Random Quote:
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Speaking of Talking
What American accent do you have? Your Result: The WestYour accent is the lowest common denominator of American speech. Unless you’re a SoCal surfer, no one thinks you have an accent. And really, you may not even be from the West at all, you could easily be from Florida or one of those big Southern cities like Dallas or Atlanta.
The Midland Boston North Central The Inland North Philadelphia The South The Northeast What American accent do you have?
Quiz Created on GoToQuizI saw a link to this quiz on Lime’s site. I hardly ever bother with such things because nearly all of these online quizzes are total crap. But this one does use words that I know indicate regional differences in speech. It did peg Lime’s Philadelphian tendencies. And I am often told that I don’t have a detectable accent… until I tell people where I grew up — a big southern city. And I currently live in Florida so I have to say it seems fairly accurate so far.
I just remembered something tangentially relevant. [Really!] A colleague recently went on a brief rant when a couple judges at a thespian competition referred to students’ use of a “southern accent” in their performances. Anyone trained in speech, she said, should know that it’s a dialect, not an accent. [Don't tell Tom Petty. He'd be... um... heartbroken.*] Apparently, the author of this quiz doesn’t know [or doesn't care] that it should be “What American Dialect do You Speak?” Hmm, it just occurred to me that we may speak a dialect, but we have an accent….
Personally, I’ll always love the sound of a soft southern
accentdialect. [Sorry, I've called it a southern accent all my life.] My speech patterns are mostly southern, I’m sure, even though my pronunciation usually isn’t. [But I reckon y'all knew that, huh?] I can speak southernly [that's my word and I'm sticking to it] and I do a bit more when I’m back home. Which brings me back to how to pronounce my home town. I was born and raised in Louisville, Kentucky.
Despite what it says in this Louisville Convention and Visitor Bureau logo, we would NEVER pronounce it Lewisville, unlike certain other U.S. cities that spell their names the same way [but pronounce them all wrong]. And we generally forgive visitors for pronouncing it Looeyville. It is, after all, named for Louis XVI.
Wait…
Ginger: This table goes back to Louis the 16th.
Fred: That’s nothing. All the furniture in my living room goes back to Walmart the 30th if I miss another payment.**Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.
…I had to get that out of my system. When we natives pronounce Louisville, it usually comes out something like this:
Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.
***
*Sorry, sorry, sorry!
**Sorry, sorry, sorry!
***This is not my voice. I stole this clip.
Posted on March 5th, 2008 10 comments10 responses to “Speaking of Talking”
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I am from Indiana. I call it Looey-ville. I can’t stand it when people cut the word down to one syllable. Luhvul…oh for pete’s sake does it really hurt that much to say the whole word!?
Hurt? I dunno. Pro’lly would. ~Tim
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interesting delineation between dialect and accent. i always thought region differences within the country were accents and between countries speaking the same language were dialects, but what do i know? apparently not much, lol.
i did know how to say louisville though and i can say that lancaster, PA is pronounced LANKaster, not LANcaster. reading, PA is pronounced redding.
thanks for playing along:)
I knew how to pronounce Lancaster and Reading. Maybe it’s because my parents moved to Louisville from Trenton, NJ and I’ve been up that way a few times. ~Tim
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Jennifer March 6th, 2008 at 06:11
I have to argue with the accent v. dialect issue, and I would argue with that colleague about it directly but I have any number of other issues with her for argumentation that supersede the a v. d issue. I heard some of those actors rehearsing, and there is nothing worse than a bad accent. Think Drew Barrymore in “Ever After” or Anne Hathaway in “Becoming Jane” or Jim Varney in anything. The judge was commenting on the competence of the delivery, nothing more.
Dialect incorporates diction (word choice) and specific colloquialisms inherent to one region. Pronunciation is implied when it comes to dialect, but dialect has far more to do with language than with tone.
Accent is all about pronunciation.
James Baldwin wrote a brilliant essay about the power of language in England–how the inflection, diction, and one’s mere carriage can “put your business in the street” and inform the listener all they care to know about you. In America, where we love to THINK that we are classless and “equalitarian”, we still judge harshly on such presentations. Some Southern accents are judged as uneducated (i.e. the girl in the NASCAR commercial) while some New England accents are viewed as intentionally snooty.
Or we could all just continue morphing into that flat Midland non-accent with zero affect and become even more homogenized.
Pardon the rant du jour. I’ve been ranty lately and I haven’t had my coffee yet.
Actually, in neither case did the judges indicate that the accent/dialect was poorly delivered. They questioned the choice to use that particular accent/dialect in the first place. One of those was for a performance of a play that repeatedly refers to events in communities “up north” making the choice of a southern accent/dialect natural [in my humble opinion].And, since it wasn’t intended to be a major point in my post, I didn’t fully explain the distinction our colleague made between dialect and accent — so your argument would have to be more with me on that. ~Tim
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Snowelf March 6th, 2008 at 13:09
[Don’t tell Tom Petty. He’d be… um… heartbroken.*]
HAHAHA!
Tim I have missed getting over here to visit you!!
I call it Looey-Ville, too.
–snow
Welcome back! I’ve missed you too. ~Tim
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Jennifer March 6th, 2008 at 22:00
Oooh, so we can argue now? Exciting!
Never take me seriously when I type a comment at 6:11 a.m. prior to coffee.
Ah, who says I ever take you seriously? [smirk] ~Tim
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What an interesting quiz. I hopped over to the site and took it — wow. It certainly has me pegged. I’m all southern belle!
Maybe I’ll post this to my site and do an audio post to see what others say. Many of the people on my blog I’ve spoken to before though or they’ve heard other audio blogs I’ve done and clearly already know my accent or um…dialect….
As for how to pronounce Louisville, I plead the 5th!
hehePlease do an audio post. You have a lovely voice. ~Tim
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I can pronounce Louisville. I knew it was from Louis the King of France. I’m a Southern Girl from Mississippi, but don’t really have an accent any more.
It’s better to be Southern than to sound Southern… maybe. ~Tim
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Jennifer March 9th, 2008 at 19:30
IN RESPONSE TO:
Ah, who says I ever take you seriously? [smirk] ~TimYou do realize this means war. [I can smirk better than you can.]
You do realize that you should never take anything seriously that I write here. Ever. ~Tim
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All anyone needs to know about the word “Louisville” is that it is nearly always admired when followed immediately by the word, “Slugger.”
Now I shall have to take the quiz. My curiosity is piqued.
The bats are cool, but I have to say I’m not a fan of the game. I’ll be looking for your quiz results. ~Tim
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Loved the quiz, even though it nailed me as the Wisconsinite that I am.
p.s.
Definitely looey-ville
Well, yeah, in Wisconsin it is…. ~Tim
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