For Those Countries That Use The English Language. A Question.

I live in South Texas. I don't really think I have a heavy drawl.
I also know a bit of Spanish.
You have to if you want to communicate with a sizeable part of the population.
I've been told "Tu hablas como Tarzan."
I haven't developed the knack for rolling syllables the way they do.
I can read and comprehend the Espanol, but damn, they speak really fast.
Slow it down Jesus.

originally posted by: surnamename57
a reply to: alldaylong

Your language does not define your personal identity. As an individual, you just conform your thoughts to a certain language. Language can help create a group identity, but that's all it does.

It is a means of communication, not an ensemble of intended meanings.

I just woke up this morning and to tell the truth I don't have the faintest idea what I was trying to say by the above.

Sorry OP for jumping in on your thread with an off topic and unintelligible reply.

Too many drinks these days! lol!

a reply to: Whatsthisthen


I think with TV becoming more global, things like youtube and internet radio, we are all picking up bits of each others version of English and using words we would have never even heard of 10 years ago. It reminds of the language that was used on the streets in the original blade runner movie.
I've also noticed more and more how accents are making there way into music and todays version of rap and the UK's "grime" scene, like an accent makes that music theres.

Bah, speak English, or gibberish...up to you...but if you expect me to understand you and respond, then English.

As for other languages, eventually, it just won't matter, so might as well hang on to it for flavor as long as you can. In the end, you will be assimilated.

a reply to: Kurokage

"Grime"? I shudder to think.

I love to sit in busy shopping centres and listen to the accents and foreign languages around me. Thee human voice is a wonderful thing. Especially Japanese, I have a music collection from their " anime" TV shows. Thee japanese voices are very different to western ones. Not understanding the language keeps the words as musical instruments.

Pommie accents are wonderful, though few and far between now in western Australia, so too the Australian slang. Rose Tyler, the blind girl from Dr Who TV show had a wonderful accent, worth watching the show just to listen to here speak.

Blade Runner, a wonderful movie though dark, "yes" the language make the film in in it's own way.

(frown) I'm not sure about something called "grime" though . . . .

a reply to: Whatsthisthen


This is "Grime".........



Make of it what you will, it's very unique shall we say.
I completely agree with you, the variation of the human voice just through language without song is amazing, I too love Japanese, and learnt it a long time ago whilst teaching Aikido but never used the language much, other than watching anime and I've forgot a lot of it, but it does sound amazing.
I enjoyed Billie Piper's "Rose Tyler" and she was good in Penny dreadful as a common Londoner but I loved Jenna Louise Coleman's "Clara" accent, I like how Dr Who uses accents from around the UK.

I wonder how many British people know that it's we Americans who actually speak the way they USED to speak... probably not many. They didn't change it to the way it is now until after the Revolutionary War, lol...

a reply to: Gazrok
This is at least partly true, though not the whole truth.
For example, I was puzzled, as a child, when my Devon grandmother called the last letter of the alphabet "zee", instead of the more usual "zed". That must have been a provincial survival, as in the U.S., of the older pronunciation.

a reply to: DISRAELI

If it helps:

www.livescience.com...

I mean, the split was 200 years ago, so not like anyone around remembers. It's just funny...because all those medieval movies, etc. are all completely wrong. In those days, would have sounded just like us.

We even standardized spellings, (well, Webster did), for words that always had two accepted forms in England, color or colour, for example. When we standardized, the stubborn Brits simply took the one Webster didn't like! LOL....

gonna go a little "Sheldon" here, incidentally, the reason for two different forms of spelling...the words came to England from French and Latin sources, so depending on the source, gave one the spelling a certain way. Both were accepted (until Webster standardized one or the other, for American English).

a reply to: Gazrok
That's very interesting, but it's about one letter.
Let's take another example. In words like "bath", and "castle", is the American short "a" older or younger then the British long "a"? I don't actually know the answer on that point.
On the one hand, the short "a" is also used in northern England, which suggests another provincial survival.
On the other hand, Chaucer's "erse" is better echoed in the modern British "arse" than in the American "ass".
That's why I think your thesis may be partly true rather than the whole story.

a reply to: Gazrok
Let's take another aspect of the way we speak. Distribution of emphasis.
I grew up hearing words like "DeFENCE", "PrinCESS", "Robin HOOD", "CaribBEan".
If I hear them on American media, they have becone "DEfense", "PRINcess", "ROBin Hood", "CaRIBbean". The emphasis has been brought forward by a syllable.
Which of those two modes is more original?

