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

Well, I'm in Boston now - I'm not sure which dialect I prefer.

Anyway, the entries are great, they made me laugh out loud in places, they're well researched from what I can tell, descriptive and easy to understand and follow - even for a non native speaker like me - what more do you want?

Ah, Boston, my sympathies
What's interesting about Boston is that the people from the city proper kind of resent the accents of people from the rest of New England and claim that there are vast distinctions between them. Only, really, I don't think that there are

I hope I didn't sound rude when I said I'd not heard words pronounced like the way they were described in the entry? That wasn't my intention. I sincerely meant that I will listen for it and see if I ever notice anyone pronouncing things that way.

I don't talk like the exaggerated "dese, dems and dose" kind of Chick-a-go accent portrayed in some comedies. Traveling through the US, when I speak, if people don't guess that I'm from Chicago, they usually guess Minnesota. Which is weird, cause I never say "yah hey dere".

Nope, I understand completely. Didn't think it was rude at all, no worries.

It's so funny... all urban areas seem to claim the replacement of the 'th' sound with 'd' as a unique part of their accent. Apparently some Eastern European languages don't use the 'th' sound, and the closest they can get is the 'd' sound. Since Eastern Europeans (Polish maybe? I don't know enough about those languages to claim they don't have a 'th' sound) tend to settle in big cities, it's contributed to something of a common urban dialect between most of the big cities - including Chicago (African-Americans also contribute to this heavily). I think that some actors substitute the common 'urban dialect' in place of actual local dialects sometimes. Just a theory of mine. The reason I included it in the Chicago entry was that I wanted to quote the SNL sketch It's really not specific to Chicago, but how could I write an entry about the Chicago accent and not mention Da Bears?

I really do agree that the Chicago accent is mostly the midwestern, plain accent - but with a slight urban, NCVS twist. I'm not surprised you speak in a flat, plain way. I'm also not surprised if you don't recognize the characteristics of the NCVS. I don't think I would. And apparently, Dayton, Ohio (which is where I live) is a city that is kind of in the process of choosing between the plain Midland dialect and the more NCVS-affected Midland dialect, so I imagine I've heard a few displaced vowels in my time. As long as it's subtle, a few vowel shifts really don't raise any alarm bells, I think. That is, unless you're looking for them or paying close attention.

I don't really know why I'm rambling on like this... I guess I'm just waiting for something to do until New Hampshire polls close in a half hour.

>but how could I write an entry about the Chicago accent and not mention Da Bears?<

I grew up in a mainly Italian-American neighborhood, and the "d"/"th" thing was rather pronounced. Likewise on the South Side in the predominantly Irish and Italian areas.

Yeah, Italians too, good point.

Incidentally, Chris Matthews, who is bloviating on MSNBC, has a great Philadelphia accent

Wow this place is dangerous - a guy just has to drop 4 cents in a corner someplace, then come back less than a day later, and BAMB, they are shaping up into a baby . I always wondered where the Storks got them...

Now, I can probably just about cope with the producer and chief-animator credits for this motion picture, but the screen-play should really be written by an American with a good handle on the subject matter (remind you of anyone Jodan? ).

As you say Rich, time will be of the essence, so before any actual AViation takes place...


A point of exception which must begin:
Basic animation,
Map-object creation.
I dreamt of Texas and Florida last night,
One spinning, Daily-Prophet-headline-proclamation like;
The other snapping off from the rest of the South,
To flip mid Atlantic, and attach itself to Maine ,


... the play-writer, the director (fancy a toe Rich?), the producer and their associates (umm, I have 10 toes, so we need 8 more people to help us out?) need to sit down in a forum someplace and hammer out which states/regions/towns/whatevers are going to get included for each entry...

Some entries will take more time to present the same amount of info - our Southern Drawlers are likely to take their time, whereas the entire Noo-yawk section will probably be compressed into one (wild guess alert) 300-syllable-long word which will just take 20 seconds to say. Ok, so I exaggerated a bit, but you see what I mean. Point being, entries covering accents which are in no way rushed, should be conveyed by clips which do not feel rushed, so each umm, scene?, will need to be more like an abstract of each entry.

Once the actual story board is thus hammered, I would suggest Casting (oops, this is getting out of hand) work together with Jodan to distribute as much of the actual script writing to the voices concerned as Jodan feels comfortable with. That way Jodan, you don't have to write everything twice if you don't want to.



Note: If all that sounds like loads of work for (hopefully) quite a few people, well, thats because it is. Even an awesome but not particularly long AViation clip like the Beeblecast trial at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RDCZ6xLHC8k took a fair amount of time for all concerned.

However, I reckon it would be worth it (I really like these entries, and I haven't even had time to read them properly (my jaw isnt hurting at the mo) yet.

Now, I really must get back to w*rk...

vp

So this is what it's like to be in show biz.

I'm happy to help with condensing the information down into shorter "sound-bite" sections. That's no problem

I'm already itching to see/hear the finished work!

