in your normal speech, do these words rhyme?

[Cake and Pi]

For some reason I change the k in rink to a g so its ring.  (reeng).  Otherwise they all rhyme.  I am a lifelong southerner; however I have been told my accent is not very pronounced.

 

This is exactly what I do.  I spent my early childhood in the Deep South, but I no longer have an accent unless I'm back visiting or spend a few days with my Southern relatives.

 

DH says I say it wrong; they all rhyme for him (he grew up in the West).

[Laura Corin]

Those saying they are short I words that rhyme with ink (I assume you also say ink with a short I), how do you pronounce Tinkerbelle?  Like as in tea or Tigger?

 

Tigger.

[Noreen Claire]

Those saying they are short I words that rhyme with ink (I assume you also say ink with a short I), how do you pronounce Tinkerbelle?  Like as in tea or Tigger?

 

I say it with an 'ink' (short i) in it.

 

Like this: 

[eternalsummer]

 mine all rhyme with ink, but ink sounds like eenk.

[Matryoshka]

So all of you who use long E for the ink words....

 

Would you pronounce eensy weensy (like in the spider ;) ) the same if it were spelled insy winsy?

[KrissiK]

They all rhyme in my dialect.

[ReadingMama1214]

The "Tink" part of Tinkerbelle rhymes with Ink for me. Like tigger.

[Chelli]

In all of these recordings it sounds like everyone is using the long e sound to say the words.I thought using the long e sound was correct because of the nk that follows it changes the sound of short i to i's third sound of long e. The same changing pattern is followed with ing words which are said with a long e.

[Matryoshka]

In all of these recordings it sounds like everyone is using the long e sound to say the words.I thought using the long e sound was correct because of the nk that follows it changes the sound of short i to i's third sound of long e. The same changing pattern is followed with ing words which are said with a long e.

 

I say -ing words the same way I say -ink words - with short i.

 

There is some kind of minor sound shift that goes on with -ing and -ink words, though, and I do think it has to do with the 'nk' and 'ng'.  I do not say eenk or eeng, but it does sound just a teensy bit different than the i in bin or win.  But not like 'ee'.   Eentsy and inky do not have the same vowel sound to me at all.  

 

How about the word 'seeing'  Does the 'ee' in see sound different than the 'i' in ing to you?  You say see-eeng? Or would it just be seeng as one syllable, then - do they run together?  

 

 

Edited July 2, 2016 by Matryoshka

[Chelli]

I say -ing words the same way I say -ink words - with short i.

 

There is some kind of minor sound shift that goes on with -ing and -ink words, though, and I do think it has to do with the 'nk' and 'ng'.  I do not say eenk or eeng, but it does sound just a teensy bit different than the i in bin or win.  But not like 'ee'.   Eentsy and inky do not have the same vowel sound to me at all.  

 

How about the word 'seeing'  Does the 'ee' in see sound different than the 'i' in ing to you?  You say see-eeng? Or would it just be seeng as one syllable, then - do they run together?  

 

Eensy and inky sound different to me as well, but it's more of how long the sound is carried through the word not that it's a different sound.

 

So for eensy it sounds like this eeensy where as ink and ing sound like this longenk  and longeng. More staccato of a vowel sound instead of a really exaggerated long e sound such as in eensy, green, teen, etc.

 

As for seeing, it's more run together, not as one syllable, but flowing into each other. Similar to eensy, see is more exaggerated of a long e sound with the ing tacked on at the end and the long e sound in ing is almost completely absorbed into the long e sound of see. There is a slight differential between those two sound syllables but not much.

[Crimson Wife]

I don't understand how you could make them with a short <i> sound.

 

All of them are the <ee> sound for me in California.

 

I don't think I've ever heard anyone say them with an "ee" sound.

 

"Think" to me is like "thin" + a /k/ on the end. Or "thick" with a /ng/ inserted before the /k/. Or do you say "theen" and "theek" as well?

 

[Crimson Wife]

 

How about the word 'seeing'  Does the 'ee' in see sound different than the 'i' in ing to you?  You say see-eeng? Or would it just be seeng as one syllable, then - do they run together?  