(As a twist on this theme, I've also noticed the reverse. The familiar "GARage" becomes the American "GaRAGE".
My current theory is that this happens because "garage" was a loan-word, and the Americans primly kept the French pronunciation)

a reply to: Kurokage

So that is "grime" . . . . . .

Yes, it is "different"

Same here with martial arts and anime. I could listen to Shinobu Oshino from the monogatari series just for the extended monologs.

Billie Piper, that's the girl. That accent is wonderful. The charm of the isles is in the variety.

I wonder if Dr Who uses the accents because theory know the charm. That would be rather clever.

a reply to: Whatsthisthen


I think music is going through one of its phases, we get in-undated by American "pop" music and everybody wants to sound different to the norm so accents seem to become more prevalent.
The UK listened to American Hip-hop and rap, so things like grime i think grew from people wanting to tell there own stories in music or have a sound to identify with. It must be the same in other country's like the US and Australia.

I got into anime in my very early teens before i could speak the Japanese language, I bought a "video tape" version of Akira and thought it was magical. The mix of sound and language is still awesome today.

I like British TV that shows the difference in accents from across these Isles, I sometimes wonder if people in other country's think we all speak like down trodden cockney Londoners, the Beatles or upper-class snobs!! Beaky Blinders is a good one, showing the west midlands accent!!
20 miles either north or south of Birmingham and the accent is very different.

originally posted by: DISRAELI
a reply to: Gazrok
Let's take another aspect of the way we speak. Distribution of emphasis.
I grew up hearing words like "DeFENCE", "PrinCESS", "Robin HOOD", "CaribBEan".
If I hear them on American media, they have becone "DEfense", "PRINcess", "ROBin Hood", "CaRIBbean". The emphasis has been brought forward by a syllable.
Which of those two modes is more original?

(As a twist on this theme, I've also noticed the reverse. The familiar "GARage" becomes the American "GaRAGE".
My current theory is that this happens because "garage" was a loan-word, and the Americans primly kept the French pronunciation)

I agree with you about Americans using some French pronunciations for English words, I think the French would have had them all speaking there language if they had half the chance. I also agree with your previous post about "Arse"

a reply to: Gazrok

I know our Adirondack mountain accent derives from the scotch Irish that settled that region.
Pennsylvania is influenced by German and the Midwest by Nordic cultures.
New York accent hints at a Dutch influence. Though the aristocracy in N.Y. used a feigned British like accent through the forties. Just watch any old movie. Weird...

a reply to: Kurokage

Yeah, America is invading Australia too.

But then again us kids had Beatle boots and haircuts like Ringo star in the day, then we all turned into hippies and surfies.

Akira was good in it's day, and Battle Angel Alita is about to be released in a live version which looks great in the trailers. Alita was VHS and the romance was tragedy itself.

Your getting me nostalgic for some of Brit TV shows . . . .

Brit accents are few and far between now in western australia, though maybe I just don't go to the right pubs. A shame in many ways, I went to school in the Perth northern suburbs and there were pommie girls galore. Some of whom could put on a very unlady like cockney. I didn't appreciate it then.

Wonderful stuff.

a reply to: Whatsthisthen

That's funny. When I watch makeup videos that are a few women from Australia and New Zealand and another in London and another in Ireland. After watching them I'm hearing an accent in my head mostly aussy. Ill think head but hear hid. The little Irish lass doesn't know the letter T. She uses gli..er not glitter and things are lih el instead of little. Oh well she does use t when she says things but then she leaves out the H so it's tings
I love them all!

I wonder how the Aussy accent developed that way. It's different from an english accent but similar.
Do others hear an American accent as a variant of an English accent? I don't hear it. I think the American accent is the least elegant of all of englishes variations around the world. I think South African is the most elegant. Everyone sounds like royalty there. Aussy is the most casual to my ear. Everybody (ivry buddy) is chill.
Some English sound elegant and some sound more casual and some ( hello Yorkshire) are well... is it English? LOL. No offense I love the sound. Like English with bells on or something. I'm not great at describing what I hear. Sorry. But I'm really good at accents if we had a sound feature.

English is like a smoothy. A blend of every language in Europe at the end of the middle ages. I think those of us who's native tongue is English find it pretty easy to learn the other European languages. We find words we know or are a root for words we know in every language going back to old Roman Latin.
While the languages of the far east are very hard to learn. We have no common ground.
We have more in common with the Islamic language and their written characters including our numbers.

Just fascinating to me. There's a whole history written within our language.

a reply to: Sillyolme
Missing out the "t" is called the "glottal stop", and it isn't just Ireland. It's a feature expanding out from London. "Woss the ma'er?"
Welsh is always considered a very musical accent.