Just noticed that some people pronounce letters others don't - like the 'b' in 'obviously'. I say 'oviously'. I haven't read your entries yet so I don't know if I'm saying anything useful or not, but I'm saying it, and since I'm a New Yorker I know it won't take up too much of your time to listen to me.

Yeah, I dunno if that's specific to certain dialects or not. I didn't come across that in my research, but it might very well be a characteristic of urban speech for instance.

I annoyingly pronounce the 'b' in obviously, and I say Feb-ROO-arry rather than Feb-YOO-arry. But I hear "oviously" all the time, here in the midwest. So I dunno.

vogonpoet's ideas there sound great to me

The one point I would make is that the 'states/regions/towns/whatevers' will be defined by who we have available to us. Do we have all the accents covered now, and if not what are we missing? If we have one person for each of the Entries, then I would say that's fine and we go with those people's states. Can we have a list of Researchers, accents and states? vogonpoet could perhaps work on his wonderful-sounding animations as soon as we this.

For the rest of us, the first thing to do would be for Jodan to come up with a script for each accent, and an introduction. I'd be happy to narrate the latter so that you start with a non-American speaker, and this will help to differentiate between the accents we're meant to be focussing on. Just so you know how long it should be, J, the first three paragraphs of A26666850 formed the first minute of the Beeblecast trial, read in a fairly rapid NY accent (see http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RDCZ6xLHC8k ).

Once we have a script, you guys just need to record your section and email it to me. I will then work these together with vp's animations. I don't think I'll go mad with AV effects between the animations, and will use text to illustrate particular points and intonations for the most part. However, if there are any bits where you describe the shape of the mouth or anything, I could just film myself doing them. I do envisage it being fairly simple apart from the complex animations, though.

How does this sound?

I would offer to help if it were needed, but I think there are probably plenty of examples of the midland non-accent.

Go on broelan, someone has to do it, so it may as well be you, and in fact, you are by far the best person for the job (you're here right )... you know you want to. Think how great you'll feel to be contributing not just to these wonderful entries, but to the very future of the guide itself. You'll be fab <?>


There are still a variety of US researchers groups, right? Do people still hang out in any of them, or did J post this convo to his journal for a good, or rather, sad, reason?



Wow, some of those places are like graveyards. No post to the North East since march last year . Did [the/a] [insert adjective(s) of choice here] wave of anti-USA sentiment on h2g2 bore many of the US researchers away or something?

Or is just because the world has moved on, and the USA is so bloody big, and maintaining a sense of community is too disjointedly hard?

Its a shame, whatever the reason... even the struggling Scottish RG still manages to generate some activity from time to time...

Anyway, what Rich said about using the states and the people we have is of course the way its gonna have to go... so who are you all, and where do you represent? Lurking Drawlers, Tawkers, Propah speakahs et al, step forwards please.



Aaargh, I'm scared, I don't remember mentioning any of the words in the "complex" family preceding the word animation rich , unless the word NOT was in front in turn...


Umm, thats all for now.
vp

I signed up for the Central Researchers group some time ago, but it seems quiet over there?

And I'm sure Broelan and I would make very different contributions. Though I can't remember exactly where you are, Broelan? I know we have a couple researchers from St. Louis, but a St. Louis accent is waaaaay different from a Chicago "accent".

Anyway, I'll record some speaking if it's wanted, and if not, good luck with the project!

Yes, I'm in St Louis, or near enough to it.

It's funny you should mention the Researchers Groups as I just spent a couple hours yesterday updating the Central States Group.

I think most of them are monitored if not very active. The US *is* a big place, and h2g2 is dominated by British researchers. The groups don't get promoted like they did when they were new. We had a Front Page spot for a week last year, but it would have had to co-incide with someone from the area actually signing up or looking at the page during those seven days. Maybe during the next flurry of suggestions we can ask for a more permanent link to the Post's page of Researchers' Groups.

Meanwhile, I don't think it would hurt anything to drop a line in each of the US groups asking for volunteers.

vp, animating a square moving from left to right across a screen would be complex to me. That's kind of what I meant

Indeed Brolean... should I just point everyone here do you think? On the one hand, presumably the more people who are in a position to answer the original post in this thread know about Jodans the project, and its those people the AViation of the project will need, but on the other hand, it kinda feels like the AViation stuff is already cluttering up what was meant to be a discussion about dialects...

When are two conversations better than one? I never know what to think about that...

How about I start a convo at the Aviators page for discussion of this up-coming clip, and leave a message pointing to both conversations, thus allowing everyone to get on with actually helping out with the articles here, and worry about nuts and bolts avi stuff elsewhere, with the additional advantage of giving the Aviators page a feeling of achieving some sort of critical mass?

Fair enough rich

vp

Arrgh, there is a crucial "the better" missing from my previous post, and now more clutter, sorry

You can discuss the AViation aspect here or wherever. It doesn't matter to me

I've got the American 'Non-Accent' as well, unfortunately.