Talk:Accent (linguistics)/Archive 1

message: If you dont like images replace them but dont remove them, i want the article to be nice. bye bye--HalaTruth(ሀላካሕ) 04:15, 30 December 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Hope you like the revamp

message: Are there specific reasons in the environment that cause people in certain locations to sound the way they do (as it has happened in the long term with skin pigment) or is it a strictly sociological construct? WHY do Los Angelenos sound different from New Yorkers, and Philadelphians, and Bostonians? Valley2city 20:18, 30 November 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: --> Valley2city: I hope you're not trying to say that skin pigment is a consequence of people living in certain locations? · Michel 13:29, 22 August 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Scientific reasons? 

message: When moving from one part of the world to another is it possible to pick up an accent? Why does this happen? Do people subliminally try to mimic the local tongue and end up having the accent themselves? —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Johnny b1212 (talk • contribs).
::Yes, but it depends on age. After about the age of 12, you're stuck with your first accent forever. ― LADY GALAXY ★彡  Refill/lol 00:03, 1 April 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Depends. As noted above, after about 12 you won't naturally take on the local accent. But it's possible for almost anyone with an ear and some time to practice to "take on" an accent with varying degrees of success - as seen in the "Accents and Acting" section. Almost certainly harder if you're trying to mimic an accent in a non-native language. -- Lonelywurm 13:28, 13 July 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Yes and no. See my comments based on personal experience, under 1.1 above · Michel 13:51, 22 August 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Picking up 

message: Sorry about the no ref but it is very difficult to get ref on this topic.--HalaTruth(ሀላካሕ) 04:16, 30 December 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Very difficult to get info

message: Can i get some feedback, please before you start saying bad things, do a quick look at what it looked like before i took on this little project.--HalaTruth(ሀላካሕ) 05:44, 2 January 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Okay it looks good, come and eat

message: These two words potato and tomato are classic examples of how stress produces different sounding words which are both correct. The stress Americans place on O called a "hard O" distinguishes it from the British version. Although not a direct feature of accents the stress or way the words are "sung" are a feature of accents.
: the stress or way the words are "sung" are a feature of accents: very much so! Unfortunately, this aspect is too often ignored or underestimated, probably because it requires the untraditional cooperation of the analytical mind of the linguist and the trained ear of the musicologist, a rare combination indeed · Michel 14:42, 22 August 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Potato and tomato?  I'm not sure what difference you are referring to here.  Tomato is pronounced very differently in British and American English, but it is the 'a' that is the difference ('ah' in Britain and 'ay' in America).  Both British and American speakers use 'ay' in potato.  The only difference I am aware of in that word is the second 't' which becomes a 'd' sound usually in America.  The 'o's aren't that different are they? Mralph72 11:02, 1 February 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Yes, they are. The standard British English  'o'  in these examples is slightly diphtonguized, sounding like varieties of  'o w'. Not the case of Scottish or Irish, though. · Michel 14:42, 22 August 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Potato and Tomato

message: This article already has a check by expert tag, we cant keep adding tags to the entire section, the entire socilinguistic section on wikipedia would need this tag, if it doesnt cite refernces that is one thing, but how is it or research? please discuss before cutting information from this article if and when u see fit.--HalaTruth(ሀላካሕ) 08:15, 23 January 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Anyone can identify OR, not just experts - simply read WP:NOR.  The article is incredibly poor as it stands right now and requires extensive cleanup.  OR is just one of its problems.  I placed the OR tag at the top of the page and then you removed it which is why I readded it along with inline OR tags so that you could see the substantial portions of text to which I was referring. It's unsurprising that once you noticed that you decided to leave the main OR tag at the top of the page which is what I had done to begin with. --Strothra 15:01, 23 January 2007 (UTC)

text: The above is preserved as an archive of the discussion.  Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the category's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this section.</div> espe accents where it is pure perception.--HalaTruth(ሀላካሕ) 15:11, 23 January 2007 (UTC)

