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Tag Archives: unusual accents and dialects
Jill Abramson’s Accent
I’m coming home from vacation Saturday and will hopefully have proper post up by Sunday. In the meantime, I’d like to address something that has been swirling around the press: the strange idiolect of new NY Times Executive editor Jill … Continue reading
Animal Accents
[Ed. Note: I’m on vacation till Saturday, July 30, so I’m publishing some old posts I drafted but never published. Some of these might be rough around the edges. Also note that it may be difficult for me to respond … Continue reading
Far Out: The Hippie Dialect
The etymology of dialect words is an obsession for English language enthusiasts. And thanks to Google NGram, Google Books, Google Scholar and other Google-related tools, it’s never been easier for laymen to research the origins of slang. But the question … Continue reading
Accent Humor: Pittsburghese
Accent humor is often mean-spirited and stereotypical. But I can’t resist sharing this loving parody of the Pittsburghese (created by comedians who grew up in the area): The actors are exaggerating this accent a bit, but the salient features of … Continue reading
Posted in American English Tagged cot-caught merger, Pittsburghese, unusual accents and dialects 31 Comments
A Brief Clarification About New Zealand Accents
I want to quickly clear something up about New Zealand accents, since the topic was touched upon briefly yesterday. In New Zealand English, the vowel in “short e” words like dress or bed moves very close to the vowel that Americans and … Continue reading
“Ayuh”: America’s Oddest “Yes”
Growing up in Southern New England, I heard tell of a near-mythical dialect feature from Maine and other places further north: ayuh. This word is the informal version of “yes” in Maine, and, unusually for semi-archaic dialect words, it has … Continue reading
Swallowed ‘r’ in Glasgow
I have a very quick request, for you budding amateur phoneticians out there. After yesterday’s conversation touched on Glasgow English, I looked for a few samples of this accent on YouTube. Glasgow is perhaps the only city in the English-speaking … Continue reading
Posted in British English Tagged phonetics, scottish accents, unusual accents and dialects 6 Comments
Cheryl Cole’s Accent: You Decide
I don’t want this to turn into a pop culture site, but it is hard to ignore the recent hubbub surrounding Cheryl Cole. As I mentioned a few days back, Ms. Cole is a pretty pop singer from the UK … Continue reading
Shakespearean vs. Modern English
For many years, there was a “standard” accent used by Shakespearean actors. In the UK, this was Received Pronunciation (RP), the “standard British” accent you hear among Oxford professors and in Jane Austen films*. In America, classical actors used something … Continue reading
Dialect Profile: The Brummie Accent
In this series, we discuss different dialects using actual video or audio samples. NOTE: This page uses the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA). For information about this notation, please visit my page of IPA Resources. In case you didn’t know, “Brummie” … Continue reading