Question: Are regional accents dying out?

[Tig]

It's creaky voice now. And while it used be mostly women, I hear men and women speaking in creaky voice. And then suddenly one day at work I noticed I myself was talking in creaky voice. Hopefully I just needed a glass of water. It's contagious.

Is this creaky voice like Lionel Barrymore's Potter voice?

 

[Bones McHorror]

Simply put I've been tested on this topic and related topics at one of the top linguistic grad schools in the country for the past year and a half with a 4.0 GPA. So I do have correct answers based on the current state of the field. I will repeat my same point again because it addresses everything you're saying if you can connect the dots: spoken languages are acquired and not learned by children. There's already an innate capacity for that acquisition. Written language is learned and not acquired, no innate capacity. It takes drilling and practice. In your example of Israel, the decision to revive Hebrew was not natural. The first Israeli occupants who began speaking it were speaking it as a 2LA or second language, not acquired naturally during the language acquisition years between infancy and 8 years old. Hebrew did not become a natural language in Israel until the children of those original occupants acquired it naturally with minimal input (Hebrew didn't have words for everything in modern day life as it was a dead language). When the first generation children acquired it naturally it immediately changed as their capacity to acquire and generate language filled in some of the missing blanks from the dead language. So the decision makers who consciously made Hebrew the official language never became fluent 1LA speakers, their children did. If you're truly interested in the subject and not just thoughts bouncing around in your brain read up on Nicaraguan sign language. It's an incredible story. Sign languages are acquired exactly the same as spoken languages and share many of the same features and syntax.

The dispute was not with spoken language being natural or acquired, but with your claim that language change is always natural (natural meaning no conscious involvement from people or their institutions). This relies on an untenable belief that everything in it is innate which is false; and that anything non-innate is not language or only an imitation (which is circular logic).

I never said sign language wasn't acquired. (Nicaraguan is not different than any other, though). The point was that signing is language like writing and speaking. And seeing how it is not spoken, linguistics cannot be limited to speaking if they study sign language. That's on top of the fact that they do indeed study writing. Again, naturally acquired language is not the only language. When someone learns Spanish they are using language. When someone learns to write, they are using language. If an Arab moves to France and writes a novel or scientific paper in a second language (not acquired as a child)... he is still contributing to the French language the same as anyone else. Even if he never speaks once. If I learn sign language to speak with a deaf relative, again, we are both using language. Really none of this is controversial.

The issue with Israel is that they made a conscious decision to revive it, and to expand it to even people who move to Israel, which took government involvement. Hence their government had a direct influence on how the language changed, and still does. From being a mostly dead language to becoming a modern and usable language with a relatively large community of speakers. The argument was not that it cannot be or is not acquired. Of course it can and is like any other. But it likely would not be right now without there being a state with an interest in it existing and expanding to more speakers. There are other factors in why it exists, but nature is not the only factor. The reverse, if we just let Hebrew die out, would also not be natural change. It would be a conscious decision or apathy, but not really a thing that must happen because it is natural. However, it could very well have happened instead.

 

[rickenvox]

The dispute was not with spoken language being natural or acquired, but with your claim that language change is always natural (natural meaning no conscious involvement from people or their institutions). This relies on an untenable belief that everything in it is innate which is false; and that anything non-innate is not language or only an imitation (which is circular logic).

I never said sign language wasn't acquired. (Nicaraguan is not different than any other, though). The point was that signing is language like writing and speaking. And seeing how it is not spoken, linguistics cannot be limited to speaking if they study sign language. That's on top of the fact that they do indeed study writing. Again, naturally acquired language is not the only language. When someone learns Spanish they are using language. When someone learns to write, they are using language. If an Arab moves to France and writes a novel or scientific paper in a second language (not acquired as a child)... he is still contributing to the French language the same as anyone else. Even if he never speaks once. If I learn sign language to speak with a deaf relative, again, we are both using language. Really none of this is controversial.

