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Category Archives: American English
Accent Prejudice Isn’t “Prejudice Lite”
I’m hesitant to respond to Gawker‘s “Ugliest Accent” tournament. For those who haven’t read it, the piece is a “March-Madness-style” competition to determine America’s “ugliest” regional English. (Pittsburg was crowned the winner last week.) I’m clearly no fan, but Josef Fruehwald offers great critiques … Continue reading
Iggy Azalea and Ethnolect Appropriation
A few years back, I was talking to an Irish musician about the American blues. I found it strange that British and Irish musicians, particularly those honing their chops in the 1960s, seemed more taken with the form than Americans. “Well,” the … Continue reading
“Fargo” Redux: Dialect Work in TV’s Renaissance
When Fargo was released in 1996, “Minnesota speech” was largely unknown to the majority of the American populace. With a handful of exceptions, the dialect had little representation in popular culture. The film’s appeal lies not only in the quality of … Continue reading
Posted in American English Tagged dialects in film, dialects in TV, northern cities vowel shift 8 Comments
“Jersey” or “Jersey?”
About a week ago, my wife and I went to a fancy grocery store and splurged on an expensive bottle of half-and-half. As we were putting away our haul, I read the description on the back of the bottle and … Continue reading
The “Awesome” Trajectory
Regarding the subject of my last post, I was struck this passage from Alice Munro’s story, To Reach Japan: They opened the compartment curtain to get more air, now that there was no danger of the child’s falling out.”Awesome to have … Continue reading
Canadian and American /T/
I recently read Alice Munro‘s famous short story collection Dear Life, my interest piqued after the Canadian writer’s recent Nobel Prize win. I enjoy watching interviews with authors I’m reading, so I looked up several with Munro on YouTube. I … Continue reading
Pre-R Raising in Cleveland
One of my favorite Food Network personalities is Michael Symon, a decorated chef from Cleveland. Celebrity chefs, refreshingly, tend not to alter their accent much (all those fancy French terms belie the industry’s working-class ethos). Symon is no exception, with … Continue reading
“Nauseous” (Standard English’s Evolution)
“‘Nauseous‘ doesn’t refer to being sick,” my 9th-grade English teacher told his class. “It refers to something that makes you sick.” He sounded more apologetic than commanding; he didn’t seem to believe this “rule” any more than we did. Yet … Continue reading
More on Dictionary Pronunciations
As per my last post on “dictionary standards,” here’s an actual editor’s thoughts on dictionary pronunciation guidelines: Good dictionaries leave room for change. Take, for example, a word like “comfortable.” In a pronunciation guide from the early 1960s, the word is … Continue reading
Midwestern English is Not “Dictionary Standard”
In a recent column, Marilyn Vos Savant (a columnist with an alleged record-setting IQ) wrote: I’ve retained 99+ percent of my Midwestern ‘accent,’ which sounds like no accent at all because nearly all the words are pronounced according to dictionary standards. A … Continue reading