They are seriously running out of ideas over there on the Ask The Red Pill subreddit.
Oi! Piss off, mate!
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Is there a difference in what “accent” vs. “dialect” means, technically speaking? I’m never quite sure based on how the terms are used in everyday discussions.
I thought dialect is the regional (or sometimes social) pattern of vocabulary and pronunciation, whereas accent is something to do with the rhythm/intonation of your speech. For example, dialect would be usually how a cunning linguist tells apart people from neighboring villages.
Re: accents – if any of you aren’t familiar with Eric Singer’s videos on accents, dialects and other things like that (I think most of them are on Wired’s YouTube channel), I highly suggest looking them up. They’re absolutely delightful and fascinating. He’s a dialect coach with a lot of knowledge on the subject, and the way he explains different modes of speech (down to really small differences that personally I van barely hear, becase I’m not great with accents) while slipping into them and between them effortlessly is just amazing. Recently he’s done a series of videos on US accents (part 2 just came out today, not sure how many there’ll eventually be), which is even more great than usual because it has guest appearances from BIPOC linguists and dialect coaches explaining about various Black/Latinx/Native accents and dialects that are usually under-represented in such discussions. But check out everything. It’s really awesome.
@Lumipuna
Accent refers specifically to pronunciation, dialect includes vocabulary. In practice they’re often used interchangeably, though.
Here are some of my earliest personal impressions of people speaking English in British accents.
Richard Dawkins (ca. 2006, still appearing normal), doing a live talk at the University of Helsinki: “Oh wow, British accent is so charming and pleasant to listen”
Some lady working in customer service at the Stanstead airport: “Excuse me, can you repeat that more slowly and with actual words?”
Re: English cuisine
I first saw bubble and squeak mentioned in Unseen Academicals, and I absolutely assumed it was something Pratchett just made up. Wasn’t so sure about peasen.
Peasen, pease, and split peas are all words for the same thing. Likewise, Peasen, pease porridge/pudding, and split pea soup are all the same dish, being boiled peas, usually with pig bones/meat in.
Re: Limbaugh
I won’t miss him. Unfortunately, he did the damage and won’t see much the harm he wrought.
Dalillama – Thanks.
Many Finns understand (more or less) the concept of accent in English context, but it doesn’t seem to really exist (as you described) in Finnish. Finnish orthography is so strictly phonetic that the concept of pronunciation is never even discussed. Regionally variable pronunciations of a word are perceived to be different word variants (and hence a matter of vocabulary variation), and if you write them in standard spelling (as is conventional), you’re technically writing standard Finnish rather than the local dialect.
I gathered some years ago that “split peas” refers to peel-less peas. I was only familiar with pea soup made from whole peas. I used to like it, but nowadays my bowel is too irritable to digest it.
I haven’t commented here in ages, but this is a topic I am peculiarly qualified to address so I thought I should weigh in.
I have what can best be called a peculiar idiosyncratic accent. I’ve always been something of an Anglophile. I grew up in the northeastern US, but in my teens consumed a lot of content featuring Brits (Douglas Adams, Richard Dawkins, Monty Python, etc, the list goes on) and a lot of the people I most admired were British. I shudder to think of it now (ugh, Dawkins). I ended up picking up a lot of the pronunciation; to this day I’m still not sure how much was accidental and how much deliberate affectation (hard as that is to admit). The more anxious I am, the stronger the accent comes out, which means it tends to be most pronounced when I meet new people.
Which, to the point, means a lot of Americans think I sound English, or maybe Australian; more knowledgeable ones tend to guess things like South Africa or New Zealand because they recognise it’s not quite any of the common English ones they’re familiar with. Interestingly, my partner is English, and she and her family have both told me I sound generically American to them and that they can’t comprehend anyone thinking I’m English, so it’s all a matter of perspective.
First and foremost: this person is absolutely barking up the wrong tree if he’s aiming it at British people, because they will definitely know you’re faking it and at absolute best they won’t give a fuck. He says he lives in Britain, he should fucking know this.
If he wants to impress Americans… I honestly can’t say with certainty it wouldn’t work, sadly. My accent and my voice have definitely gotten (or kept) me attention I wouldn’t otherwise have had (though I think it’s usually just the mystery of “what the fuck is this weird accent I’ve never heard”). Of necessity, though, it’s a pretty shallow sort of thing, and more often than not just annoys me. I can’t say whether any of that interest has been sexual, I’m asexual-spectrum and pretty oblivious to that sort of thing so who knows (well, one time I know it was, but the woman in question went on to sexually assault me so it’s not exactly a fond memory).
I doubt this person’s claims of “pulling” or whatever, though, if he were that successful he wouldn’t be asking for dumb advice like this. I look forward to him trying this and thoroughly humiliating himself.
Completely unrelated, I love baked beans on toast (especially for breakfast) but weirdly I prefer the American style of baked beans, which probably horrifies people equally on both sides of the pond!