The issue with Israel is that they made a conscious decision to revive it, and to expand it to even people who move to Israel, which took government involvement. Hence their government had a direct influence on how the language changed, and still does. From being a mostly dead language to becoming a modern and usable language with a relatively large community of speakers. The argument was not that it cannot be or is not acquired. Of course it can and is like any other. But it likely would not be right now without there being a state with an interest in it existing and expanding to more speakers. There are other factors in why it exists, but nature is not the only factor. The reverse, if we just let Hebrew die out, would also not be natural change. It would be a conscious decision or apathy, but not really a thing that must happen because it is natural. However, it could very well have happened instead.

language acquisition is the mechanism that controls language change. It's the natural selection amongst a world of mutations, some which will stick and some which won't. And it's across generations.

Just read up on Nicaraguan sign language for god's sake and you'll see why I brought it up. Everything I've said is not original and comes from a body of well accepted, peer-reviewed research. Studying won't harm you.

As long as parents have kids and get to raise them the languages of the parents don't die out. It's only the acquisition that makes it a living language. And if a government forced native speakers of one language to speak another (as a second language, without first language fluency), they would still use their native language in the household. The US government almost killed Native American languages by pulling children out of their homes, away from their parents, and moving them far away from home to so called "Indian schools." But the languages aren't dead yet, almost but not yet. Any ethnic/language group that moves to the United States, the native language of their home country is most often lost by the 3rd generation. The 2nd generation is raised with the native language in the home and English from their school and friends. When they have kids they mostly speak English in the home and that's what the child picks up. Doesn't make Japanese a dead language in Japan. People move in and out of language groups. And "if" they did teach their children the language they can't speak fluently, their kids though natural processes would fill in the blanks and change it. Just like Hebrew which is now not the same as ancient Hebrew. Language acquisition is also the mechanism for the creation of pidgin and creole languages, people don't do it consciously. If governments could kill languages then Hebrew should have disappeared centuries ago. African slaves were forced to speak English in this country, but it was more relaxed in Spanish or French held territory like New Orleans. The words "hip" and "cat" that jazz musicians used in the 20th century and hipster which is still in use are African root words which have nothing to do with anatomy or kitties. The double negative that American blacks often use is a device in African languages to emphasize the negative. Not all cultures apply Aristotelian logic to their use of negatives in language. The countries where the slaves came from still speak all the native languages, the languages did not die because a subset of people were moved into an area with a different language. And, they changed English in many small but lasting ways (they as in generations, not single people with a language changing mission). If all the speakers of one language lived in one little village in some part of the world, a government could make that language die only by nuking the little village.

 

[rickenvox]

North Carolina

I proudly enunciate x's in words, none of that 'fittin' or 'fidden'.

OK, pronunciation isn't really correct or incorrect, it's regional. I'm guessing you pronounce lawyer as "law-yer" (aw as in saw) instead of "loyer" (oy as in boy). And that's a southern thing, not just North Carolina. That's a pretty common example in textbooks. Is it true?

'fitten' /'fidden' is mostly a black southern pronunciation from what I've heard. But supposedly the southern belle accent came from the influence of black nannies raising white southern children (rich ones anyways). The other poster's example of pronouncing 'ask' as 'axe' is another black American speech pattern. Funny that if it's the same set of speakers the 'x' sound is avoided in 'fidden' but preferred over 'sk' in ask. BTW, there is no 'x' character in the phonetic alphabet, because it's actually the combination of two consonants, 'k' and 's'. Some languages do not allow certain consonant clusters. For example English only allows the 'x' or 'ks' sound at the end of a syllable or word. Never at the beginning of a word (ignore the spelling, xylophone is a 'z').

 

[Bones McHorror]

This you're wrong about. People adopt new words in their lexicon their entire life. People can imitate certain trends in intonation and other elements of prosody. They only change language when a child acquires them naturally. Then it sticks. And there are new novel words that stick, shortcuts in grammar that stick, but they stick across a wide range of speakers within the language group and over generations. If some novel trend starts in our lifetime we have no way to gauge if it's going to change English or not. We're not in control of that. That's why the gender pronouns debate is so heated. You can't change language by edict. That's not how languages change. Even a dictator won't live long enough to see if language edicts stick or not.

Well using this standard we can't be sure of anything, because it assumes that only permanence is an actual change. The change between Old English and Middle English obviously weren't permanent changes, but they were changes. (it's also noted that the change between these two periods wasn't very natural either). Also there is a contradiction in thinking something has to both change constantly and be permanent.

