h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

I first started noticing this some years ago. There was a Time Warner ad campaign in the mid 00s, and each ad ended up with a side-on shot of a teenage girl sitting at a computer, turning to the camera and saying "Welcome to what's next."

Except she didn't. She said "Wulcome to whuts' nuxt." I remember saying at the time to the former Mrs Gosho "She only has one vowel, and it's 'uh'." Actually, it was more a sort of blend of uh and the schwa. The schwa is that sound we all make in so many words without really knowing it. The second syllable of London, for example, has a schwa - it's the 'er' sound. Because we don't say Lon-Don, do we. We say 'Lundern'. Same thing with station - stayshern. There's the schwa in the second syllable again.

And then this morning I heard this http://www.npr.org/2014/05/10/311276100/lesbians-and-mashed-potatoes-are-all-under-the-table

I think this is probably the most extreme instance I've heard so far. It's gone way beyond Valley Girl. A few examples:

"uxpuctations that are sort of shuttered"
"I went tiw scoowerl on the Upper East Side of Munhuttan"
"and uctually totally uccupting your your lesbian daughter and lesbian frund"
"but I realise now the bust way to talk about these issues"
"when I wus writing the scrupt I though uveryone is going to uxpuct me..."

Good grief Listening to that is almost as unpleasant as hearing Estuary English There are one two sections of it I can't make heads or tails of. Where does that sort of uccent come frum? What can pussibly gunerate such a luck of vowel sounds? How can unyone hear thumsulves und not know they're doing ut?

Isn't that just regional, much like the UK?

I don't think so. I'm hearing more frequently and it seems to be generational rather than geographical. As an accent it lacks a region the same way that RP does. I hear it in people, mostly 30 or under, around here too. Texas accents are becoming less common among younger Texans in the large cities.

I watch Judge Judy a lot, which is great as it has 'normal' people on it so we get to hear normal speaking, rather than actors. Apart from there apparently being actual words like 'burglarised' being really real over there, although Judy corrects a lot of their grammer and when they can't pronounce words she tells them, but she never ever corrects them when they say 'aks' instead of ask. Usually it's 'he aksed me for the money'. Why? Why?

Judge Judy. Blimey, its been a while since I watched that show.

I'd suggest that 'aks' is more a black thing than a white thing, so it could be seen as racist to correct it? And people are falling over themselves trying not be seen as racist, even when there's none there. I dunno. You'd have to ask Judy about that.

Once you've been burglarized a few times, you get acclimated to it.

That'll certainly trend you towards a state of normalcy.

Ugh... I wasn't aware that dreck like Judge Judy was one of our exports to the UK. Can't say I'm a fan of her show. I grew up on Judge Wapner's The People's Court of which her show is a direct rip-off. Judge Wapner was a stickler for judging his cases based on evidence. It was a common joke that if a litigant didn't have a manila folder full of receipts she was sure to lose the case. Judy seems to judge people mostly on whether or not she thinks they look like they're lying.


Anyway, as for Ax/Ask, Chaucer used "ax".

http://www.npr.org/blogs/codeswitch/2013/12/03/248515217/why-chaucer-said-ax-instead-of-ask-and-why-some-still-do

I think ask/ax is just one of those things that grates a bit when you hear a different dialect of English. It's the same way I sometimes hear an English person say the word "drawer", and wonder where the "-er" at the end of the word went. (Oddly, and this is probably topic drift within the topic drift - the only other speakers of English I've heard who pronounce the letter "R" the Northern Ireland way are from Trinidad and Jamaica )

(Oh, and don't apologise for exporting Judge Judy to the UK. The UK got its revenge in spades when it sent Jeremy Kyle to the USA.
)

And Piers Morgan. And Ainsley Harriot

There are certain regional accents in the US that pronounce "drawing" with an extra, invisible R. "Drawring". Whatever is said immediately after that I can't hear as "drawring" does to my brain what suddenly shifting from 5th gear to 2nd in a car does.

BG, are you familiar with Loyd Grossman? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kSMU8smM4jk He says he's from Borston.

He don't talk nothin' like Click and Clack http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bU9v8xMuMXM They say they're from Bahston.

Massachussetts has a number of accents. Click & Clack are a general Mass. accent (they're from Cambridge, (ahh fayah city) not Boston). But even in Boston there are a few distinct accents. There's the Southie accent that you hear Matt Damon faithfully use in Good Will Hunting for example.

But I have no idea where Lloyd Grossman's accent is from.

It is a strange one, isn't it. His 'totally' sounds almost Valley Girl. In fact quite a lot of it does.

When I was in college, one of my roommates had an odd, somewhat English accent. I couldn't quite place it, but I have some difficulty distinguishing English accents anyway. He said that it was a combination English/Texas accent as his mother was from England. OK... that makes sense. But the following semester I noticed his accent had drastically faded to general Gulf coast Texas. Yeah, it was an affectation. He admitted it and said it was just something he did since he moved away for college. Good thing he admitted it as it would have made meeting his parents a bit awkward.

Anyway, many years (decades) later, I hear nearly the same accent. It was from a coworker. He didn't have a strong English accent, but certain vowels were exagerated. For instance, "balls" sounded like "bowls". I was very leary of his accent, especially as it tended to drift when he would drink. The drunker he got the more English he sounded. But it was still so similar to the one my roommate affected that I was very surprised when I met his very Engish parents. He moved to Texas when he was just a kid in 1977 (around 7 years old, I beleive, maybe 10 tops).

My roommate apparently did a good job of blending English and Texan. I'm still convinced my former coworker does thicken his English for effect when he drinks though. He's gets kinda snobbish when he drinks as well.

When my son was backpacking through Canada, he met someone who could not only discern that he was bilingual English/German, but could also tell whereabouts in England I came from, all from the nuances in his English accent. I find that amazing. Not even I could do that.

I wonder how long it will be before this de-vowelification breaks into the cinema and other media and becomes generally accepted.

Everybody says 'aks', all all colours, shades and hues. I love JJ.

How interesting (unturusting?). Apparently there's a bono fido term for one of the other vocal ticks exhibited in this piece - vocal fry. It's when the voice tails off into a sort of scratchy sound, almost a growl, usually at the end of a sentence. You can hear it at about 1m 25s when she says "I didn't make this film to point fingers at anyone at all" and at about 1m 50s - "in order to seem liberal and open-minded". Also at about 4m 5s - "to me the mother is the most interesting character".

Blimey. You have no idea how difficult it was for me to listen to that again. That kind of accent is like fingers down a blackboard. Only one thing for it now. I need a heavy duty palate cleanser (shame about that Hammers result).
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4jcuW6JXLF4

The common one in my area that sets my teeth on edge is warsh instead of wash.