 

See-ying. Just like there is an extra y sound before certain u's (cute, computer, etc.)

 

[eternalsummer]

I say -ing words the same way I say -ink words - with short i.

 

There is some kind of minor sound shift that goes on with -ing and -ink words, though, and I do think it has to do with the 'nk' and 'ng'.  I do not say eenk or eeng, but it does sound just a teensy bit different than the i in bin or win.  But not like 'ee'.   Eentsy and inky do not have the same vowel sound to me at all.  

 

How about the word 'seeing'  Does the 'ee' in see sound different than the 'i' in ing to you?  You say see-eeng? Or would it just be seeng as one syllable, then - do they run together?  

 

 

seeing sounds like see-eeng 

 

or maybe just see-ng, no second vowel sound, depending on how fast I'm talking

 

the spider is an itsy bitsy spider, no ns in the whole thing.

 

I have never heard of an intsy-wintsy spider.

[eternalsummer]

In all of these recordings it sounds like everyone is using the long e sound to say the words.I thought using the long e sound was correct because of the nk that follows it changes the sound of short i to i's third sound of long e. The same changing pattern is followed with ing words which are said with a long e.

 

There is no correct or incorrect pronunciation, there are just different dialects.

 

That said, you and I have the same dialect, with a long ee sound with things and thinks and rings and rinks (but not, I assume, lint or mint or tint, which all have the short i sound still).

[Tumbatoo]

They all rhyme with ink for me with a long "e" sound. I'm from Georgia :)

[Matryoshka]

Eensy and inky sound different to me as well, but it's more of how long the sound is carried through the word not that it's a different sound.

 

So for eensy it sounds like this eeensy where as ink and ing sound like this longenk  and longeng. More staccato of a vowel sound instead of a really exaggerated long e sound such as in eensy, green, teen, etc.

 

As for seeing, it's more run together, not as one syllable, but flowing into each other. Similar to eensy, see is more exaggerated of a long e sound with the ing tacked on at the end and the long e sound in ing is almost completely absorbed into the long e sound of see. There is a slight differential between those two sound syllables but not much.

 

Hmmm.... I'm starting to wonder if maybe we're talking past each other.  What does 'short i' sound like to those of you who think ink sounds like it has a 'long e'?  By any chance are you from those places where 'pin' and 'pen' are pronounced the same?  Because that would explain a lot...

[maize]

Hmmm.... I'm starting to wonder if maybe we're talking past each other.  What does 'short i' sound like to those of you who think ink sounds like it has a 'long e'?  By any chance are you from those places where 'pin' and 'pen' are pronounced the same?  Because that would explain a lot...

 

short i and long e sound sounds are definitely different for me, and it is definitely long e in ink.

 

I can say ink with a short i sound, but that is not natural to me.

[Ms.Ivy]

Hmmm.... I'm starting to wonder if maybe we're talking past each other. What does 'short i' sound like to those of you who think ink sounds like it has a 'long e'? By any chance are you from those places where 'pin' and 'pen' are pronounced the same? Because that would explain a lot...

No pen pin merger here, but I say long ee in -ink and -ing. Short i sounds like the i in "if".... "ef" is short for a bad word. Haha

[emmaluv+2more]

I'm wondering if it is just a difference in the way people are hearing things?  Maybe an auditory discrimination thing?  When I watch Tinkerbelle, her name is definitely pronounced Teenkerbelle, not Tin-kerbelle, just as in all of the recordings linked earlier I hear the same long e sound. 

 

That's another word...linked.  It definitely doesn't sound like lick to me, but more like lean. 

 

I do say pin and pen differently, but I certainly know plenty of people who do not.

 

I keep thinking of the movie (can't recall which movie) where a child is screaming "a drink...I neeed a dreeeeeenk".  Definitely not "I neeeed a driiiink".

 

Fascinating, and yet very confusing, stuff here!

[Matryoshka]

short i and long e sound sounds are definitely different for me, and it is definitely long e in ink.

 

I can say ink with a short i sound, but that is not natural to me.

