Moderator:JackFrost
Rom wrote:Interesting. I've always heard Colorado described as having "no accent", although I've never heard a recording of someone from Colorado.
Gormur wrote:Rom wrote:Interesting. I've always heard Colorado described as having "no accent", although I've never heard a recording of someone from Colorado.
Well there's something there that at least I would call a "twang", so it sounds a bit like a "Western accent", but definitely completely separate from the Southern accents. Hope that makes sense....
Rom wrote:Gormur wrote:Rom wrote:Interesting. I've always heard Colorado described as having "no accent", although I've never heard a recording of someone from Colorado.
Well there's something there that at least I would call a "twang", so it sounds a bit like a "Western accent", but definitely completely separate from the Southern accents. Hope that makes sense....
Interesting. Is it anything like the twang in the rural parts of Washington? I've noticed that in some of the more rural areas of Washington there's almost a Southern or country sounding accent (just in the overall sound), as opposed to in and around the major cities (except Olympia where people sound like they have the California vowel shift because their e's tend to sound like a's), where there is no accent.
Rom wrote:Well there's something there that at least I would call a "twang", so it sounds a bit like a "Western accent", but definitely completely separate from the Southern accents. Hope that makes sense....
rancher wrote:Rom wrote:Well there's something there that at least I would call a "twang", so it sounds a bit like a "Western accent", but definitely completely separate from the Southern accents. Hope that makes sense....
I'm from Colorado and I wouldn't say our accent has a twang at all. We associate that with folks from the Deep South. The Colorado accent, and I would say Western accents in general, are rather flat sounding. (I assume we are talking about Colorado English and not Colorado Spanish.)
There are varieties of course. If you are a native of the state, it is pretty easy to pick out someone from eastern Colorado from one from the Front Range (the area running along the Plains and the Rockies), or one from the western part of the state.
I think things have changed a lot though. Because the state has basically been invaded from folks from California and Texas, you don't hear a really strong mountain accent very often anymore except with older people. I love listening to my granddad tell stories of when his father was working the mines and ranching. All kinds of local dialectical words come up!
I did find some articles via google on the dialect of Colorado:
PLAINS ENGLISH IN COLORADO PDF
Dialect Survey Results: COLORADO
Why bother to learn the Colorado dialect?
The term "California drawl" is sometimes used to described the practice of lengthening the accented syllable's vowel in time, taking up to twice as long as the time given to other vowels in a word, and sometimes accompanied by a shift of the accent to another syllable. Unlike the "Southern drawl" or the Texas-style "Western drawl", no twang or changes to the vowel's value (e.g. a diphthong) are introduced: the Californian simply pronounces the accented vowel for a longer time than the other vowels in the word. This is most noticeable in the native pronunciations of "San Francisco" and "Sacramento". Non-Californian pronunciation would sound like "San Fran CIS co" and "Sac ra MEN to" with each syllable equally timed and the accent placed on the penult. A California drawl pronunciation would be "SAAAN Fran cis co" and "SAAACK ra men to" with the so-called short-A æ sound unchanged in value but held for a longer time.
Gormur wrote:On the twang (I think this applies to Western twangs in general)...The term "California drawl" is sometimes used to described the practice of lengthening the accented syllable's vowel in time, taking up to twice as long as the time given to other vowels in a word, and sometimes accompanied by a shift of the accent to another syllable. Unlike the "Southern drawl" or the Texas-style "Western drawl", no twang or changes to the vowel's value (e.g. a diphthong) are introduced: the Californian simply pronounces the accented vowel for a longer time than the other vowels in the word. This is most noticeable in the native pronunciations of "San Francisco" and "Sacramento". Non-Californian pronunciation would sound like "San Fran CIS co" and "Sac ra MEN to" with each syllable equally timed and the accent placed on the penult. A California drawl pronunciation would be "SAAAN Fran cis co" and "SAAACK ra men to" with the so-called short-A æ sound unchanged in value but held for a longer time.
Kirk wrote:Gormur wrote:On the twang (I think this applies to Western twangs in general)...The term "California drawl" is sometimes used to described the practice of lengthening the accented syllable's vowel in time, taking up to twice as long as the time given to other vowels in a word, and sometimes accompanied by a shift of the accent to another syllable. Unlike the "Southern drawl" or the Texas-style "Western drawl", no twang or changes to the vowel's value (e.g. a diphthong) are introduced: the Californian simply pronounces the accented vowel for a longer time than the other vowels in the word. This is most noticeable in the native pronunciations of "San Francisco" and "Sacramento". Non-Californian pronunciation would sound like "San Fran CIS co" and "Sac ra MEN to" with each syllable equally timed and the accent placed on the penult. A California drawl pronunciation would be "SAAAN Fran cis co" and "SAAACK ra men to" with the so-called short-A æ sound unchanged in value but held for a longer time.
That section of the California English article on Wikipedia was nonsense so after discussing it on the talk page I deleted it because it's not up to the scholarly linguistic tone of the article. Things like "drawl" and "twang" are very vaguely defined and do not fit in with a serious linguistic description of language.
Gormur wrote:Kirk wrote:Gormur wrote:On the twang (I think this applies to Western twangs in general)...The term "California drawl" is sometimes used to described the practice of lengthening the accented syllable's vowel in time, taking up to twice as long as the time given to other vowels in a word, and sometimes accompanied by a shift of the accent to another syllable. Unlike the "Southern drawl" or the Texas-style "Western drawl", no twang or changes to the vowel's value (e.g. a diphthong) are introduced: the Californian simply pronounces the accented vowel for a longer time than the other vowels in the word. This is most noticeable in the native pronunciations of "San Francisco" and "Sacramento". Non-Californian pronunciation would sound like "San Fran CIS co" and "Sac ra MEN to" with each syllable equally timed and the accent placed on the penult. A California drawl pronunciation would be "SAAAN Fran cis co" and "SAAACK ra men to" with the so-called short-A æ sound unchanged in value but held for a longer time.
That section of the California English article on Wikipedia was nonsense so after discussing it on the talk page I deleted it because it's not up to the scholarly linguistic tone of the article. Things like "drawl" and "twang" are very vaguely defined and do not fit in with a serious linguistic description of language.
How would it best be defined then?
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