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Donna Richoux
Guest
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| Posted: Wed Nov 09, 2005 8:22 pm
Post subject: US Dialects in New Yorker article |
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You might wish to check out this short article in "The New Yorker" (they
only keep them at the website for a limited time):
http://www.newyorker.com/talk/content/articles/051114ta_talk_seabrook
Professor William Labov is to American dialect what
Lewis and Clark are to American geography. He's the
pathfinder. Labov's new work, which is called "The
Atlas of North American English," constitutes the
first coast-to-coast charting of all the major
dialects spoken in the continental United States and
Canada...
...As often happens when Labov appears in public, he
was asked if he could perform a variation on the "My
Fair Lady" trick: to identify what part of New York
City a person came from, based on his speech. Labov
shook his head, causing his enormous glasses to
slide down his nose. "People want me to tell them
which block," he said. "The fact is - but don't write
this, because it will enrage people - Brooklynese is
exactly the same whether it's spoken in the Bronx,
Queens, and Staten Island or in Brooklyn. Or the
Lower East Side." The city's dialect, he said, is
much more indicative of one's social status than of
one's neighborhood. "Although no one wants to admit
this," he added, "because we're supposed to live in
a classless society."
He also talks about the return of the R to upper-class Northeastern
accents.
--
Best - Donna Richoux
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Salvatore Volatile
Guest
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| Posted: Wed Nov 09, 2005 8:22 pm
Post subject: Re: US Dialects in New Yorker article |
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Donna Richoux wrote:
| Quote: | You might wish to check out this short article in "The New Yorker" (they
only keep them at the website for a limited time):
http://www.newyorker.com/talk/content/articles/051114ta_talk_seabrook
...As often happens when Labov appears in public, he
was asked if he could perform a variation on the "My
Fair Lady" trick: to identify what part of New York
City a person came from, based on his speech. Labov
shook his head, causing his enormous glasses to
slide down his nose. "People want me to tell them
which block," he said. "The fact is - but don't write
this, because it will enrage people - Brooklynese is
exactly the same whether it's spoken in the Bronx,
Queens, and Staten Island or in Brooklyn. Or the
Lower East Side."
|
He's wrong to at least some degree; there are certain specific features of
certain northeastern Queens accents that do not occur in any Brooklyn
accents. I know; I've lived in both places. While dialect differences
within New York city may have been exaggerated, they do exist, and indeed
one would expect them to, given the size of the city and the isolation of
some groups in some neighborhoods.
Surely Labov would not contend that no dialect features specific to Long
Island suburbs exist. To me, Long Island accents are identifiable, and
the accents of northeastern Queens resemble them.
I submit that Labov is committing a Liebso-Erkian Error. |
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Salvatore Volatile
Guest
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| Posted: Wed Nov 09, 2005 8:22 pm
Post subject: Re: US Dialects in New Yorker article |
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Bob Cunningham wrote:
| Quote: | On Wed, 9 Nov 2005 14:22:27 +0100, trio@euronet.nl (Donna
Richoux) said:
You might wish to check out this short article in "The New Yorker" (they
only keep them at the website for a limited time):
http://www.newyorker.com/talk/content/articles/051114ta_talk_seabrook
Thank you. I found that quite interesting.
I'm mystified, though, by the "eah" sound he mentions ("the
raised 'a' in words like 'past' (peahst)". I'd like to hear
a recording of it.
|
Ask Erk.
| Quote: | Coming from a student of dialects over a wide geographical
area, his parochialism in the choice of pronunciation
symbols is surprising.
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Oy?
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Salvatore Volatile
Guest
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| Posted: Wed Nov 09, 2005 9:20 pm
Post subject: Re: US Dialects in New Yorker article |
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jerry_friedman@yahoo.com wrote:
| Quote: | Salvatore Volatile wrote:
Donna Richoux wrote:
You might wish to check out this short article in "The New Yorker" (they
only keep them at the website for a limited time):
http://www.newyorker.com/talk/content/articles/051114ta_talk_seabrook
...As often happens when Labov appears in public, he
was asked if he could perform a variation on the "My
Fair Lady" trick: to identify what part of New York
City a person came from, based on his speech. Labov
shook his head, causing his enormous glasses to
slide down his nose. "People want me to tell them
which block," he said. "The fact is - but don't write
this, because it will enrage people - Brooklynese is
exactly the same whether it's spoken in the Bronx,
Queens, and Staten Island or in Brooklyn. Or the
Lower East Side."