 

I wasn't wondering if people were thinking long e and short i were the same, but if they say pin like pen, maybe they're short i is something else?

 

Especially since a bunch of us that hear short i in the audio clips are told by others that it sounds like long e to them.  

 

Long e for me is long and drawn out, never clipped or staccato.  If it's clipped, it's a short sound.  

 

This international phonetic alphabet link has audio of all vowel sounds (many do not exist in English).  It draws them all out, 'short' versions are just if you clip them.  English 'long E' is represented by .... i.  In the upper left.  If you clip, or shorten that, I guess it is about what the short i sound is in ink.  Which of those sounds shortened would be short i sound to you?

 

Short e is a clipped or shortened version of the 'e' sound further down.  We don't use the long drawn out version of that sound in English (they do in German and Spanish).  In German, short E and long E are both that 'e' sound in the chart, one is clipped and one is drawn out.  Same for i - the long i is 'eeee' to our ears, and their short i sounds pretty much like our short i.

 

Our long i sound is not a true vowel at all (won't find it on that chart).  It's a diphthong - a combination of two vowel sounds.  If you blend a (not a) and i on that int'l phonetic chart, you'll get what we call 'long i'.  Almost all our 'long vowels' in English are really diphthongs - long E is the only exception, and it should be i....  So English 'long E' and 'short E' are not long and short versions of the same vowel sound... as with everything in English, confusing and counter-intuitive....

Edited July 3, 2016 by Matryoshka

[eternalsummer]

short i for me, like in pig or pin, is this sound:

ɪ

[eternalsummer]

that is different than the sound in pen, which is e

[eternalsummer]

And both of them are different than the vowel sound in tinkerbell, or think, or thing, or sink, which is i

[kitten18]

They all rhyme with ink.

 

When I say them the vowel is not a short i nor a long e, it's something between them.

[maize]

I wasn't wondering if people were thinking long e and short i were the same, but if they say pin like pen, maybe they're short i is something else?

 

Especially since a bunch of us that hear short i in the audio clips are told by others that it sounds like long e to them.  

 

Long e for me is long and drawn out, never clipped or staccato.  If it's clipped, it's a short sound.  

 

This international phonetic alphabet link has audio of all vowel sounds (many do not exist in English).  It draws them all out, 'short' versions are just if you clip them.  English 'long E' is represented by .... i.  In the upper left.  If you clip, or shorten that, I guess it is about what the short i sound is in ink.  Which of those sounds shortened would be short i sound to you?

 

Short e is a clipped or shortened version of the 'e' sound further down.  We don't use the long drawn out version of that sound in English (they do in German and Spanish).  In German, short E and long E are both that 'e' sound in the chart, one is clipped and one is drawn out.  Same for i - the long i is 'eeee' to our ears, and their short i sounds pretty much like our short i.

 

Our long i sound is not a true vowel at all (won't find it on that chart).  It's a diphthong - a combination of two vowel sounds.  If you blend a (not a) and i on that int'l phonetic chart, you'll get what we call 'long i'.  Almost all our 'long vowels' in English are really diphthongs - long E is the only exception, and it should be i....  So English 'long E' and 'short E' are not long and short versions of the same vowel sound... as with everything in English, confusing and counter-intuitive....

 

Short i to me is like the sound represented by capital I in your chart

[maize]

If you look at the chart here I shown as the IPA symbol for many short i sounds in English words https://jakubmarian.com/international-phonetic-alphabet-ipa-for-english-vowels/

 

edited to add link

Edited July 3, 2016 by maize

[Matryoshka]

If you look at the chart here I shown as the IPA symbol for many short i sounds in English words https://jakubmarian.com/international-phonetic-alphabet-ipa-for-english-vowels/

 

edited to add link

 

That is very helpful.  I do say the short i in 'bin'. or 'wit' more like a shortened I, I think.  I mentioned earlier that i do hear a difference.  I just think of 'long e' as being eeeeee - actually long, drawn out, so I don't say eeenk or theeenk.   There is no 'short long E' described in English, lol. 

