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Author Archives: Ben
“Interstate Farty-Far” (St. Louis English)
It’s easy to prematurely assume that certain rare American dialect features have become extinct. Such is the case with St. Louis‘ “Interstate Farty-Far” quirk, whereby words like “for” and “born ” are pronounced more or less as “far” and “barn” … Continue reading
What Rhymes Tell Us About Changing English
One of the incidental pleasures of reading Shakespeare’s sonnets is finding rhymes that give us clues about Elizabethan English. One of these occurs in the first four lines of the entire collection: From fairest creatures we desire increase, That thereby … Continue reading
Goombye
A reader recently wrote me a question concerning the word “goombye,” which appears in this up-tempo Ivie Anderson song (penned by Duke Ellington) from 1939: At first glance, I figured “goombye” might be an awkward attempt to transcribe African-American English … Continue reading
“Button” vs. “Butter”
Apropos of a recent conversation in the comments, it’s worth noting that Americans generally pronounce /t/ in words like “button” and “Manhattan” in a different manner than one might expect. To take one contrasting example, Americans pronounce the word “butter” … Continue reading
On “Local” Place Pronunciations: “Manhattan”
While on a train to New York, I overheard the following from a young man speaking Nuyorican English (i.e. the Latino-American New York dialect): “I’m on a train in Jersey to visit my cousin in Manhattan.” This would be an unnoteworthy … Continue reading
Regional African-American Accents
Annie Minoff has written a fascinating, in-depth piece on African American English over at WBEZ in Chicago. It’s worth reading in its entirety, but the main thrust of the article is that within African-American English one can find numerous regional … Continue reading
David Beckham’s “Poshification”
Researchers from University of Manchester recently announced that David Beckham has “poshed up” his accent since moving the the United States (pun probably intended). Given that Beckham is one of the biggest sports stars in the world, it’s fairly easy … Continue reading
Posted in British English Tagged celebrity accents, Cockney, Received Pronunciation (RP) 19 Comments
Why D.A.R.E. Is Important
In the 1960s, an enterprising young linguist named William Labov travelled to Martha’s Vineyard to study a curious feature of the island’s local vernacular. Vineyard natives tended to centralize the diphthongs in words like “house” and “kite” (həʊs and kəɪt), … Continue reading
“Every Man Thinks He’s a Tenor In Cork”
In my college “dialects” class, our instructor played a recording of a talented Irish actor imitating various Irish regional accents. When he got to Cork, he wryly observed, “In Cork, the voice always seems to be higher–every man thinks he’s … Continue reading
Race and “Voice Quality:” A Skeptic’s Viewpoint
During an unrelated Google search the other day, I stumbled upon this Yahoo Answers query: Can you tell someone’s race from the sound of their voice? I was wondering if you could tell if someone was white or black etc by hearing … Continue reading