text: POV is permitted on an article talk page.  Further, there is a great deal of sociolinguistic research concerning accents.  That research is what should be the focus of the article, not broad generalizations of perceptions substantiated with the editor's own examples.  That is origional research.  Rather, that can be avoided by focusing on what has been written by experts - hence why this is an encyclopedia, not "Halaqah's opinions about the world supported by his/her observations." --Strothra 15:21, 23 January 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: removing OR tag as many refernces have been given for sources, also it might be better to add OR tags to problem areas to help improvement.--HalaTruth(ሐላቃህ) 01:05, 3 February 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: OR tag

message: "America is a melting pot for accents and cultures from around the world" is a classic American sentiment on Americanism and has nothing to do with this article. The same is true of scores of existing countries and hundreds of historical ones. Furthermore the picture has absolutely nothing to do with accents. The comment that "lot's of people think Jamaican accents are cool", is an absolutely subjective, irrelevant, and downright stupid comment. I've removed these, please do not revert them without commenting.  Grendel's Mother 18:04, 31 January 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I agree with Halaqah's concern about process for bulk deletions, but I have to say that I also agree with Grendel's Mother on the content dispute.  This article is a mess, unrefrence, unencyclopedic, and could probably use a thorough pruning.  The problem is, comments on talk pages that things should be deleted often go unanswered unless the article is updated also.  I vote delete --Selket 18:38, 31 January 2007 (UTC)

text: My complaint wasn't that content isn't cited; my complaint was that content was unencyclpedic.  You may be able to find a source for the statement "Chinese people like oranges," but that does not mean it should go in Oranges.  "Many people think Jamaican accents are cool," is just such a statement. -Selket 20:01, 31 January 2007 (UTC)

text: P.S., but you are to be commended for your work on the article.  You have been putting in a lot of effort, and I think we all recognize that. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Selket (talk • contribs) 20:02, 31 January 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Removing the ridiculous

message: Accents are not fixed; they change over time. Usually this happens naturally, and often unconsciously. Accents can be expected to change until we are in our early twenties
: And even much later · Michel 15:06, 22 August 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Your examples only prove that certain individuals retain their accents, for example due to personal abilities (for the same reason that not everyone is "born with" a musical ear), or because, as might well be the case for the individuals you describe, their active  social life is revolving around other members of their communities of origin (as happens in the case of countless emigrant communities around the world, not least in the Chinatowns of North America). Or some altogether different explanation. See my comments under 1.1 above. What it boils down to, when dealing with losing/acquiring accents or, generally speaking, the ability to acquire languages, is that you must always keep in mind that while generalisations are useful as tools, their use will always be reduced by the presence of countless individual exceptions. An anthropologist might be well served by the notion that German culture is a culture of orderliness, but countless Germans will demonstrate to him/her that they can be quite disordely indeed! · Michel 15:06, 22 August 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Doubt 

message: History
"As human beings spread out into isolated communities, stresses and peculiarities develop. Over time these can develop into identifiable accents. In America, the interaction of people from many ethnic backgrounds contributed to the formation of the American accent. It is difficult to measure or predict how long it takes an accent to formulate. Accents in both America and Australia are derived from the British parent accent, yet the American accent remains more distant, either as a result of time or of external or "foreign" linguistic interaction, such as the Italian accent.[1] It could also be argued that the American accent is more fairly consistent with the manner in which English was pronounced by people from Britain - most especially people from Western parts of England - during the 1600s and early 1700s which presumably may not yet have been fully non-rhotic. Australia, New Zealand, and South Africa (particularly among whites of British settler descent) are more fairly recent transplants to their destinations so their accents are more-or-less in sync with the way English is spoken in Britain.
In many cases, the accents of non-English settlers from Britain affected the accents of the different colonies quite differently. Scottish and Irish immigrants had accents which greatly affected the vowel pronunciations of certain areas in Australia and Canada.[1]"
God, this is not USApedia, is this the point of view people want to have in the "history of accents in the world"-section? 194.144.5.171 14:07, 1 May 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  International encyclopedia?