Do western americans have accents?

[SlowwHand]

So I don't know if so many can't read, or can't comprehend.

Californians have dialect, and accent.

[DuncanK]

Originally posted by monolith94
What do you consider to be the difference between dialect and accent?
And yes, Californians have accent. I can hear it VERY well - I meet alot of people from seattle, oregano, norcal and socal, and although the differences may be slight, they're there.

I agree that there is a slight difference. It's so slight that most people don't even notice.

[Imran Siddiqui]

Duncan, perhaps you will listen to a linguistic professor?

http://www.linguistlist.org/~ask-ling/archive-most-recent/msg02786.html

There are a couple of answers to your question. First off, as you pointed out, the regional differences in the West are generally smaller than in the East and the South. This has partly to do with the more recent settlement of the West (differences take time to develop), and partly to the mixing that has ocurred (settlers of the West came from many different places and blended together when they settled). Lumping the West and the Midwest together, we find fewer differences in that large area than we do along the East Coast. That's part of why "Broadcast English" (as it's called) is more like the speech of the West and the Midwest than the East or the South: it represents
a larger portion of the US than any Eastern variety does.

But probably just as important, the features that mark you as a Westerner or a Midwesterner are usually not stigmatized. We tend to notice the features of someone else's speech only if they carry some social value, either positive or negative. Very few features from the West or Midwest carry such social value. I am from Utah and still talk like a Utahn; I teach linguistics in New Jersey. My students never notice the peculiar features of my speech until I point them out ('cot' and 'caught' are the same for me, as are 'merry', 'marry', and 'Mary'). None of my students talk like I do, but none of my features are stigmatized, so nobody pays any attention. If I said 'father' without a final 'r', or if I 'pahked my cah' the way Bostoners do, everyone would notice. Broadcast English includes no stigmatized features.

But speakers of Broadcast English don't talk like the rest of us. There are peculiar features of Broadcast English, like pronouncing 'news' as 'nyews' and 'tune' as 'tyune', that, as far as I know, are not found in any other variety of American English. (They *are* found in British English.) The reason that speakers of Broadcast English sound like they're from the West or Midwest is that all of those varieties contain no stigmatized features and so we don't notice the differences.

The reaason that there are differences at all is because
language is constantly changing, in pronunciation and in
other ways, and if two groups of speakers of a language are separated for a long enough period of time, they will drift apart and the differences will eventually become noticeable (as British and American English have).

[DuncanK]

According to what Imran is saying, Californains say the word phone differently than the rest of English speakers because they don't round off the sound at the end. I don't really know what that means, but I skeptical. I don't think I say the word phone different at all.

[Imran Siddiqui]

Duncan: the merger of A and O can be found in 'cot' and 'caught' sounding exactly the same.

[SlowwHand]

Duncan, of course you don't think so. You don't hear it.

So, it's the comprehension then?

[Asher]

Originally posted by devilmunchkin
californians DEFINITELY have accents..the guys especially..they all have that slightly gay sound to their voice...and say doooood and whatever (just like texans say yall) and "right on" they elongate and kinda morph their o's.

Right on!
I love the California "accent". I used to have one from the time I lived there, but now it's back to just a typical "Western" accent.

[DuncanK]

But I should here the difference in peoples accents from say Urban San Francisco and the North West and I don't hear that either.

[SlowwHand]

Have you had a hearing test lately?
Can you tell the difference in a cat and a dog?

[Imran Siddiqui]

Like said, it was subtle. Some people on here can definetly tell between California and North West (as they've posted earlier), because they are more attuned to it.

[DuncanK]

Well, there could be a subtle difference between the way I talk and the person in the next town, but it's extremely subtle. In this case no one can identify a word that a person in Oregon would say differently than a person in California. I think subtle is actually an exageration. I don't think we can say that there is a distinct California accent from that.

[Asher]

It's not really a California accent as it is a California Youth accent.

The older people don't usually have one....

[SlowwHand]

Right. They grow out of it.

[Asher]

It's just that it's much less formal. You can't use words like "dude" when you're working, people get so used to repressing saying it they stop saying it altogether.

When you're young it doesn't matter.

[DuncanK]

I found something in the encyclopedia that shows that both sides are right.

People west of the Mississippi pronounce almost all English words the same. When there is a difference it is in the words they use not much with the pronounciation. This has very much to do with how much exposure each region had to different ethnic groups, mainly Spanish. Another factor was where the people came from who migrated to each region.

Settlement west of the Mississippi River was more mixed than settlement through the regular pathways in the East, and eastern regional features were leveled in the West just as the speech of people from different parts of England had been leveled in the colonies. Western American English is not all the same, however, because of varying amounts of influence from Spanish residents and because the plains and Western states were settled by different proportions of Northerners, Midlanders, and Southerners. The Pacific Northwest and northern California gained more Northerners and North Midlanders, while the Southwest and the southern plains received more settlement from the South and South Midland. -Encarta.com