 

I notice listening to those I have some apparently not-quite-standard vowel shifts in my speech (common to this area).  The 'a' in father for me is the phonetic 'a'.  Not 'a' as in that chart. 'a' is how I pronounce aw, which is actually exactly the same sound as short o for me, which is why Dawn and Don (and Laura and Lora) are pronounced exactly the same.  That upside-down 'c' sound they give as aw is not a sound I make, lol.  And what do they think the American short o sound is?  They give a short o for "British only", but no American equivalent?  Oh, wait, it's mentioned as a footnote that a is indeed how Americans say short o - it's just also how I say aw. :lol:  But for me not the same sound as in father, bra, or the other words with A in them they list there under a....  

 

Heh, and you'll notice none of the 'long vowel' sounds (aka 'when the vowel says its name') for AEIOU are mentioned in that chart except for E, which is i of course, because... diphthongs. :D

 

Interesting he did include those 'r-controlled' verby sounds, though...  

[Sahamamama]

I love these "how do you pronounce this" threads, especially when people from all over the world chime in. In New Jersey, it's 3 am at the moment, but there must have been caffeine in that "decaf" coffee at the family reunion. So... here I am, saying "rink, think, sink, mink" out loud, over and over again, trying all the variations. ;)

 

Next up, how do you pronounce water? Some folks around here say WOR-ter.

 

https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/philadelphians-have-a-unique-accent-with-pronunciation-evolving-over-the-decades/2013/04/29/fcfe7b18-ae74-11e2-98ef-d1072ed3cc27_story.html

[Laura Corin]

 

 

Next up, how do you pronounce water? Some folks around here say WOR-ter.

 

https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/philadelphians-have-a-unique-accent-with-pronunciation-evolving-over-the-decades/2013/04/29/fcfe7b18-ae74-11e2-98ef-d1072ed3cc27_story.html

 

Interesting article.  I (southern English middle class) pronounce water as if the first syllable rhymed with 'law'.  The second syllable is a schwa and there's no 'r' sound.  WAW-tuh.

[luuknam]

Next up, how do you pronounce water? Some folks around here say WOR-ter.

 

Wotter? Sometimes people think I say a 'v' instead of a 'w' (though I've never been accused of that when saying 'water' specifically).

 

I hate water. I don't understand why it's so hard to understand when the waiter asks "what do you want to drink?" and I say "water". I don't care how much of a foreign accent I have - it's a very limited domain, what else could I possibly be saying? For a few years in Texas I gave up and ordered coke instead (or "the same" if someone before me ordered water), because waiters would *always* misunderstand me. People understand everything else I say - it's not like I'm hard to understand. Just 'water', and, now that we live in NY, our last name, which starts with a 'w', but for some reason people in Texas understood it just fine.

 

What I've figured out in the past year is that people seem to understand better when I say 'wodder' instead of 'wotter'. :confused1: (I noticed some people (including my wife) using more of a /d/ than a /t/ sound in the word, so I decided to try it)

[Crimson Wife]

 

Next up, how do you pronounce water? Some folks around here say WOR-ter.

 

Those are my IL's. "WORSH your hands with soap and WORter" [shudder]

[maize]

water for me is like wodder.

 

My toddler says wah-wah, it's adorable.

[maize]

More re: what we call long and short vowels in English (not necessarily related to the actual duration of the vowel sound): 

Traditional long and short vowels in English orthography[edit]

English vowels are sometimes split into "long" and "short" vowels along lines different from the linguistic differentiation. Traditionally, the vowels /eɪ iË aɪ oÊŠ juË/ (as in bait beat bite boat bute) are said to be the "long" counterparts of the vowels /æ É› ɪ É’ ÊŒ/ (as in bat bet bit bot but) which are said to be "short". This terminology reflects their pronunciation before the Great Vowel Shift.

However, the use of the terms "long" and "short" in describing these vowel values is actually linguistically incorrect, as the letters in these words, although the same letter may be used, actually represent different vowels, that is, they are pronounced in spoken English as different vowels.