While it’s true that native British English speakers will usually know when a foreigner is faking a British accent, this is not equally true for all of our accents. If you want to pass, probably your best bet is to learn RP (received pronunciation) and sound like a toff. I’ve seen many Americans do this convincingly.
Oh, he saw the harm and celebrated it. He lived for harming others.
Rush Limbaugh is one of the reasons that my paternal grandfather spent the last decade of his life voting for me to die.
@GSS ex-noob:
@Full Metal Ox: I have been meaning for a few days to wish you a Happy Year of the You.
Thank you—and you picked an opportune time to do so, because today I’m also having a Significant Birthday.
@Dalilama:
The “neutral” American accent is one that nobody has ever spoken natively, but was developed by newscasters and other early broadcasters to be understandable to the maximum number of speakers.
And if (having somehow gotten the idea that Broadcast American English is optimally correct English) you attempt to use it in everyday life, people will laugh and laugh and laugh. Particularly if you’ve gone with early black-and-white cinema and radio enunciation. Why, no, I wasn’t a weird neurodivergent kid with far more media exposure than socialization.
@mcbender:
If he wants to impress Americans… I honestly can’t say with certainty it wouldn’t work, sadly. My accent and my voice have definitely gotten (or kept) me attention I wouldn’t otherwise have had (though I think it’s usually just the mystery of “what the fuck is this weird accent I’ve never heard”)
This may have been what was going on with my mother’s friend (see above.)
Completely unrelated, I love baked beans on toast (especially for breakfast) but weirdly I prefer the American style of baked beans, which probably horrifies people equally on both sides of the pond!
Then here’s a recipe from The I Hate to Housekeep Book (Fawcett Crest paperback edition, July 1965, pp.62-63) by Peg Bracken: the Cookery of My People!
WIENERINOS
“You’ll need a slice of French bread or plain bread per customer.
Toast the slices on one side only. On the other side, spread, in this order:
plain yellow hot-dog mustard
chopped green onions
a good big dollop of canned beans
(any kind—tomato sauce-style or New England; they can be hot from the double boiler if you like, but it’s not necessary)
a good chunk of cheese
(Cheddar, Swiss, or what-have-you)
2 or 3 strips of uncooked bacon
Slide them under the broiler, four of five inches front the heating element or flame, until the bacon is done.”
(I’ve taken the liberty of changing the original name, “Beanerinos”; first, because a Google search on the word suggests that it’s an anti-Mexican slur, and secondly because my family substituted hot dogs sliced into medallions for the bacon.)
@Lumipuna
Dialect is what you say, accent is how you say it.
Edit: Ninja’d
@PoM
True, he did see some of the harm, but there are long term things which would have even affected him which he will never see. Climate change, for instance.
When I met my first husband in 1985, he thought I was from the UK because I spoke clear, precise, grammatically correct English. He was from Panama, which may have affected his perception.
Full Metal Ox, many felicitations on your birthday! I’m a fellow metal ox, and will be celebrating my birthday on International Women’s Day next month. I just spent the afternoon with my older son, who is a fire ox.
And a language is a dialect with an army and a navy.
Dalillama: I natively speak neutral news-program American English. I’m not sure exactly how; I discovered after returning home from my first college semester that absolutely everyone including my dad had a Canadian accent, and I just … didn’t. It wasn’t my first language but I was only about 6 or 7 when I starting speaking principally English.
@numerobis
If I’m not being rude to ask, are you Québécois/e, then? I notice that your nom de net is an Asterix reference.
@Dalillama:
Eh? Humans can’t eat bones.
Also, eww.
@Surplus
Just like with gelatin or bone broth, the bones are boiled with it, then removed.
@Full Metal Ox
As I’m vegetarian the core concept of that recipe doesn’t quite work for me, but I can see why people would like it!
“Humans can’t eat bones”? Says you. If you boil them in weak acid for long enough, they’ll turn soft enough to eat without damaging your teeth or getting splinters in your throat. What’s left of them doesn’t taste like much, though. I’ve tried.
@Hambeast: but the Valley Girl accent had already spread before Moon Unit’s song came out, fer shure. We girls talked that way in my Colorado high school in the late 70s. The song came out in 1982, by which time we’d all given it up too. So I’m thinking even Nebraska (just one state over) girls should have picked up the speech by then.
Janice the Muppet from Dr. Teeth’s band talked that way on “The Muppet Show”, which ran from 1976.
I remember thinking the song was kind of out of date even when released. I guess I was ahead of the curve once in my life.
Elaine the Witch:
But then again I’m from Kansas and I can’t imagine eating chili without a giant cinnamon roll on top of it.
???!!!!!!
Full Metal Ox:
I love Peg Brackett. Her “Sweep Steak” recipe is the reason I can now roast things (I’d got it into my head it was terribly difficult, so I’d never tried. Turns out it’s just a question of having several hours, but you don’t actually have to stay by the oven the whole time and can go do other stuff while it cooks).