Questions tagged [accent]
An accent is a manner of pronunciation peculiar to a particular individual, location, or nation.
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Accent of babies crying. Is there research other than for German and French?
In the first days of their lives, French infants already cry in a different way to German babies. This was the result of a study by researchers from the Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and ...
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How is it possible to reconstruct old accents of a language?
I just a video of a guy who delivered the opening lines of Romeo and Juliet in the modern received pronunciation of (British) English and then the same lines in what he claimed was the original accent ...
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Minimal Pairs Highlighting the Difference between American and British English
Does anyone have a list of minimal pairs, highlighting the difference between American and British English?
Thanks.
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Are there common traits of foreign accents across languages?
A foreign accent is obviously influenced by the native language of the speaker. What I'm wondering is if there's been any research on common traits of foreign accents across languages, that one could ...
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Do speakers with heavy accents find it easier to understand their own accent than a more standard accent?
As a speaker of a fairly standard North American English accent, I occasionally find it difficult to understand people who speak with a heavy accent. I've always been curious about what exactly makes ...
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Do sign languages have "accents" like verbal languages?
Do sign languages have "accents" like verbal languages? If so, what would be some examples of those?
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Phonetic/ phonological description of 2nd gen Chinese accent
Quick question, and perhaps a natural extension of some of my previous questions.
For the girl speaking here at 1:09, what phonetic and phonological characteristics of her accent, and how do they ...
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Corpus for Asian American Accents?
I'm looking for a corpus of Asian American accents so that I might parse them and determine what phonetic/ phonological differences differentiate them from other American accents.
By Asian-American ...
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Best phonetic/ phonology resource for learning accents?
I'm a non-native English speaker at a California university absolutely fascinated by the variety of English accents I encounter in my day-to-day life. I have a co-worker with a Singaporean accent, for ...
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How fast do people lose their accents and regain them?
If a child was born in for example India and moved to America around age 5, but still spoke their native language at home what age would they lose their accent? And then maybe when they are 12 they ...
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Pitch-Accent languages like Ancient Greek sometimes acquire a dynamic component. Any papers on this change?
This is kind of the opposite of tonogenesis. All languages with stress use a combination of pitch, force and duration to represent a stressed syllable. Some use only (or primarily) pitch.
What ...
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What is the difference between Silesian Polish and neutral/standard Polish?
I would like to know what are the distinctive sounds of Upper Silesian Polish. Not the dialects, but the regular official language spoken by an upper silesian person with his regional accent.
Do they ...
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Influences on the accent of Georgia (the American state)?
The accent of (most of) the American state of Georgia, as far as I know, lacks the drawl of most other Southern American accents. Instead, it is quicker and clipped. Does anyone know why? Does the ...
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Losing a non-native accent of English [closed]
I realize this question has been done to death in other contexts, but I have already exhausted the possibilities covered in similar threads all across the web. I am a fluent (I hold the Certificate of ...
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Accents and dialects
How are dialects formed? Are they always a diverging branch from the main language or can they be the fruit of a converging process between different languages because of cultural pressure?
Also, ...
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What gives rise to racial accents? (timbre)
As a native speaker of English, it is almost immediately obvious to me when a speaker is Native American or Black. I find the difference is most obvious in men, I find, but even setting aside ...
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If someone grows up bilingually, with what accent will they speak a third language they learn as an adult?
If someone grows up bilingually (say, a Mexican-American who's a native speaker of both English and Spanish), and they learn a third language (say, Mandarin), what accent will they speak it with? (Or ...
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We have constructed languages, but are there constructed accents?
I know people have created languages like Esperanto or Ido to make languages that have desired characteristics. Obviously then people have spent a lot of time creating these languages from the ground ...
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What accent (for the English language) is most widely and easily understood?
I am making educational videos (in maths, science, etc.) that I plan to put on YouTube and perhaps elsewhere.
I am hoping to reach as wide a global audience as possible. Obviously then, if there is ...
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Is there a phrase for someone being ashamed of, or self-conscious about their accent when moving to another region?
I was reading a book about accents at a local library and there was a chapter where the author says "some varieties of a language are more aesthetically pleasing than others". Some accents are ...
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The verb BE as function word or content word
I'm reading a book on America accent and there's a page with exercises.
Exercice:
Circle the function words in the following sentences:
The sky is blue.
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The answers are provided at the end ...
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Is diphthongising [ʌ] as [ʌɪ] novel or an accent feature?