Traditional English phonics teaching, at the preschool to first grade level, often used the term "long vowel" for any pronunciation that might result from the addition of a silent E(e.g., like) or other vowel letter as follows:

Letter "Short" "Long" Example A a /æ/ /eɪ/ mat / mate E e /É›/ /iË/ pet / Pete I i /ɪ/ /aɪ/ twin / twine O o /É’/ /oÊŠ/ not / note U u /ÊŒ/ /juË/ cub / cube

A mnemonic was that each vowel's long sound was its name. However, it is important to remember that the "a" in the word "mat" represents a different vowel sound than the "a" in "mate," it is not a long or short version of the same vowel sound. In this case, the terms "long" and "short" are incorrectly used to describe these vowel values.

In Middle English, the long vowels /iË, eË, É›Ë, aË, É”Ë, oË, uË/ were generally written i..e, e..e, ea, a..e, o..e, oo, u..e. With the Great Vowel Shift, they came to be pronounced /aɪ, iË, iË, eɪ, oÊŠ, uË, aÊŠ/. Because ea and oo are digraphs, they are not called long vowels today. Under French influence, the letter u was replaced with ou (or final ow), so it is no longer considered a long vowel either. Thus the so-called "long vowels" of Modern English are those vowels written with the help of a silent e.

[maize]

With regard to what one person hears and what another hears, it is true that perceived speech depends in part on what our brain has learned to expect. So in many cases I think we actually hear words the way we learned them ourselves, regardless of small differences in pronunciation.

 

One famous case of the hearer's brain misunderstanding a sound is the difficulty many native Japanese speakers have in differentiating between English r an l--to many, words like light and right seem indistinguishable https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perception_of_English_/r/_and_/l/_by_Japanese_speakers#Perception

[maize]

Those are my IL's. "WORSH your hands with soap and WORter" [shudder]

 

But why shudder over it? It's a different pronunciation, not fingernails scraping on a chalkboard ;)

[Laura Corin]

 

 

One famous case of the hearer's brain misunderstanding a sound is the difficulty many native Japanese speakers have in differentiating between English r an l--to many, words like light and right seem indistinguishable https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perception_of_English_/r/_and_/l/_by_Japanese_speakers#Perception

 

I had a similar problem teaching some of my Chinese students to differentiate 'smell' and 'smile'.  Neither 'ile' nor 'ell' exists as a single syllable in standard Mandarin, so they couldn't hear the difference.  

 

A similar problem exists with English speakers learning tonal languages: it takes a lot of retraining to be able to hear the tones, let alone reproduce them.  My first several months learning Mandarin was entirely taken up with tones.

Edited July 3, 2016 by Laura Corin

[Sahamamama]

Wotter? Sometimes people think I say a 'v' instead of a 'w' (though I've never been accused of that when saying 'water' specifically).

 

I hate water. I don't understand why it's so hard to understand when the waiter asks "what do you want to drink?" and I say "water". I don't care how much of a foreign accent I have - it's a very limited domain, what else could I possibly be saying? For a few years in Texas I gave up and ordered coke instead (or "the same" if someone before me ordered water), because waiters would *always* misunderstand me. People understand everything else I say - it's not like I'm hard to understand. Just 'water', and, now that we live in NY, our last name, which starts with a 'w', but for some reason people in Texas understood it just fine.

 

What I've figured out in the past year is that people seem to understand better when I say 'wodder' instead of 'wotter'. :confused1: (I noticed some people (including my wife) using more of a /d/ than a /t/ sound in the word, so I decided to try it)

 

:lol: You are so right! What else? Rum?

 

Yes, it's about the D versus the T. Think of it like this -- the person who puts the wadding in the cracks is the WADDER. :huh: So, on the East Coast (I think) if you say "water" as if you are saying "wadder," you'll be understood.

 

Except in Philadelphia. There, it's WOR-ter. Drives me nuts. My father is from Philly, and when my girls have had a sleepover at Grammy and Pop Pop's they come back saying worter. No, no, no!

 

I'm with Laura on the first part (waw, rhymes with law), but not on the second part (ter, there is a vocalized R sound there). I think the non-vocalized R is easier to say, though, but sounds like the reader on our Mary Poppins CD. ;) I am firmly a rhotic speaker. I like to hear it all, though.

