The A.G.R.A. Files

[sfmpco]

Yeah, I think I'd have gone a bit off-piste myself without an outlet like this forum where I could discuss it.  Yikes.  One thing that show does every now and then is make me run to the dictionary because they'll throw in a word that is definitely not part of my vocabulary, and I have to look the darn thing up.  Hello!  Who uses the word "meretricious" in their daily vocabulary????  Apparently only Sherlock (and Moffit and Gatiss). (TGG)

[Slithytove]

I know that British accents can be problematic for Americans but I've never really understood the reason why. We don't seem to have the problem in reverse - there are a lot of US programmes on British tv and no-one seems to have difficulty understanding the dialogue. There are many different accents within the US itself, so I wonder if, for instance, a New Yorker has difficulty watching a programme set in New Orleans. Or is it just foreign programmes that cause this problem?

 

Even If anyone does struggle to follow British accents, I wouldn't have thought they would have much difficulty following Benedict, as his speech is extremely clear and precise. Not that Martin doesn't speak clearly too, but Benedict's enunciation is perfect. Sherlock does, admittedly, speak quite fast and his use of language tends to be fairly formal - though that might be an advantage, as he rarely uses colloquialisms.

[sfmpco]

Cute how BC has a tiny lisp sometimes but completely loses it when in character.  Once in a great while I can hear it in Sherlock but not often.

[Carol the Dabbler]

I know that British accents can be problematic for Americans but I've never really understood the reason why. We don't seem to have the problem in reverse - there are a lot of US programmes on British tv and no-one seems to have difficulty understanding the dialogue. There are many different accents within the US itself, so I wonder if, for instance, a New Yorker has difficulty watching a programme set in New Orleans. Or is it just foreign programmes that cause this problem?

 

There aren't a lot of British programs on American television in general.  PBS has several, and of course there's BBC America (if you have cable), and maybe some of the other cable channels have some.  But I think it's still mostly American productions, so it's mostly American accents.  Maybe there are more American shows on British television?  It keeps surprising me that British people seem quite familiar with any number of our shows.

 

As for American regional accents, they don't often show up on TV.  For example, Cheers was set in Boston, but only one character (Cliff the mailman) had a Boston accent.  Friends was set in New York City, but I don't recall that any of the regulars had a noticeable NYC accent.  Most of what you hear on American TV is a fairly average American accent, which is understood by just about everybody in the country.  (In fact, my father was convinced that they talked the same way he did, despite his noticeable Hoosier accent.)

 

However, if you put actual people from, as you say, New York City and New Orleans in a room together, they might well have a bit of trouble understanding one another.  Even more so with, say, someone from the backwoods of Maine and someone from rural Georgia -- country folk tend to have stronger accents just about everywhere, I think.

[Arcadia]

Yep, I think you've pretty much hit the nail on the head Carol. When I was a kid I couldn't understand a word my Tennessee cousins said, now I don't  even notice they have an accent, because I've gotten used to it. My Brooklyn-born brother-in-law still notices it, though, a lot.

 

Also, I read somewhere that American regional accents are evening out somewhat, due to the influence of the "generic American" accent used on our TV shows. Kind of sad, in a way.

[Zain]

I know that British accents can be problematic for Americans but I've never really understood the reason why. We don't seem to have the problem in reverse - there are a lot of US programmes on British tv and no-one seems to have difficulty understanding the dialogue. There are many different accents within the US itself, so I wonder if, for instance, a New Yorker has difficulty watching a programme set in New Orleans. Or is it just foreign programmes that cause this problem?

 

 

I am not American, but I'd say British English is more of a problem than American English to most foreigners, too. Whenever I watch a British show, I get this first few seconds in which I need to mentally adapt. It's just a different pronounciation of the vowels than what would appear "natural" to me. Which, of course, depends on one's own language.

 

In linguistics, you distinguish vowels by characterizing the level of roundedness of your lips, as well as the position of the tongue. I'd say - without consulting any source! Might be complete BS -  British English, or at least most British accents, have a high level of roundedness of the lips in a lot of vowels. American English's vowels are less rounded. And because most languages depend on the clear enunciation of vowels to distinguish similar semes, i.e. meaning carrying sequences of speech, it can be harder to understand it when your own language vowels are on average less rounded.

You have to get used to the phonological difference, otherwise it is more difficult to connect the utterance to its semantic properties.

[Carol the Dabbler]

I believe you're absolutely right about that, Zain.  British vowels do sound far more rounded to me (assuming that I understand the term).  For example, their short "o" is sort of an "aw" whereas ours is an "ah."

 

You might want to read up on The Great Vowel Shift, which occurred over a few hundred years in the fairly recent past.  In Chaucer's time (late 1300's), English vowels were pronounced pretty much the same as in any other European language.  Over the next few hundred years, all sorts of changes occurred, and because North America was colonized during that time, the later changes sometimes took different forms here vs. back in the UK.

 

[Zain]

Yes, I've heard about that shift before. It's brilliant what you can find out about how people spoke centuries ago. And, in a way, millenia. Just mind-blowing at times, how much we seem to know about ourselves, and yet we, know nothing at all. Thank you for the link, I had forgotten a lot of details! Like some particular steps. It is actually quite possible to "hear" a lot of Germanic properties once you go back this much. Nowadays, few words sound like their Germanic roots, though they are very much noticeable in the written form. One of the most intriguing things about English is, in my opinion, the combination of so many other languages, like Celtic, Germanic, and Latin. Then there's the French influence, too. It just adapted so much, and in a way, it got richer through those influences.

[Carol the Dabbler]

Yes, borrowing from so many languages tends to give us a lot of more-or-less synonyms that each have a slightly different connotation.

 

For example, someone might talk about eating roast pig (the good ol' Anglo-Saxon term), but the more common way to phrase that would be roast pork (from French), because the Anglo-Saxon serfs were tending the livestock while the Norman-French lords of the manor were feasting in style.