Currently on heavy YouTube rotation is aspiring actress Amy Walker, presenting 21 accents in two and a half minutes.
Accents are interesting. It’s easy to draw a lot of inferences about people from their accent, even when you’re trying not to. Even linguists aren’t immune to some strange attitudes. There I was, enjoying the clip. Then she got to Seattle, and just for a moment in spite of myself, I caught myself thinking, “Well, that one was easy. She was just talking like a normal person there.” Which I know is silly, because everyone has an accent.
So, at what point did her accent seem least marked for you?
Oh, and if you want to play with accents, try Sound Comparisons out of the University of Edinburgh and the Speech Accent Archive courtesy of GMU.
24 May 2008 at 1:40 pm
The very first one – the standard English was the most normal to me. Actually the second is probably out of date now – the common London accent is now a mix of London and West Indian. The Scottish should have been familiar but her accent was dreadful – sounded Northern Irish. Pretty impressive though to be able to move through them so quickly
24 May 2008 at 4:07 pm
I’m with you in hearing the Seattle accent as least marked. I’ve lived in Australia all my life, but the stereotypical Australian accents she did just grated on me. Though it’s not really her fault. I’m often surprised at how broad some of my Aussie friends’ accents are. Sometimes I forget that people don’t just talk like that in the movies.
24 May 2008 at 5:14 pm
Sounds to me, from the comments above and yours Daniel, that accents are getting more and more hemoganized in the bigger cities throughout the english speaking world. Is that true?
24 May 2008 at 6:04 pm
Actually, probably not. I’ve just found out about something called the ‘Uniformitarian Hypothesis’. No, it’s not a new religion, nor someone who only eats uniforms.
The idea behind the U-Hyp is that things pretty much happen as they always have. So if there used to be lots of accents before, there will probably still be lots of accents now.
Witness the rise of Estuary English. Or snowqueen’s example of the new London accent. These things are mutating all the time. Maybe some combine, but new ones pop up.
I don’t know if TV & communication etc. changes the assumption of the U-Hyp. But linguists do use this principle to make guesses about how accents have been, historically.
24 May 2008 at 7:00 pm
Haha, that was fun!!!
I thought the Seattle one sounded like “just talking like a normal person there” too, and I’ve never even been to the Pacific Northwest. (I grew up in the Midwest and East Coast.)
Too bad she didn’t do more western and midwestern varieties, though. Utahns have a pretty distinct accent that I’ve thought of learning for fun since I’ve been in the Mo/ex-Mo scene. Also, I’d be curious to hear her iterpretation of Minneapolis, Detroit, Chicago, New Jersey… ;^)