He's wrong to at least some degree; there are certain specific features of
certain northeastern Queens accents that do not occur in any Brooklyn
accents. I know; I've lived in both places.
He said that Brooklynese is the same when it's spoken in Queens, but
not that it's spoken everywhere in Queens.
|
What I'd say is that there *are* regional-dialectal differences within New
York City, but that they don't follow Liebso-Erkian boundaries (which
would have to be borough/county lines in the case of New York). You don't
enter a new dialect region when you cross the border between Brooklyn
(LBITCONY) and Queens, any more than you enter a new dialect region when
you cross the border between, say, Rhode Island and eastern Connecticut.
If Labov doesn't disagree with this, then I have no quarrel with him.
Let's remember that Labov is himself a New Jerseyite. |
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Salvatore Volatile
Guest
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| Posted: Wed Nov 09, 2005 9:21 pm
Post subject: Re: US Dialects in New Yorker article |
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Bob Cunningham wrote:
| Quote: | On Wed, 9 Nov 2005 16:43:28 +0000 (UTC), Salvatore Volatile
me@privacy.net> said:
[...]
Coming from a student of dialects over a wide geographical
area, his parochialism in the choice of pronunciation
symbols is surprising.
Oy?
I don't think I said anything oyable. What are you on
about?
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I hereby retract the Oy!. |
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Salvatore Volatile
Guest
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| Posted: Wed Nov 09, 2005 10:59 pm
Post subject: Re: US Dialects in New Yorker article |
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Bob Cunningham wrote:
| Quote: | I know, of course, that when the _New Yorker_ article said
"tawk", the intended pronunciation was almost surely
[tO:k], but how many _New Yorker_ readers would know that?
|
More than half of all _New Yorker_ readers are CINC, I think it's
safe to say, though for many of them "tawk" might not have [O:]. |
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Salvatore Volatile
Guest
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| Posted: Wed Nov 09, 2005 11:00 pm
Post subject: Re: US Dialects in New Yorker article |
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jerry_friedman@yahoo.com wrote:
| Quote: | Bob Cunningham wrote:
...
I know, of course, that when the _New Yorker_ article said
"tawk", the intended pronunciation was almost surely
[tO:k], but how many _New Yorker_ readers would know that?
I strongly suspect that the intended pronunciation was a diphthong,
something like [tU@k], and that the great majority of _New Yorker_
readers knew that. And I have some suspicion that you knew it too.
For instance, if you listened to the recording that Michael Hamm made
for a.u.e.
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No big whoop. |
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Bob Cunningham
Guest
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| Posted: Wed Nov 09, 2005 11:07 pm
Post subject: Re: US Dialects in New Yorker article |
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On Wed, 9 Nov 2005 14:22:27 +0100, trio@euronet.nl (Donna
Richoux) said:
Thank you. I found that quite interesting.
I'm mystified, though, by the "eah" sound he mentions ("the
raised 'a' in words like 'past' (peahst)". I'd like to hear
a recording of it. When I try to pronounce it as it's
spelled, it doesn't sound like any English I've ever heard.
I was disappointed to see that he used "aw" to represent a
sound, evidently assuming that all readers pronounce it the
say he does, and ignoring the fact that millions -- possibly
a majority -- of Americans won't understand it to be a sound
different from "ah" or the "augh" in "caught".
He ends the piece with a sentence containing the spelling
"tawk". A great many of his readers will wonder about the
strange spelling since to them it doesn't represent any
different pronunciation than it would if it were spelled
"talk".
