'Mother Tongue' odd words

[Rhiannon]

I'm not even sure what London English is.

The other dominant accent here is Home Counties, but that isn't posh enough to count as RP.

[ippy]

Not so fast Mr Bond! Many linguists believe that Received Pronunciation - what's regarded as neutral standard English or BBC English - grew out of East Midlands English, since that was the language of court around the beginning of the 15th century (i.e. Chaucer's time).

Yes that's possible, but is it likely?

If I could chose an English accent that I would see as neutral, I'll have Richard Briars, "The Good Life", one any day, not posh just correct and easy on the ear.

ippy
 

[Shaker]

If I could have anybody's voice it would be Samuel L. Jackson's in Jackie Brown. And Mike Reid's laugh.

Then again, this one of course, who I could listen to reading out the phone directory: https://youtu.be/7M3JIUCT2kM

[Gordon]

One things I've noticed on TV and occasional forays into England is the odd use of the word 'floor'. I'd use it, and I think other Scots would, to refer only to the floor in buildings, so to say 'put it on the floor you'd be inside' and if outside it would be 'put it on the ground'.

I'm sure though I've heard some of you guys down south refer to the 'ground', which I think of as always outside, as being the 'floor'.

It is clearly a boring Sunday afternoon in this neck of the woods 

[Rhiannon]

Ground outside, floor inside here, G.

[Rhiannon]

The richness of our (often infuriating) language is a joy. Sometimes looking for words reminds me of the way children try to grab dandelion seeds blowing on the wind. Just do it for fun.

(I put this on the Moving On thread but really it's more appropriate for this one.)

[ippy]

One things I've noticed on TV and occasional forays into England is the odd use of the word 'floor'. I'd use it, and I think other Scots would, to refer only to the floor in buildings, so to say 'put it on the floor you'd be inside' and if outside it would be 'put it on the ground'.

I'm sure though I've heard some of you guys down south refer to the 'ground', which I think of as always outside, as being the 'floor'.

It is clearly a boring Sunday afternoon in this neck of the woods 

Not all but a large amount of Glaswegians I really can't understand, I get something like about one in ten words without asking them to say it again.

For me, it's the least understandable British accent, closely followed by Newcastle and around that area.

ippy

[Rhiannon]

When I did a media course at college we went to a film festival and ended up watching a documentary on sea coaling. My friends couldn't make head nor tail of it so I translated, having had a dad who liked watching Auf Weidershen, Pet.

[Shaker]

When I did a media course at college we went to a film festival and ended up watching a documentary on sea coaling. My friends couldn't make head nor tail of it so I translated, having had a dad who liked watching Auf Weidershen, Pet.

I have rellies from Newcastle and I've spent quite a bit of time up there so I can tune in to it at the drop of a hat. Love that dialect

[ippy]

I have rellies from Newcastle and I've spent quite a bit of time up there so I can tune in to it at the drop of a hat. Love that dialect

Yes I like the dialects, it's the understanding, it's usually the difference that's fun.

ippy

[ippy]

I have rellies from Newcastle and I've spent quite a bit of time up there so I can tune in to it at the drop of a hat. Love that dialect

Can't remember where but I heard that Newcastle was in the forefront of the origins of our English language originally a sport off of Danish shipped over from Friesland, and if you listen to their people speaking the rhythm and tone of a Frieslander speaker speaking is still very similar in its overall sound to the Newcastle and around accent.

Arr I faintly remember something to do with Melvin Bragg about our language a while back, TV I think.   

ippy

[Shaker]

Can't remember where but I heard that Newcastle was in the forefront of the origins of our English language originally a sport off of Danish shipped over from Friesland, and if you listen to their people speaking the rhythm and tone of a Frieslander speaker speaking is still very similar in its overall sound to the Newcastle and around accent.

Arr I faintly remember something to do with Melvin Bragg about our language a while back, TV I think.   

ippy

Ipples, you may (I don't know) be thinking of Frisian, which is a minority dialect of Dutch only spoken now by a very small number of predominantly older people on the scattered Frisian islands off the coast of Holland. Thirty-odd years ago when I was still a youngster there was a superb BBC TV series called The Story of English (I still have the accompanying wonderful book in its original first edition hardback)* that filmed the few last quite elderly people who spoke/speak Frisian, and the amazing thing is that as a Germanic language how incredibly similar it is to English in many respects. There was a piece of film showing a Frisian speaker with his bicycle (as I remember it) speaking a different language but able to make himself understood to a Breton-speaking Frenchman from Brittany (where do you think the word 'Britain' comes from?). Spoken, it sounds like a foreign language - like Dutch - but has the same rhythm and feel as nearly-almost-not-quite-a bit like-but-not-quite-English. For example: what do you think this means - een kopje kaffee?. This is a short video with the fragrant Eddie Izzard gamely trying to converse with a Frisian farmer in old English and just about getting away with it: https://goo.gl/leXY3z

I'm reasonably good with languages; but I wish I'd learnt Frisian properly. These little languages with only a few usually elderly people speaking them are dying out, and that's a desperate tragedy.

A hell of a long time ago we all used to speak a bit like this. How absolutely fantastic and amazing is that

* http://goo.gl/30FpK4

[ippy]

Ipples, you may (I don't know) be thinking of Frisian, which is a minority dialect of Dutch only spoken now by a very small number of predominantly older people on the scattered Frisian islands off the coast of Holland. Thirty-odd years ago when I was still a youngster there was a superb BBC TV series called The Story of English (I still have the accompanying wonderful book in its original first edition hardback)* that filmed the few last quite elderly people who spoke/speak Frisian, and the amazing thing is that as a Germanic language how incredibly similar it is to English in many respects. Spoken, it sounds like a foreign language - like Dutch - but has the same rhythm and feel as nearly-almost-not-quite-a bit like-but-not-quite-English. For example: what do you think this means - een kopje kaffee?