Also, children do not acquire most of the changes that happen to a language. You are using your own definition of language that is untenable to the real world. And even if children needed to acquire all semantic content and everything else about a language before they are 8, which is absurd, something would have had to cause that like new words existing before they were born. Something some human caused to happen by inventing it. And therefore the change is not entirely a natural phenomenon. And therefore your previous statement is still wrong.

It also doesn't understand that much of a language is not used by most speakers at all, such as scientific language or things like fiction/poetry and so on. Which is nonetheless still a part of the language whether kids read it at 5 years old or 50 years old or never at all makes no difference. It's because that is still language, regardless of anyone acquiring any of it in some early stage of development. And no one gets to claim that a science term or concept isn't real because no child has yet to understand it yet. So I don't think that has any relevance to language. The issue of pronouns I think is an issue about whether we use existing terms properly or should form new categories based on the evidence we have available about gender. And that's not controversial at a linguistic level, it happens all the time in science or just in normal everyday life. We recategorize things constantly in reality. It's controversial because some people do not believe being transgender is a real thing and want to enforce existing gender categories. That's one reason. Secondarily, I don't think anyone has all of the answers for how to solve it, as far as I know. It would be easier if there was one, but the whole point of the anti-binary movement is the absence of easy categorization. I don't think it is a language controversy, though. It's the same for using the n-word to describe black people. It's not about waiting to see if children keep acquiring the n-word or not. Is anyone really waiting for that? It's people who are racist vs. people who aren't. In that case, it is mostly just settled through social pressure that being racist is bad. And therefore the language means you are also bad. It was a category meant to demean them and not something formed in language by nature.

We change certain things by edict all the time. I mean, the fact that 'president of the United States' is different in one year vs. another is a change in how we use language. What the term president of the US means has changed as an institutional fact (facts that depend on human agreement). The semantic content of that phrase changed. Not because of the will of the children, but citizens of a country over 18 who voted in an election. And that's a rather mundane aspect of language. And the president doesn't have to wait until someone learns that new fact be named the president. He just is one... later he won't be. Institutional facts can also mean that 'legal voter' means something different within our lifetimes, say to include people under 18. That is quite easily changed in a democratic society all the time; at least from a linguistic (if not political) point of view. A month ago people changed a bunch of meanings in physics. Smart people, not kids, decided. Language just isn't that rigid as you're making it out to be.

 

[335clone]

There is actually no [g] sound at the end of those words, it's an engma. Which is a velar nasal. The 'ng' sound which is made with air passing through your nose like an [n] or [m], but with the blade of your tongue against the velar portion of the roof of your mouth.

I like the southern 'fixin' with the x substituted for a tap (the soft [d] like sound that most Americans use when saying "batting"). Almost like 'fittin' or 'fidden'.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

According to my wife, it's fiddy (fitty) down in Fla & La where she grew up. As in I'm fittytu go home soon.

Next we need to discern the difference between Y'All and All Y'all.

 

[rickenvox]

Also, children do not acquire most of the changes that happen to a language. You are using your own definition of language that is untenable to the real world. And even if children needed to acquire all semantic content and everything else about a language before they are 8, which is absurd, something would have had to cause that like new words existing before they were born. Something some human caused to happen by inventing it. And therefore the change is not entirely a natural phenomenon. And therefore your previous statement is still wrong.

Geez Bones, this is basic stuff and you're actually requiring me to type a textbook here. There are innate switches in our brains for the facilitation of language. They get set on and off during the acquisition phase. The switches control what sounds are used in your native language's phonemic inventory. The ones that could have been set on as a child, but are not required in the native language, get set off. You don't use them. And they become difficult to learn in adulthood.

The Indian retroflex 't' is one example. Indians make the 't' sound by curling the tongue backwards and hitting the roof of the mouth. Our 't' is made by our tongues touching the alveolar ridge, which is forward. Once you get past a certain age that ability is either cemented in or missing. And learning later in life is never a natural process. Although many actors have done a great job of imitating accents and dialects with much work (although Pygmalion was based on false assumptions about language acquisition and Shaw had many crazy, pre-linguistics, ideas about language). But that's not natural and hard to do consistently or to know the exceptions to other dialectical pronunciation rules.