I have noticed some speakers diphthongising [ʌ] as [ʌɪ]. For example, in Bea Miller’s Young Blood, she pronounces “young blood” as [jʌɪŋ blʌɪd] and “us” as [ʌɪs]. Has this been documented elsewhere? ...
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Is Anglo-English more diverse in terms of accents than, say, French (in France)?
Ignoring English outside England for the moment, does English have more variation in its accents than other languages do?
To put this practically but unscientifically, is it more difficult for ...
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Negation word and stress in English
in the phrase "It's funny", the stress is usually on the first syllable of the adjective:
[ ɪts ˈfʌ ni ]
But what happens when the negation "not" appears?
[ ɪts nɑt ˈfʌ ni ]
I'm quite sure the ...
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How distinct do two language varieties need to be in order to consider their alternating usage to be an act of code-switching?
I was recently thinking about code-switching (i.e. switching between languages within a sentence, social exchange, phrase, etc.) Would switching between dialects or accents of the same language under ...
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What characterises Hebrew spoken by native English speakers?
I was watching episode 8 of Srugim's third season and noticed, beginning at approximately 19:50 (at least in the Hulu upload), this very minor character whose Hebrew sounded weirdly "off" to me. From ...
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Why do French/German speakers round [ð] to /z/ while Italian/Hebrew speakers round it to /d/?
More generally, what factors determine which phoneme a non-phonemic foreign sound gets rounded to in a specific language when there are multiple possibilities available? Is the choice always ...
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IPA for English: British or US standard?
I often see IPA representations of words (e.g in Wikipedia) that render the American accent of English (instead of British). Is there any agreement on which English accent IPA should render or does it ...
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Is there such a thing as standard text for learning accents?
I've been trying to learn accents and have been fortunate enough to make friends in some of the countries I want to emulate.
I was wondering if there is a standard block of text containing all the ...
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What is the cause of the epenthetic ‘r’ in ‘warsh’?
Why does this ‘r’ appear only in ‘wash’ and ‘Washington’ without analogous examples? That is, why does this ‘r’ not also appear in similar constructions (like ‘posh’ (which is never pronounced ‘parsh’)...
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Fastest way to learn accents for English native [closed]
What's the fastest way for an American English native to learn other accents, specifically the Boston accent and Received Pronunciation? Books? Audio clips on the web? If so, what books, and what ...
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Are there any linguists out there to help identify country of origin from syntax?
I've come here in the hope that there may be some genius amongst you who could have a fair crack at identifying a potential country of origin through speech pattern.
On the Movies&TV stack, we're ...
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Accents resources?
What are some good beginner's introductions to accents? In English (accents, I mean, generally; but English sites or books)?
At this moment I'm primarily interested in accents on the level of the ...
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Different accent for different genders and age groups
Probably due to a desire to sound cute or otherwise I find teens (girls mostly) using an accent wherein they have to pout their lips a bit more in speaking while this may give them a more appealing ...
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Native Urdu Speakers saying "I'll I'll" when speaking English
I have a number of Indian colleagues who are fluent in English (but Natively spoke Urdu or Hindi) and I've noticed a trend to stutter the word "I'll" when they speak it, as in:
I'll I'll look into ...
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Bostonian Accent
While I am no linguist I do teach language as an element of culture to my middle-schoolers and as we are located near Boston, the "Pahk the Cah in Havahd Yahd" question often comes up.
The kids want ...
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Why do people singing in English sound like Americans?
This is just my observation, but it seems like Standard American English lacks any distinct accent when speaking. Listen to almost any person singing with an accent, and they sound like any American ...
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Does accent/dialect prestige rely on socio-cultural bias or on acoustics?
Is there any evidence that implies that accent/dialect prestige is formed due to the sounds of accents (i.e. something to back up statements like an accent being "harsh sounding") or is it really just ...
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Consonant length-differences by prominence
In a language I am studying I have just noticed a significant but subtle difference in the length of [f] segments in tonic versus atonic syllables (an ~50ms difference which is statistically ...
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What are the main accents of modern Russian among native speakers?
Before I had heard any spoken, Russian was one of my favorite languages. I used to have fun just reading Russian dictionaries, and I thought I'd soon learn to speak it. But when I tried to find some ...
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What makes a non-native English speaker sound foreign?
I'm not a native speaker. However, I have tried a lot during last 10 years to learn English at a high level of proficiency and to become fluent in conversation.
However, when I talk to some of my ...
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Distinguishing dialects objectively: lexical sets in non-English settings
The concept of lexical set is a useful technique for differentiating accents or dialects within a language. A lexical set is a set of all words/syllables that are pronounced with the same vowel. These ...
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