Coming from a student of dialects over a wide geographical
area, his parochialism in the choice of pronunciation
symbols is surprising. |
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Donna Richoux
Guest
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| Posted: Wed Nov 09, 2005 11:52 pm
Post subject: Re: US Dialects in New Yorker article |
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Bob Cunningham <exw6sxq@earthlink.net> wrote:
| Quote: | On Wed, 9 Nov 2005 14:22:27 +0100, trio@euronet.nl (Donna
Richoux) said:
You might wish to check out this short article in "The New Yorker" (they
only keep them at the website for a limited time):
http://www.newyorker.com/talk/content/articles/051114ta_talk_seabrook
Thank you. I found that quite interesting.
I'm mystified, though, by the "eah" sound he mentions ("the
raised 'a' in words like 'past' (peahst)". I'd like to hear
a recording of it. When I try to pronounce it as it's
spelled, it doesn't sound like any English I've ever heard.
I was disappointed to see that he used "aw" to represent a
sound, evidently assuming that all readers pronounce it the
say he does, and ignoring the fact that millions -- possibly
a majority -- of Americans won't understand it to be a sound
different from "ah" or the "augh" in "caught".
He ends the piece with a sentence containing the spelling
"tawk". A great many of his readers will wonder about the
strange spelling since to them it doesn't represent any
different pronunciation than it would if it were spelled
"talk".
Coming from a student of dialects over a wide geographical
area, his parochialism in the choice of pronunciation
symbols is surprising.
|
I suspect those spellings were chosen by the writer John Seabrook,
transcribing Labov's speech.
--
Best - Donna Richoux |
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Guest
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| Posted: Thu Nov 10, 2005 12:22 am
Post subject: Re: US Dialects in New Yorker article |
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Bob Cunningham wrote:
---SNIP---
| Quote: |
I'm mystified, though, by the "eah" sound he mentions ("the
raised 'a' in words like 'past' (peahst)". I'd like to hear
a recording of it. When I try to pronounce it as it's
spelled, it doesn't sound like any English I've ever heard.
|
I know just the sound he's talking about. Though it doesn't occur in my
dialect, I can produce it at will (having lived near NYC some years
ago). There's no good way to transcribe it. Say "yeah". Now lengthen it
a bit, and add some tension by widening the lips. Try to sound like a
goodfella. Now stick that vowel into "past".
---larry
P.S. When I lived in that region, I worked with a Jerry and a Gary. Our
names rhymed for me, but not for them. |
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jerry_friedman@yahoo.com
Guest
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| Posted: Thu Nov 10, 2005 12:26 am
Post subject: Re: US Dialects in New Yorker article |
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Salvatore Volatile wrote:
| Quote: | Donna Richoux wrote:
You might wish to check out this short article in "The New Yorker" (they
only keep them at the website for a limited time):
http://www.newyorker.com/talk/content/articles/051114ta_talk_seabrook
...As often happens when Labov appears in public, he
was asked if he could perform a variation on the "My
Fair Lady" trick: to identify what part of New York
City a person came from, based on his speech. Labov
shook his head, causing his enormous glasses to
slide down his nose. "People want me to tell them
which block," he said. "The fact is - but don't write
this, because it will enrage people - Brooklynese is
exactly the same whether it's spoken in the Bronx,
Queens, and Staten Island or in Brooklyn. Or the
Lower East Side."
He's wrong to at least some degree; there are certain specific features of
certain northeastern Queens accents that do not occur in any Brooklyn
accents. I know; I've lived in both places.
|
He said that Brooklynese is the same when it's spoken in Queens, but
not that it's spoken everywhere in Queens.
| Quote: | While dialect differences
within New York city may have been exaggerated, they do exist, and indeed
one would expect them to, given the size of the city and the isolation of
some groups in some neighborhoods.
Surely Labov would not contend that no dialect features specific to Long
Island suburbs exist. To me, Long Island accents are identifiable, and
the accents of northeastern Queens resemble them.
|
That's consistent with what Labov said.
| Quote: | I submit that Labov is committing a Liebso-Erkian Error.
|
I regret that you didn't comment on the most important point in the
article, which is that the speech of northeastern Ohio became the U.S.
standard. Northeastern Ohio in the '30s, of course, not now.