Children add new words to their lexicon at a slow pace which gradually increases, and then goes through the roof after the age of 5 and continues throughout most of our lives. Again, these are not things misunderstood by linguists. If I mentioned half the equation to someone else studying linguistics, because I don't want to write a book, we would still have a common understanding of exactly what language acquisition means and what it doesn't mean.

Everything affecting language is 'human', but some factors are innate, some are conscious, and some are unconscious. 98% of our thoughts are unconscious. To use cognitive linguistics and George Lakoff specifically, our speech is formed in frames. We know the central point of what we're going to say before we can even formulate the sentence that carries that thought. Ideas do not exist in sentences. Our accompanying hand gesture to indicate the peak of a mountain can start in the sentence before we get to the mention of the mountain peak. Our hand already knows where the sentence/grammar/words are going because we don't think in those terms, we think in ideas, concept, frames. Forming the sentences and phrases are unconscious and conscious. We consciously modify or chooses better words as the words are coming out of our mouths. We can also plan what we say, but sometimes that comes out different than we planned.

Those rules of grammar and sentence construction are acquired. What consonants sound like next to other phonemes and how they change in different settings are not learned from reading. Orthography doesn't even capture sounds as we make them (the 'knight' example, there is no silent 'k', there is simply no 'k' in 'knight' in English, only in orthography because it's left over from past languages that did pronounce it exactly the same as it was written).

The majority of human existence had spoken language and no written language. Books can only influence language because you also hear the spoken version in your head. And many times, like Sartre's self-taught man in Nausea, if you haven't heard people actually say the words you're reading you'll come up with the wrong pronunciation (and look stupid). There are no consistent pronunciation rules for written English. Orthography and all writing is a byproduct of spoken language. And it certainly doesn't drive pronunciation or prosody changes when it does a poor and inaccurate job of representing it.

 

[rickenvox]

According to my wife, it's fiddy (fitty) down in Fla & La where she grew up. As in I'm fittytu go home soon.

Next we need to discern the difference between Y'All and All Y'all.

I like "all y'all" which actually adds more meaning to y'all. I also like "might could." I don't talk like that but find it pleasant and friendly.

 

[rickenvox]

another episode of "Things Rickenvox does when he's supposed to be writing a paper."

Part II - Rickenvox logs out of Mark Wein forums and starts playing guitar. Then goes for a bike ride (where all serious thinking is done).

 

[335clone]

I like "all y'all" which actually adds more meaning to y'all. I also like "might could." I don't talk like that but find it pleasant and friendly.

As I understand it, Y'all is singular, and All Y'all is plural.


But my all time favorite southern comment is "Bless her (or your) heart". You can call a woman a cunt to her face and get a softer look back than saying THAT.

 

[Bones McHorror]

language acquisition is the mechanism that controls language change. It's the natural selection amongst a world of mutations, some which will stick and some which won't. And it's across generations.

Just read up on Nicaraguan sign language for god's sake and you'll see why I brought it up. Everything I've said is not original and comes from a body of well accepted, peer-reviewed research. Studying won't harm you.

As long as parents have kids and get to raise them the languages of the parents don't die out. It's only the acquisition that makes it a living language. And if a government forced native speakers of one language to speak another (as a second language, without first language fluency), they would still use their native language in the household. The US government almost killed Native American languages by pulling children out of their homes, away from their parents, and moving them far away from home to so called "Indian schools." But the languages aren't dead yet, almost but not yet. Any ethnic/language group that moves to the United States, the native language of their home country is most often lost by the 3rd generation. The 2nd generation is raised with the native language in the home and English from their school and friends. When they have kids they mostly speak English in the home and that's what the child picks up. Doesn't make Japanese a dead language in Japan. People move in and out of language groups. And "if" they did teach their children the language they can't speak fluently, their kids though natural processes would fill in the blanks and change it. Just like Hebrew which is now not the same as ancient Hebrew. Language acquisition is also the mechanism for the creation of pidgin and creole languages, people don't do it consciously. If governments could kill languages then Hebrew should have disappeared centuries ago. African slaves were forced to speak English in this country, but it was more relaxed in Spanish or French held territory like New Orleans. The words "hip" and "cat" that jazz musicians used in the 20th century and hipster which is still in use are African root words which have nothing to do with anatomy or kitties. The double negative that American blacks often use is a device in African languages to emphasize the negative. Not all cultures apply Aristotelian logic to their use of negatives in language. The countries where the slaves came from still speak all the native languages, the languages did not die because a subset of people were moved into an area with a different language. And, they changed English in many small but lasting ways (they as in generations, not single people with a language changing mission). If all the speakers of one language lived in one little village in some part of the world, a government could make that language die only by nuking the little village.

