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Yearly Archives: 2011
Yod-Dropping in American Accents
Of the many words that distinguish American accents from British, ‘tune‘ serves as a particularly good test. Many British accents insert a small ‘y’ sound before the vowel–resulting in something like ‘tyoon‘–whereas for most Americans, this word is homophonous with … Continue reading
Great Minds Who Kept their Accents
Open Culture posted a fantastic video of the late Arthur C. Clarke discussing the future. The clip is remarkable for its prescience (Clarke seems to predict the emergence of the internet), and is fascinating on all levels. Given my interests, … Continue reading
On the Hunt for the New Orleans Yat
Some English dialects are so uncommon that they adopt the mythology of the Loch Ness Monster. One such dialect, unique the city of New Orleans, is locally referred to as Yat. It is renowned not because of how strange it … Continue reading
Will English Dialects Become Languages?
It’s a fair question to ask if English dialects may eventually split off into separate languages. This has happened before, of course, Latin being perhaps the most notable example. And while I find it a compelling question, I think we’re … Continue reading
[hur-i-keyn]
I am currently in the path of the hurricane about to pummel the Northeastern United States. We’re not entirely sure what the power situation is going to be for the next couple of days, which may or may not result … Continue reading
A Pronunciation Mystery: American ‘Father’
Sometimes the most common words have the most illogical pronunciations. Such is the case with the American pronunciation of ‘father.’ It seems so self-evident this word is pronounced with a broad a (i.e. an ‘ah’ sound) that this fact barely … Continue reading
How Do Falkland Islanders Speak?
English has a number of isolated speaker communities throughout the world. Among the most isolated are the Falkland Islands, which comprise a sparsely populated British territory of about 3,000. To date, I’ve only found one speech sample of someone truly … Continue reading
The Most Controversial Thing I Said on this Site
Writing about dialects (or anything language-related), it’s hard to avoid disagreement. Yet of all the things I’ve said here, my most controversial statement, it seems, is something fairly trivial. That would be my assertion that comedian Ricky Gervais speaks with an … Continue reading
The Accent(s) of the Pacific Northwest
I’m moving to the Pacific Northwest in about six weeks. I will soon be able to participate in a hotly debated topic: is there such a thing as a Pacific Northwest accent? And if there is, what does it sound like? … Continue reading
Apologies About the Comments
A very quick note of apology. Due to a hectic schedule, I’ve been out of the loop and have had limited time to work on this blog over the past few days. Unbeknownst to me, the comments have been disabled … Continue reading