--
Jerry Friedman |
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Bob Cunningham
Guest
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| Posted: Thu Nov 10, 2005 12:35 am
Post subject: Re: US Dialects in New Yorker article |
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On Wed, 9 Nov 2005 16:43:28 +0000 (UTC), Salvatore Volatile
<me@privacy.net> said:
[...]
| Quote: | Coming from a student of dialects over a wide geographical
area, his parochialism in the choice of pronunciation
symbols is surprising.
Oy?
|
I don't think I said anything oyable. What are you on
about? |
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Bob Cunningham
Guest
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| Posted: Thu Nov 10, 2005 3:26 am
Post subject: Re: US Dialects in New Yorker article |
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On Wed, 9 Nov 2005 17:52:33 +0100, trio@euronet.nl (Donna
Richoux) said:
| Quote: | Bob Cunningham <exw6sxq@earthlink.net> wrote:
On Wed, 9 Nov 2005 14:22:27 +0100, trio@euronet.nl (Donna
Richoux) said:
You might wish to check out this short article in "The New Yorker" (they
only keep them at the website for a limited time):
http://www.newyorker.com/talk/content/articles/051114ta_talk_seabrook
Thank you. I found that quite interesting.
I'm mystified, though, by the "eah" sound he mentions ("the
raised 'a' in words like 'past' (peahst)". I'd like to hear
a recording of it. When I try to pronounce it as it's
spelled, it doesn't sound like any English I've ever heard.
I was disappointed to see that he used "aw" to represent a
sound, evidently assuming that all readers pronounce it the
say he does, and ignoring the fact that millions -- possibly
a majority -- of Americans won't understand it to be a sound
different from "ah" or the "augh" in "caught".
He ends the piece with a sentence containing the spelling
"tawk". A great many of his readers will wonder about the
strange spelling since to them it doesn't represent any
different pronunciation than it would if it were spelled
"talk".
Coming from a student of dialects over a wide geographical
area, his parochialism in the choice of pronunciation
symbols is surprising.
I suspect those spellings were chosen by the writer John Seabrook,
transcribing Labov's speech.
|
Your suspicion is probably right, and I shoulda thoughta
that.
But with indirect quoting you never know which words are
those of the person quoted and how much of the indirect
quotation is paraphrased. Also, it wouldn't surprise me to
learn that JS worked from a hard copy of Labov's speech.
Anyway, to many of us spelling "talk" "tawk" -- whoever did
it -- to suggest a different pronunciation is like spelling
"beam" "beem" for the same purpose.
"Talk", "tawk", "tahk", "tock", "taughk": all would be
pronounced the same.
I know, of course, that when the _New Yorker_ article said
"tawk", the intended pronunciation was almost surely
[tO:k], but how many _New Yorker_ readers would know that? |
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jerry_friedman@yahoo.com
Guest
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| Posted: Thu Nov 10, 2005 3:45 am
Post subject: Re: US Dialects in New Yorker article |
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Bob Cunningham wrote:
....
| Quote: | Anyway, to many of us spelling "talk" "tawk" -- whoever did
it -- to suggest a different pronunciation is like spelling
"beam" "beem" for the same purpose.
|
A classic example of eye dialect.
| Quote: | "Talk", "tawk", "tahk", "tock", "taughk": all would be
pronounced the same.
I know, of course, that when the _New Yorker_ article said
"tawk", the intended pronunciation was almost surely
[tO:k], but how many _New Yorker_ readers would know that?
|
I strongly suspect that the intended pronunciation was a diphthong,
something like [tU@k], and that the great majority of _New Yorker_
readers knew that. And I have some suspicion that you knew it too.
For instance, if you listened to the recording that Michael Hamm made
for a.u.e.
--
Jerry Friedman |
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Mike Lyle
Guest
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| Posted: Thu Nov 10, 2005 3:49 am
Post subject: Re: US Dialects in New Yorker article |
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Bob Cunningham wrote:
[...]
| Quote: | "Talk", "tawk", "tahk", "tock", "taughk": all would be
pronounced the same.
[...] |
My God! Life must get really difficult down your way. I read, redd,
or reed three different sounds there.
(Sorry, delete "redd", substitute "reddd": I'm not torking about the
breeding habits of the salmon family.)
--
Mike. |
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