English Language & Usage: Multi-Layered Discourse Room

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alphabet

19:00

Also: the rare hip-hop and/or country hit performed with a rhotic accent.

Mitch

I thought the twangy country accent -was- rhotic.

alphabet

Yeah, I was probably overstating that.

Surprisingly, his accent isn't an affectation; I just checked and, in interviews, he talks the same way.

Cerberus

You're an affectation.

alphabet

Aww, thanks.

Mitch

-Some- 'southern' accents are non-rhotic, like the upper-class Scarlett O'Hara accent.

alphabet

19:03

Also: a lot of pop music is non-rhotic, even by speakers who are rhotic in their ordinary speech--I think this came up in an ELU question a while back.

Mitch

But the hillbilly, Texas, good ol' boy, pull a crawdad out of a drain pipe southern accents are all rhotic?

Robusto

@Mitch Well, couldn't that be the "Atlantic" version popular in the movies of that era?

Mitch

@Cerberus You feel he's an affectation.

Uh oh

I feel like ...

nope, seems hard to do.

Robusto

@Mitch You can't spell affectation without affect--ion.

alphabet

Hollywood's "Fake" Mid-Atlantic Myth DEBUNKED!

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Robusto

19:07

@alphabet Yes, I saw that. But for whatever reason, actors in '30s movies affected some made-up version of that. For example, the way Jack Haley in The Wizard of Oz (1939) says Dorothy as "Dahrothy" ...

Mitch

@Robusto I think the 'nice' couple, played by Olivia de Havilland and Leslie whatshisname sounded 'mid-Atlantic' like Katherine Hepburn and .. cripes that other guy.

Yes yes Clark Gable was in the movie but I don't have a good idea of what his accent was.

The cockney guy. The acrobat. North by Northwest.

Robusto

@Mitch Frankly, my dear, I don't give a damn.

Mitch

I think he just played himself.

alphabet

@Robusto I believe that that pronunciation was very common among people born in 1897 in Boston. It's how a certain Donald Trump pronounces words like "horrible."

Mitch

Cripes... Cary Grant.

Archibald Lewis.

alphabet

19:12

(The /ɔɹ/-/oʊɹ/ merger was less ubiquitous then and in the Northeast the merged vowel was generally closer to /ɔ/ than to /oʊ/.)

Robusto

@alphabet Yeah, but not all of those actors were brought up in (upper-class) Boston. Vivien Leigh, for example, grew up in India.

Mitch

I need one of those amyloid plaque removers. You can get it in a a scrub brush or in an abrasive wash.

Robusto

My point is, it was some kind of affectation.

Cerberus

How about howwible?

Mitch

@Cerberus that's arful

Cerberus

19:14

As in /ho.wə.bəl/.

Would Trump say this?

Mitch

Like the British TV interviewer, Jonathon Ross

Robusto

@Cerberus It is a faux pas to refer to that man in polite company.

Mitch

Everybody has to spit now.

Cerberus

I do apologise.

Robusto

Apology accepted. Let's be mindful in the future, though.

Cerberus

19:18

Let's.

alphabet

@Robusto Her native accent would be a British one--probably old RP, which sounded somewhat less stereotypically British than ones you hear today. Of course, in many of her films she was playing characters from the old South and trying to imitate that sort of accent.

Robusto

@alphabet Yes. She did aim for a "Southern" accent.

Fiddle-dee-dee!

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alphabet

@Cerberus Listen to how he pronounces horrible at 2:05 in this video.

Cerberus

A bit like harrable?

alphabet

Yes. For him the first syllable of horrible has the same vowel sound as words like talk.

Robusto

19:27

@alphabet I hear it more as rhyming with far.

alphabet

Unusual among younger speakers in most of America. More common among people born in the 1940s in New York City.

@Robusto Yes, it sounds considerably closer to how we would say far than to how we would say four.

Mitch

But isn't that... claps hands over mouth

Do people say hore-ible nowadays?

alphabet

After all, that's why there's a double consonant -rr- in the word horrible--it shows that there's a "short" vowel before it, just like how there's a double consonant in holler but not in hole.

Mitch

I say harr-ible. but could be an 'o'

nobody says hole-er for holler, right?

alphabet

@Mitch No. But we do put a long vowel in "horrible" now--because of a sound change that affected us but didn't affect Trump in the same way.

In this case, his pronunciation is the more "logical" one, i.e. it reflects the spelling more clearly.

Robusto

19:32

Chunky Candy What A Chunk Of Chocolate TV Commercial HD

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For example.

alphabet

(Yada yada, those terms "short vowel" and "long vowel" that we learned in school are bad and we should call them "lax" and "tense" instead.)

Robusto

The way he pronounces the first syllable of chocolate is the way Brooklyners of the '40s pronounced talk.

alphabet

Indeed.

WHO WANTS CAWFEE?! | VicDibitetto.net

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Mitch

almost /twawk/

alphabet

Trump's accent doesn't go quite that far, though.

Mitch

19:39

We shouldn't make fun of his awful speech problems or his advanced decrepitude.

alphabet

(Granted, that video was satire, though I think it got spread around social media by people thinking it was real.)

jlliagre

20:16

Sep. 2, 2024

T I G H T R O P E
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My Score: 1710

alphabet

21:16

Word of the day: whenwe. "A whenwe is a former British settler or expatriate who talks nostalgically about their former homes in colonial Africa, i.e.: 'when we lived in...' (the origin of the term)."