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rhoticity_in_English

 

 

English is fascinating, isn't it? I suppose it can be frustrating, too, if it's not your native language. Hang in there, Luuknam.

Edited July 3, 2016 by Sahamamama

[Sahamamama]

Those are my IL's. "WORSH your hands with soap and WORter" [shudder]

 

Where from? I've heard the WORSH from people out of Carlisle, PA and Indiana, but nowhere else.

[luuknam]

I had a similar problem teaching some of my Chinese students to differentiate 'smell' and 'smile'.  Neither 'ile' nor 'ell' exists as a single syllable in standard Mandarin, so they couldn't hear the difference.  

 

A similar problem exists with English speakers learning tonal languages: it takes a lot of retraining to be able to hear the tones, let alone reproduce them.  My first several months learning Mandarin was entirely taken up with tones.

 

I actually picked up on tones very quickly in Thai, but it took me a few months to realize that their difference between long and short vowels actually is a difference in duration of the vowel. Part of the problem is that quite often, they would say more of an 'uh' for short 'a' and 'ah' for long 'a', but it really is the duration that matters - you could do 'ah' for short 'a' and 'uh' for long 'a' just fine, as long as you hold the long one longer. They probably wondered how on earth I could fail to understand something as simple as the difference between 'long' and 'short' - and it's totally because in western languages we'll call those different vowel sounds 'long' and 'short', even though the duration doesn't matter at all.

[luuknam]

:lol: You are so right! What else? Rum?

 

The only thing I can think of is vodka. Not that I say a /k/ in 'water', and I do have a rhotic 'r', but nothing else potable would be remotely similar to 'water'. I suppose you could maybe hear "what, er, please". Actually, that's probably what they're hearing, lol. Still, one would think that after repeating it they'd figure out it must be water, but repeating myself doesn't tend to help. At least I figured out 'wodder' tends to get the job done, even though there's no 'd' in 'water' and I feel like I must've had too much vodka to be slurring the 't' into a /d/.

[Matryoshka]

water for me is like wodder.

 

My toddler says wah-wah, it's adorable.

I say wadder. With the a like in father, which for me (but apparently not for lots if others) is a bit different than short o sound...

[Crimson Wife]

But why shudder over it? It's a different pronunciation, not fingernails scraping on a chalkboard ;)

 

There is no "r" in the word "wash" and only a single "r" in the word "water".

 

I also shudder over my Midwestern-raised mom's addition of an "r" to the second syllable of the word "sherbet".

 

[Crimson Wife]

Where from? I've heard the WORSH from people out of Carlisle, PA and Indiana, but nowhere else.

 

MIL is from central PA and FIL is from southeastern PA but they both do it.

 

[maize]

There is no "r" in the word "wash" and only a single "r" in the word "water".

 

I also shudder over my Midwestern-raised mom's addition of an "r" to the second syllable of the word "sherbet".

 

 

Is there an "r" in colonel?

 

In some dialects, there is indeed an "r" sound in those words. 

 

Just because standard English spelling doesn't put the letter there doesn't mean it is wrong to use the proper form of a word for the dialect you were raised with. The standardization of spelling is something that began with the advent of the printing press, though it took some time after that to be adopted universally. Because standardization began around the same time as some major shifts in pronunciation were happening, we have ended up with a lot of words that are spelled differently than we now pronounce them. Most of our "silent" letters are there because at one point in time they were pronounced--knife, night, etc.--those k's and gh's and such were actual consonants. We're totally used to the idea of pronouncing words differently than they are spelled, there's no particular reason to think it is right to leave a k sound out of knife but wrong to put an r sound into water.

 

This is how living languages work; the way people in any given community speak is correct in their dialect, and every person who speaks uses a dialect--there is no set in stone standard of right and wrong. There are dialects that are more wide spread or more prestigious than others, but that does not make them more correct than others.

Edited July 3, 2016 by maize

[Laura Corin]

 

 

This is how living languages work; the way people in any given community speak is correct in their dialect, and every person who speaks uses a dialect--there is no set in stone standard of right and wrong. There are dialects that are more wide spread or more prestigious than others, but that does not make them more correct than others.

