]

I have mentioned elsewhere that I have seen and heard what was a Southern California phenomenon "Valley Girl Speak" accent all over the US. It's being used by women not in their teens but in their 20's and 30's to retain some image of youth and breathless vapidity. :eusa_doh: Shyah!

 

[LizzieMaine]

I have mentioned elsewhere that I have seen and heard what was a Southern California phenomenon "Valley Girl Speak" accent all over the US. It's being used by women not in their teens but in their 20's and 30's to retain some image of youth and breathless vapidity. :eusa_doh: Shyah!

Bah. Can I propose, as an alternative, that the gals of the Lounge adopt "Patsy Kelly Speak," the sharp, adenoidal rasp of typecast Golden Era brunette supporting actresses who always knew more than their bosses and weren't shy about saying so. See also "Jean Arthur Speak," or for blondes, "Glenda Farrell Speak." If we must have archetypes for our speech, let's have respectable ones.

 

[John in Covina]

It's like OHMYGOD!

 

[Lone_Ranger]

Classic Peter Sellers, doing accents in an interview, for Dr Strangelove. Morphs from English, to American, at the very end.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CJH-4BNsVlc