And, unrelated, an interesting explanation of leap years and more.
2 is an admirably clear explanation of the concepts, although while watching it I was mostly distracted by trying to figure out what her accent is. It sounds like an odd mixture of Irish (or Scottish?) and American. Turns out she's from the Canadian Maritimes, which makes sense.
3: I was also puzzled by her accent, but Maritimes does make perfect sense. Thanks for figuring that out.
That's interesting. I was perplexed by a similar accent on a podcast I heard the other day. In that case I know the guy is Canadian, but it wasn't an accent I was at all familiar with - if anything a bit more Scots than this woman.
Haven't seen Downton Abbey, but the prototype, Gosford Park, written by the same guy, is an excellent movie. Also, Kelly Macdonald.
if anything a bit more Scots than this woman
"Speak with an accent combining Irish, hoser, and dumb?" Newfie
hmmm that question mark goes outside quotes...
Yeah, that makes sense. The only Newfie I knew well had spent enough time in Ireland he basically just sounded Dublin. But that's a good description of the accent that's been puzzling me.
I've heard accents from older Newfies that are entirely indistinguishable from, say, Tipperary or Waterford, or eastern County Cork. It's almost uncanny. Probably the younger generation would have a bit more national influence.
Oldey-timey Ottawa Valley accent (from about .30 in this clip), with an explanation of square timbering. I used to go to this area in the summer when I was a kid.
Lovely clip. I liked the bit where he talked about going down to the hotel to see a fight, and I thought, oh, they organised boxing or wrestling, but no, it was just some lads having a predictable rumble every weekend.
Turns out she's from the Canadian Maritimes and has been living in England since 1997.
The Downton Abbey thing has only solidified my conviction that bloggers watch too much care too much about TV.
My husband constantly mangles the title of this show, calling it "downtown alley"--needless to say, he has never watched it.
Although, I would also totally watch a show called "downtown alley" starring maggie smith.
_Downtown Alley_ as the same show: Upstairs, the condo owners fret over co-op capitalization and the lessee in 4B! At ground level, maintenance and delivery workers rub contest for space with the kitchen of the adjoining restaurant! But zoning changes threaten this seemingly changeless world.
but the prototype, Gosford Park, written by the same guy, is an excellent movie
I kind of hated that movie. But I watched it a little after I watched The Rules of the Game (based on someone's recommendation here), which I loved.
On accents, I wonder if it makes a difference that Newfoundland did not become part of Canada until 1949.
Downtown!
Where all the kittens are!
Downtown!
Drinking in kitten bars!
and has been living in England since 1997.
Doesn't seem to have affected her accent in any noticeable way.
On accents, I wonder if it makes a difference that Newfoundland did not become part of Canada until 1949.
Probably not, except insofar as the same historical contingencies that led to that result also led it to have a somewhat different settlement history from other provinces.
17: More likely it's due to paved roads coming in the 1960s.
There was extensive ship-based travel among Newfoundland, the Maritime provinces and the Northeastern US states (and those weird islands off the south coast that are France) so it wasn't as isolated as one would tend to think. Even though it wasn't part of Canada, Newfoundland was definitely involved with Canada.
But also some communities were only assessable by dirt roads (or boat!) into the late 1960s. My dad was there around the Canadian centennial and remembers the horrible roads.
Now to listen to the recording.
What are you guys talking about?! Her accent is totally modified by living in England. For example, "time" has a weird twang to it, and "actual", "exactly", and "and a quarter". The latter is especially modified.
Otherwise, she sounds mostly like an 'accentless' Canadian (i.e. not from Northern Ontario/Manitoba).
I may be biased.
The paved roads thing is a joke because that is not obvious on reread.
What are you guys talking about?! Her accent is totally modified by living in England. For example, "time" has a weird twang to it, and "actual", "exactly", and "and a quarter". The latter is especially modified.
Huh, those were the things I was picking up on as sounding vaguely Irish. They definitely don't sound English to my ear, although now that I think about it they could be coming from some northern English regional dialect (Nottingham is in the north, right?). Her speech is very rhotic, which is of course not typical of the sorts of southern England/RPish accents Americans typically hear.
So I take it that's not how people from Nova Scotia actually sound?
I talk to a lot of Maritimes folks for work, and it definitely sounds Irish-ish to me, too.
Here is a Newfoundlander (St.John's) talking to a Nova Scotian (Antigonish, at least that's his riding). Cape Bretoners sound more like Newfoundlanders. South Coast Newfoundlanders sound most Irish but they are a distinct sub-accent within Newfoundland. Mainland Nova Scotians have less of an accent, although there is a slight, though not Irish or English, Annapolis Valley accent.
Right, the link.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oLO7LaHZyCI&feature=related
I dunno, looking at the Wikipedia description of Maritime English (that's from the "Canadian English" article; the Maritimer English article is not very good but contains some relevant additional information) and watching the video again makes it seem like she fits pretty well somewhere in that category (which seems to contain considerable internal diversity). At least some Maritime dialects appear to be particularly heavily rhotic, which is one of the most striking features of her speech. The vowel qualities are less clear, and some of them could be from English influence. Her speech still sounds much more Irish than English to me, though, and the Nottingham dialect is apparently non-rhotic so the heavy rhoticism is clearly from some other source.
Her speech is very rhotic, which is of course not typical of the sorts of southern England/RPish accents Americans typically hear.
Nottingham accent isn't at all rhotic. It's possibly more midlands than north, but does have broad vowels that I didn't hear on that video. As a native Englishman I couldn't hear anything English in her accent. She might as well have just stepped off the plane.
If you want rhotic dialects in English, you go to the south west. Aaarrrhhh!!!
Nottingham accent isn't at all rhotic.