Let's get back on track. You said languages never changes except naturally. That was wrong. That's all that matters here.

Your basic argument is that since those people didn't die out then nothing changed. Those destructive forces did absolutely nothing to change the language. That's wrong and you know it. Your theory of language also seems suspiciously limited to isolated factoids/truisms.

Here is some actual linguistics.

 

[CBHScott]

I actually miss hearing "fixin' to". I have been away from home so long that it's lost in my vernacular.

“Vernacular???? That’s a derby!!!”

 

[Bones McHorror]

Geez Bones, this is basic stuff and you're actually requiring me to type a textbook here. There are innate switches in our brains for the facilitation of language. They get set on and off during the acquisition phase. The switches control what sounds are used in your native language's phonemic inventory. The ones that could have been set on as a child, but are not required in the native language, get set off. You don't use them. And they become difficult to learn in adulthood.

The Indian retroflex 't' is one example. Indians make the 't' sound by curling the tongue backwards and hitting the roof of the mouth. Our 't' is made by our tongues touching the alveolar ridge, which is forward. Once you get past a certain age that ability is either cemented in or missing. And learning later in life is never a natural process. Although many actors have done a great job of imitating accents and dialects with much work (although Pygmalion was based on false assumptions about language acquisition and Shaw had many crazy, pre-linguistics, ideas about language). But that's not natural and hard to do consistently or to know the exceptions to other dialectical pronunciation rules.

Children add new words to their lexicon at a slow pace which gradually increases, and then goes through the roof after the age of 5 and continues throughout most of our lives. Again, these are not things misunderstood by linguists. If I mentioned half the equation to someone else studying linguistics, because I don't want to write a book, we would still have a common understanding of exactly what language acquisition means and what it doesn't mean.

Everything affecting language is 'human', but some factors are innate, some are conscious, and some are unconscious. 98% of our thoughts are unconscious. To use cognitive linguistics and George Lakoff specifically, our speech is formed in frames. We know the central point of what we're going to say before we can even formulate the sentence that carries that thought. Ideas do not exist in sentences. Our accompanying hand gesture to indicate the peak of a mountain can start in the sentence before we get to the mention of the mountain peak. Our hand already knows where the sentence/grammar/words are going because we don't think in those terms, we think in ideas, concept, frames. Forming the sentences and phrases are unconscious and conscious. We consciously modify or chooses better words as the words are coming out of our mouths. We can also plan what we say, but sometimes that comes out different than we planned.

Those rules of grammar and sentence construction are acquired. What consonants sound like next to other phonemes and how they change in different settings are not learned from reading. Orthography doesn't even capture sounds as we make them (the 'knight' example, there is no silent 'k', there is simply no 'k' in 'knight' in English, only in orthography because it's left over from past languages that did pronounce it exactly the same as it was written).

The majority of human existence had spoken language and no written language. Books can only influence language because you also hear the spoken version in your head. And many times, like Sartre's self-taught man in Nausea, if you haven't heard people actually say the words you're reading you'll come up with the wrong pronunciation (and look stupid). There are no consistent pronunciation rules for written English. Orthography and all writing is a byproduct of spoken language. And it certainly doesn't drive pronunciation or prosody changes when it does a poor and inaccurate job of representing it.

Once again you're taking my disagreement with you for disagreement with linguistics. I am not in dispute with the claim that language is acquired. Nor anything else in mainstream linguistics. But your own idiosyncratic theory which is wrong. Wherein everything language based is either innate or not really language. Which is no one else on earth has ever believed, as far as I know.

