"Wes" wrote in message
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"Ed Huntress" wrote:


"Wes" wrote in message
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"Ed Huntress" wrote:

We speak Standard English up in the north of michigan.

Wes

The hell you do. g


Hell is in Michigan.

Yes it is. I always wanted to take the tour but never got there.

Btw, you live in New Jersey, not Joisey.

Wes

When you say "standard English," you may be referring to standard North
American syntax and vocabulary. If so, then yes, most educated Americans
speak roughly the same dialect today.

But pronunciation varies widely. Michigan has four or five different
accents. Not knowing where you live, exactly, I can't point you to
anything
specific. If you're interested, though, here are samples:

http://web.ku.edu/~idea/northamerica...n/michigan.htm


That Michigan 3 seemed a bit out of place. Maybe an exile from NYC living
in Trenton, NJ.
Might even wonder if the guy is Jewish.

It does sound more Eastern-urban than the others. The ones from Detroit have
a mild, but noticeable Northern Cities Vowel Shift. That sound really stands
out to us Easterners, and we usually identify people who have that sound as
upper-Midwest.

The ones from Ishpeming and L'Anse are definitely Yoopers -- they have a
vowel shift, but not in the same direction. It's called "Canadian Raising,"
if you're interested. g

The others have the "Mary-marry-merry merger," another Midwest
characteristic identified with Inland North American dialect. It's stronger
in Wisconsin, but the whole region shows traces of it, especially from
people who have been planted there all their lives.


The other ones I sampled seemed pretty normal.

Of course. That's what you hear every day. g



There are lots of individual pronunciations that will mean something to
you
if you track such pronunciations in other parts of the country, but they
don't mean a lot standing by themselves. Still, it's interesting:

http://www4.uwm.edu/FLL/linguistics/.../state_MI.html

Anyway, your personal pronunciations may be different, but there are
definite differences between Michigan pronunciations and those of the most
"neutral" part of the country, which is a large area of the West coast.

I'm assuming we are leaving out "valley gurl" ?

g Yes, there are local dialects, but a lot of the far West is largely free
of the vowel shifts, raisings, non-rhotic pronunciations, and so on, that
the rest of us have in our pronunciations.



There are a few pronunciations of mine that give me away as mid-Atlantic,
but people rarely think I'm from NJ. That's because the remnants of my
accent are Philadelphia/Delaware Valley/South Jersey, not New
York/Northeast
New Jersey. It's the latter that most people think of as a "Jersey"
accent,
because that's what you hear on TV shows like "The Sopranos." But in fact
that is a very local and ethnic (Italian) accent in NJ. It's about like
Brooklyn. Most of us rarely hear that accent in real life. Only on TV.

Normally when I think Jersey, I think of my adopta dad's Polish family.
Well there was an
aunt (ANT) that was Italian but she didn't have a lot of influence.

In the northeast corner of the state there are several very local, ethnic
dialects that still survive. They're for the experts to sort out. I just
recognize them as New York-area ethnic (Italian, Polish, or Irish, mostly).
If you ever watch the new TV show "Jersey Shore" (which is unlikely g)
you'll hear a real hard-core Bergan County Italian pronunciation. The show
supposedly takes place in Seaside Heights, where I spent many days when I
was in high school. I'll be darned if I can remember ever hearing that harsh
accent down there, but you do hear it from time to time when those Bergan
County folks get loose. d8-)


Some regions have strong accents. Texans sound like Texans, Georgians
like Georgians, and
when I was speaking to a gent at Starrett today, it was certain he wasn't
calling from a
call center in India rather than Mass.

I *thought* Indiana had a neutral accent until I ran into some people that
lived near my
former part of the state. Those people have an accent. Don't know how I
missed that 35
years ago.

My great uncles kids have a bit of accent. Their mom is a WWII British
war bride that is
still living and as kids they spent a part of every year up in Alaska
hunting it tends to
make them sound like Canadian's that immigrated from England.

Wes

Well, as I said, it can be interesting. The more you learn about it the more
you get into it. My dad was more into it than I am, and he was a lot better
at spotting where people come from. He seemed to pick up the interest when
he was in the Marines in WWII.

--
Ed Huntress