 

Yes.  My accent is non-rhotic, so I pronounce no terminal 'r' and any other 'r' is touched on very softly, almost like a 'w'.  This doesn't obey the spelling, but it's not illegitimate.  Indeed, in previous generations, that characteristic held prestige in Britain.  Listen for the light 'r' in 'Christmas' and the missing 'r' in 'ever':

 

[maize]

Yes.  My accent is non-rhotic, so I pronounce no terminal 'r' and any other 'r' is touched on very softly, almost like a 'w'.  This doesn't obey the spelling, but it's not illegitimate.  Indeed, in previous generations, that characteristic held prestige in Britain.  Listen for the light 'r' in 'Christmas' and the missing 'r' in 'ever':

 

 

And there you have it, the Queen's English! Different certainly from my own. The word "empire" for example, bears little resemblance to the way I pronounce it. I noticed some of her r's are slightly rolled, which is almost never done in American dialects. 

 

She sounds so young and earnest, I've never listened to that speech before. Thanks for sharing!

[Laura Corin]

And there you have it, the Queen's English! Different certainly from my own. The word "empire" for example, bears little resemblance to the way I pronounce it. I noticed some of her r's are slightly rolled, which is almost never done in American dialects. 

Yes, it's almost 'EM-pah' isn't it?  And 'and' is almost pronounced 'end'.

 

More than one linguist has made a study of her speeches and the changes in her accent: no other person has left such a complete record: at least one broadcast speech on the same day each year.  Sorry it's the Daily Mail:

 

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-3439129/How-Queen-s-cut-glass-accent-slipping-Videos-reveal-monarch-shifted-speech-recent-years-sound-like-one-us.html

[maize]

Yes, it's almost 'EM-pah' isn't it?  And 'and' is almost pronounced 'end'.

 

More than one linguist has made a study of her speeches and the changes in her accent: no other person has left such a complete record: at least one broadcast speech on the same day each year.  Sorry it's the Daily Mail:

 

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-3439129/How-Queen-s-cut-glass-accent-slipping-Videos-reveal-monarch-shifted-speech-recent-years-sound-like-one-us.html

 

"Power" is another word that stood out to me as different, but when I listen closely I realize there hardly a single word was spoken the way I would say it. The fact that I can understand in spite of the differences is I think rather a testimony to the flexibility of the human brain.

 

Looking at changes in speech patterns is very interesting. When I watch movies or news broadcasts from the 50's I notice differences in speech from contemporary American standard, both in accent and in cadence. But when I talk to people from my grandparents' generation there is not so much difference. I wonder how much of what I am seeing is the result of changing speech patterns over time and how much might be changes in media specific standards (were broadcasters and actors taught to speak a specific way?)

[maize]

I have an aunt-by-marriage from Australia; after decades of living in the US her speech has Americanized considerably though it still have a touch of Australian accent to it. When I speak with someone with an accent different from my own I know I start to subconsciously imitate it. This bothers me as I am convinced it makes me sound phony, but it is almost impossible to stop myself. My kids tease me about it whenever they hear me talking to their Irish dance teacher.

[Matryoshka]

Looking at changes in speech patterns is very interesting. When I watch movies or news broadcasts from the 50's I notice differences in speech from contemporary American standard, both in accent and in cadence. But when I talk to people from my grandparents' generation there is not so much difference. I wonder how much of what I am seeing is the result of changing speech patterns over time and how much might be changes in media specific standards (were broadcasters and actors taught to speak a specific way?)

 

 

Why yes, they were.  It was called the Mid-Atlantic accent, and it was a made-up accent that intentionally blended American and British received pronunciations.  It was taught to actors and broadcasters in the 1930's and 40's.

 

And the linked Wikipedia page about it has some interesting tidbits about bits of persistence - apparently Darth Vader as well as Princess Leia and Queen Amidala when speaking in political situations were supposed to be speaking in Mid-Atlantic in the Star Wars movies?  Now I need to go pay better attention....

Edited July 3, 2016 by Matryoshka