Writing not being present for most of human existence is consistent with what I said that non-natural factors change language. Writing is not acquired but is a huge part of language. And there being a spoken version of every written text is both factually wrong, and not relevant. Even if books were just speeches guys used to give, which they aren't, it wouldn't change the fact that they are language. Or change the fact that they change how people use language both in how we talk, think, write, maybe even sign, and so on using language. Do you think Sartre used to go around from town to town reading all 600+ pages of Being and Nothingness to all and sunder in Paris? And anyone who reads it now hears his voice in their head from that time they heard him. And then when he died new people couldn't read it anymore because they were afraid to look stupid because they can't pronounce his words? Because that is wrong. Even that absurd reality was true, the purpose of the book is to change philosophical language used by adults not to teach kids how to pronounce their alphabet.

 

[shoeless]

As I understand it, Y'all is singular, and All Y'all is plural.


But my all time favorite southern comment is "Bless her (or your) heart". You can call a woman a cunt to her face and get a softer look back than saying THAT.

Maybe this will help.

 

[rickenvox]

Once again you're taking my disagreement with you for disagreement with linguistics. I am not in dispute with the claim that language is acquired. Nor anything else in mainstream linguistics. But your own idiosyncratic theory which is wrong. Wherein everything language based is either innate or not really language. Which is no one else on earth has ever believed, as far as I know.

Writing not being present for most of human existence is consistent with what I said that non-natural factors change language. Writing is not acquired but is a huge part of language. And there being a spoken version of every written text is both factually wrong, and not relevant. Even if books were just speeches guys used to give, which they aren't, it wouldn't change the fact that they are language. Or change the fact that they change how people use language both in how we talk, think, write, maybe even sign, and so on using language. Do you think Sartre used to go around from town to town reading all 600+ pages of Being and Nothingness to all and sunder in Paris? And anyone who reads it now hears his voice in their head from that time they heard him. And then when he died new people couldn't read it anymore because they were afraid to look stupid because they can't pronounce his words? Because that is wrong. Even that absurd reality was true, the purpose of the book is to change philosophical language used by adults not to teach kids how to pronounce their alphabet.

You've misinterpreted almost everything I've said, so there's not much use in replying as you'll also misinterpret my replies.

 

[yabba]

spoken languages are acquired and not learned by children. There's already an innate capacity for that acquisition. Written language is learned and not acquired, no innate capacity. It takes drilling and practice.

as someone with a background in the neurobiology of learning and memory, this acquired vs learned thing is wacky. linguists are wacky.

 

[rickenvox]

as someone with a background in the neurobiology of learning and memory, this acquired vs learned thing is wacky. linguists are wacky.

There are specific examples of evidence for both. There are a couple of things that happen at a specific time in childhood language acquisition that can't be explained by learning or outside influence. But I'm still open to both since I'm interested in the cognitive linguistics side.

Mostly I'm open to both since universal grammar is a bit like a religion with half my professors.

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

[bsman]

Wisconsin is one place where I can guarantee you that regional accents are NOT dying out. I played this for my daughter last night and she told me: "That sounds just like your sister, Paula!"

 

[Andrew Sak]

Wisconsin is one place where I can guarantee you that regional accents are NOT dying out. I played this for my daughter last night and she told me: "That sounds just like your sister, Paula!"

I find regions other than mine are the ones with the accents.

What made you dig up this thread?

I love Wisconsin by the way. I stayed in a cabin there for a week in the summer before 6th grade. We did a whole lot of fishing, hiking, swimming, and wild berry eating.

 

[bsman]

I find regions other than mine are the ones with the accents.

What made you dig up this thread?

I love Wisconsin by the way. I stayed in a cabin there for a week in the summer before 6th grade. We did a whole lot of fishing, hiking, swimming, and wild berry eating.

It's just that a friend of my wife posted that asking if it was accurate. The friend is a FIB, and yes, it's accurate. We moved to Cali from Madison 32 years ago, and plan to retire there, so we have a lot of friends and family back there - and a fair proportion of them would sound pretty fuckin' funny here in NorCal!

One of the reasons I want to retire there is JUST for the fishing, hiking, canoing, etc. I figure we'll probably be snowbirds and spend winters elsewhere, because anybody who says (s)he loves that shit is either crazy or lying...