For the linguistically inclined: 'Strine younger than thought.
Even in the '80s Aussies were still saying "be-ah" (and saying it a lot, if I remember correctly. Which I do.)
Funny; just this morning I was thinking that Aussie/Kiwi and even South African accents and cultural referents seem a lot more Englishy than American ones do, and wondering when the various sociolinguistic splits occurred.
Also I recently remembered a Norwegian friend's years-ago conjecture that the notorious American "arrr" (r) came from Irish immigrants, after we watched some movie with Irish people in it. Made sense to me at the time, though I don't know much linguistic history. (Linguistory?)
MISTRESS OF SCIENCE! Mwah ha ha ha.
(Actually now with PhD, but Doctor of Philosophy just doesn't have the same evil ring, does it?)
About Me
- liz
- If you're looking for my primary blog, it's the Doctorlizardo one there at the bottom. (The parenting one is the Furmother one.)
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8 comments:
That's Awrrrresome! (as you Yanks say)
I think I recall hearing that the Puritan came from a part of England where the accent is pretty flat. Then, once they got here, it kept getting flatter.
Funny you should mention it, because I've just been reading a lot about r-fulness and r-lessness.
From _American English: Dialects and Variation_ (Wolfram and Schilling-Estes):
***
Contrary to popular perceptions, the speech of the Jamestown colonists more closely resembled today's American English than today's standard British speech, since British English has undergone a number of innovations which did not spread to once-remote America.
***
Me again...the Ulster Scots (our >,>,>,>,>,>, ancestor) definitely brought r-fulness with them and had a great deal of influence on speech here. But the British English we started out with was actually r-ful; r-lessness later gained prestige in Britain.
That's also why we still have some r-lessness on the East Coast -- they had more contact with the mothership and emulated the new r-less prestige dialect.
Incidentally, r-lessness is becoming less prevalent in New York because of the stigma attached to it.
And of course, there are a bazillion places where r-fulness and r-lessness came together and duked it out, so don't quote me about any particular area of the U.S. But in general, that's the story as I understand it.
I haven't, but it sounds like something I would like to see.
I just realized that I've come to think of you as The Non-Linguistic One (ha)!
The PBS thing had some interesting stuff, but a few things were just painful to watch -- like the gray-haired host tossing out teenagerisms.
Well, then, I guess that makes you the non-psychologically-minded one! (Also "ha"!)
We're just such brazenly exceptional experts at this point, that even we can't match ourselves! Or... something... like that.
Really, I just think of you as having a database that is broader than mine in that area, which I can now access the interesting bits without having to actually get the degree. Kind of a peripheral drive, as it were.
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