Thanks; that's the general impression I had gotten from some cursory googling, but finding specific information for Nottingham was surprisingly difficult.
As a native Englishman I couldn't hear anything English in her accent. She might as well have just stepped off the plane.
This is not necessarily inconsistent with her having picked up speech mannerisms and subtle accent modifications which would sound "English" back in the Maritimes. My own experience when I lived in Texas was that when I was back home people (and my mother in particular) would comment on my "accent" and yet I was absolutely just another "you guys" Yankee to the folks in Houston.
Years ago, a German friend of mine was telling me that her youngest sister, who had lived in Texas, made fun of her siblings for not speaking English with an American accent. Her sister turned out to speak English with a very noticeable Texas accent,* but apparently no one in the family knew that until I pointed it out.
*Over a faint but still present German accent.
But also some communities were only assessable by dirt roads (or boat!) into the late 1960s
Back in the late 80s/early 90s I visited a village in Scotland that was only accessible by boat - though they were blasting a way for the paved road while I was there.
It also had the smallest telephone exchange in Britain. Renigadale 1 was the post office; Renigadale 2 was someone's house. There were no other telephones.
I have no idea what rhotic means at all, sorry (can you explain it a little more?). I can just tell you that to this Maritimer, she sounds like she's picked up a few Irish or, more likely, English pronunciations in those particular words. Nothing major - it still sounds mostly Nova Scotian - but enough to get a slight razzing when she went home. Maybe the unclear bit is that she's from Halifax (at least according from her cv)? She's not from an area that has a notable "Maritime" accent. Haligonians (of which I am) often get comments of surprise at our lack of accent but accents are more characteristic of our rural areas.
I met a girl who spoke Australian-accented English in California. So much so I thought she was Australian for about a month before she mentioned she was actually German. She didn't even know that she had an accent in English.
I have an accent question: in Montana, the word "bag" is pronounced as if it rhymes with how I would pronounce "egg." (Met a girl recently called "meggie" which I assumed was short for Megan -- but no, it's Margaret, and she spells her nickname with an A.)
What's the source of this?
You mean her nickname is Maggie? It's a standard nickname, and isn't this just the Merry Marry Mary thing again -- once you get off the East Coast, those vowels merge and you can't tell the difference in speech. Like when I'm surprised that a man introduces himself as Erin, and then I find out his name is Aaron, his dialect just doesn't include the vowel I'd begin Aaron with.
Although I'm surprised you can tell the difference yourself: you lived on the East Coast, but you're originally from the West, no?
Rhotic means that the "r" in "er", "ar", "or" etc is sounded rather than simply modifying the preceding vowel. Most US accents are rhotic to some extent; comparatively few English ones.
Hartford was on the western frontier, once upon a time.
It's true that I pronounce erin and aaron the same (at both ends, actually). I would never say bag and beg the same, though. Or bad and bed.
What about marry/merry? That's the standard vowel-merge example, and offhand it sounds the same as Maggie/Meggie to me. Do you not merge marry/merry, or does Maggie/Meggie sound like a different issue to you?
Thanks chris. I was noticing pronunciation differences in the vowels so we were talking about totally different things.
All merries sound alike to me. But none has the same vowel as Maggie even in your speech, right?
On the rhotic topic, I heard an interesting conversation between an Englishwoman and some Americans about the name "Tupac". She kept pronouncing it like "2-pack". They kept correcting her. She kept saying "There's no R in it, is there? How can it be 'Tupac' [now pronounced the correct way] if there's no R in it?" Nobody knew how to respond, because her pronunciation that she claimed had an R in it did not have an R in it.
Marry is either the same, or quite close, to Maggie. That's funny that you hear and use the distinction sometimes, but not in the canonical example.
What about AWB's first name? I hear her initial vowel as matching marry and Meggie, but she pronounces it with the vowel I use for merry and Meggie, as well as the Irish place-name/American girls' name that's nearly the same as AWB's name.
Most people in the US mispronounce Sade (the singer)'s name because on her first album it says 'pronounced shar-day.' But that meant that it was pronounced shah-day.
Dammit, the "Meggie" in the first line of the second paragraph of 44 should have been a "Maggie".
36: I think LB is wrong about this. I had a friend growing up who was from Washington state, who pronounced the word bag as "beg." And I currently work with someone from Duluth who does the same.
According to Wikipedia, this is a feature of Pacific Northwest English, and it also common in the northern Midwest.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pacific_Northwest_English
The marry/Mary/merry thing only applies before r. The shift Charley is talking about sounds like the first stage of the Northern Cities Shift, although I'm a bit surprised to hear about it being found as far west as Montana.
I was noticing pronunciation differences in the vowels so we were talking about totally different things.
Yeah, sorry, I think my phrasing sort of conflated the vowel issue you were discussing (for which I don't really have an explanation) with the particularly rhotic quality I was noticing. They're separate phenomena.
I don't understand 43. How is 'tupac' meant to be pronounced then?
Also, as a Scot, I take the view that y'all are (monophthongal)-vowel-deprived.
So the distinction is between [front] /a/ and [rear] /ɑ/ vowels in the final syllable? OK.
FWIW, that's something that's quite prone to dialect differences, I'd have thought. Different dialects of British English would use one or other pronunciation.
Maybe Ned's englishwoman was really from Boston, and the Australians were (America-style) valets, and she was explaining that they would have trouble with her vehicle because the tires were flat.
Okay, the last part is a stretch.
And, sociolinguistically, the /ɑ/ almost always sounds twatty in Scottish English.
I guess if you're speaking Estuary English, it's pronounced "Two Park".
Huh. I obviously didn't think so -- it's googleproof, and puzzling it out, while clearly possible even for someone who doesn't know, just gets you to a fairly common first name.