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After spending a very short time in Portland, OR, I was amazed to find I could tell when someone was from there as opposed to, say, Seattle. Subtle but very telling differences everywhere despite mass media.
The Appalachians are a really clear example of how culture is kept and how it changes. Since they are pretty isolated, their Scots/Irish roots are amazingly preserved in their speech patterns, food, and music. The similarities of “hillbilly” music to its roots in traditional Irish and Scottish music is obvious. The jigs, reels, ballads, as well as instrumentation is in a direct line from Europe to West Virginia. When I was studying ethnomusicology, which was my original academic goal, this was always the case study for the field.
DIBS, you are speaking purely out of self interest rather than fairness. If the argument is that wall street banks that kept tax payers money are able to pay big bonuses and that is good for state and local governments’ coffers, it seems to me a more efficient way to go about it is just give money to state and local governments directly and cut out the middlemen and avoid a big moral hazard problem.
The one old time NYer accent I hear on TV now is on CSI:NY. Although he’s toned it down the last season or so. His voice sounds flatter to me now.
Philadelphia, Baltimore, down to Richmond has tinge of “tidewater”.
On the Outer Banks you can hear Elizabethan English – Okracoke, etc. Many people there have never been on mainland America.
Word usage is a factor too – hero/grinder/sub – stand on line or in line, etc.
People who study these things can tell NYC borough & neighborhood fairly accurately – just as in London you used to be able to identify someone’s roots within half a mile.
I’m better with cadence. I can catch most of the up and down sound and rhythm which is why i love Irish accents and Scottish burrs. I was listening to some Jamaican people speaking and thought it sounded like and Irish lilt.
joe and bxgrl,
It really is fascinating, if you watch old shows set in NYC like Kojak or a movie like Dog Day Afternoon (filmed in Windsor Terrace) you hear the clear NY accents everywhere from the cops to the robbers to the bystanders.
like joe said, it’s probably evolving with phrases like rob mentioned (gosh)and intonation.
I took a linguistics class in college, and it was fascinating tracing the roots of American speech. I would think that the Boston accent would have strong roots in Irish/Gaelic inflections, stronger than Cockney, I would think, but then again, my knowledge of Boston’s ethnic history is pretty basic. I can see the same in what may have been spoken by lower and working class Manhattan by mid to turn of the 19th century, but again, Irish would have been stronger, and they tended not to associate with the English, if they had a choice. I would definitely agree that the Germanic languages, from Old English to Yiddish, had the greatest influences, with Italian and Spanish adding their own “notes”.
WOW who knew people can’t have opposing opinions on this blog.
1.) i think housing lotteries are largely SCAMS
2.) low income housing in general is plagued with TONS Of fraud.
im not allowed to have those opinions? whatever. im taking a board break!
g’bue!
*rob*
I can definitely say “I AGREE” w/ everything in this post including but not limited to the last part. (I was getting pretty sick of the OT yesterday…)