I'm reasonably good with languages; but I wish I'd learnt Frisian properly. These little languages with only a few usually elderly people speaking them are dying out, and that's a tragedy.

* http://goo.gl/30FpK4

Sounds about right, I think there was some changing of hands between the Dutch and Danes, so it looks like my sketchy memory was somewhere about right and I'm sure it was good old Melvin B that presented the series and probably researched & prduced it too.

ippy

[ippy]

Shakes, just a thought that Melvins prog must have been where I heard that the American accent is a  mix of Norfolk & West Country accents, not as it seems a little like an Irish accent,

ippy

[Shaker]

Shakes, just a thought that Melvins prog must have been where I heard that the American accent is a  mix of Norfolk & West Country accents, not as it seems a little like an Irish accent,

ippy

The consensus of opinion ippy is that what we think of as a bog-standard American accent grew out of a south-western English dialect, because of the number of English people from that corner of the realm who went across the water to the new world. South-western English accents are strongly rhotic (they pronounce and roll their Rs - farrrrrrm) which you can still hear to this day in an American accent.

[Shaker]

Rubbish!

A West Country ( or south western ) accent is nothing like an American one.

Americans have a wide variety of accents, America is a big place.

Having lived in the south west for the majority of my life, and heard it spoken around me, it sounds about as American as the Brummie or Scottish accent.

And the Irish accent sounds very different ( they speak very fast for a start, which isn't so in the south west)

Someone who is Irish with an accent would stand out just like a Scottish or Brummie accent.

Bristolian is also a different accent  to the part of the West Country I grew up in, ( it sounds similar to Welsh to me as their tones differ)

None of them sound American.

Btw they don't say farrrrrrm, it's "varm".

As in "down on the Varm"

John Wayne does not sound like he comes from the West Country, at least to a local.

I'm a local.

But unless you're extremely old you weren't a local four hundred years ago - linguistic analysis demonstrates that the British settlers took their rhotic accents with them. Hence the rhoticism of American accents.

[ippy]

Rubbish!

A West Country ( or south western ) accent is nothing like an American one.

Americans have a wide variety of accents, America is a big place.

Having lived in the south west for the majority of my life, and heard it spoken around me, it sounds about as American as the Brummie or Scottish accent.

And the Irish accent sounds very different ( they speak very fast for a start, which isn't so in the south west)

Someone who is Irish with an accent would stand out just like a Scottish or Brummie accent.

Bristolian is also a different accent  to the part of the West Country I grew up in, ( it sounds similar to Welsh to me as their tones differ)

None of them sound American.

Btw they don't say farrrrrrm, it's "varm".

As in "down on the Varm"

John Wayne does not sound like he comes from the West Country, at least to a local.

I'm a local.

The American accent isn't a specialist area of mine Rose, but perhaps there is an explaination for where Shakes and myself have heard the same West Country and Norfolk mix origins of the American accent, I didn't imagin that I heard this and Melvin Bragg isn't that well known for making things up, well I've not heard anything to that effect.

Although it's a subject where I'm no authority about the inns and outs of, but I can read and I do wonder why your views seem to conflict with some other, not that lightweight voices?

By the way I'm not your enemy and I'm not trying to get one over on you, I'm just talking about things I've read and heard; I suspect Shakes is speaking to you in a similar manner to me, entirely out of interest and  not contest.

ippy

[Sebastian Toe]

Here are interesting examples of how Shakespeare would have sounded and by extension, the accent taken by the early settlers to America.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gPlpphT7n9s

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hi-rejaoP7U

[Shaker]

Rose appears to think not ...

[Shaker]

It just doesn't sound anything like an American accent ippy.

Are you familiar with the fact that a language, written or spoken, can change pretty substantially in four hundred years?

[Sebastian Toe]

Btw they don't say farrrrrrm, it's "varm".

As in "down on the Varm"

The salient point which you seem to have missed is the fact that you pronounce it 'vaRm' - that is rhotic.

And not 'vahm' which is non-rhotic

this explains simply;

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8pCKdk7LTXM
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=au57KSivkG8

and this much more interestingly, concentrating on the Boston accent which is very non-rhotic;

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L9DwPz52UhQ&ebc=ANyPxKqeahcaEMvnb2f_by2hJoXb8IZgaA_eEl-DVEuajLxt7CPBS3A4GO33_Jk68vTwpBMaeSul5RgtmjFrZxuocZ0C1WjR1w

[Sebastian Toe]

Shakespeare, globe theatre
Old pronouciations

http://youtu.be/gPlpphT7n9s

I already posted a link!

Here are interesting examples of how Shakespeare would have sounded and by extension, the accent taken by the early settlers to America.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gPlpphT7n9s

..please pay attention! 

[Hope]

I've also had different reactions from different accents speakers to my own accents.

My (Aussie) wife really struggles with her accent.  She often gets told how strong her accent is by new chiropody clients, only to then be told that that accent has completely disappeared by Australians she meets or speaks with by phone.  I can't really hear any Aussie accent in her voice - the only indication for me is that she sometimes uses Aussie phraseology.

[ippy]

Yes, so many people hear different things 

I find the Ausies like our Scottish friends where you can insult the hell out all aspects of their countries and get just as good and well formed insults back and then after a couple of friendly drinks all walk off laughing afterwards.

Pro Oz and Scots.

ippy

[Hope]

I find the Ausies like our Scottish friends where you can insult the hell out all aspects of their countries and get just as good and well formed insults back and then after a couple of friendly drinks all walk off laughing afterwards.

The only times I'd disagree is when one of them gets physically violent rather laughing the insult off.