Where is English the Official Language ?

[zoobyshoe]

You can't live in the past

Hello. We're talking about language.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hnHv7NGWb0k

 

[cbetanco]

Hello. We're talking about language.

HAHA, ya... That video is also old. I stand by my statement. I'm from so cal, where movies are from, so we must be speaking the real english.

 

[zoobyshoe]

HAHA, ya... That video is also old. I stand by my statement. I'm from so cal, where movies are from, so we must be speaking the real english.

Sorry, your post is already 5 minutes old. I can't answer it or I'll just be living in the past.

 

[cbetanco]

Sorry, your post is already 5 minutes old. I can't answer it or I'll just be living in the past.

Touche. Oh wait, that's not English

 

[cbetanco]

But seriously, I hear younger people from, say, the east cost have less and less of an east coast accent, and we are all kind of sounding like we speak the same dialect of English here in the states. Of course, its just a trend I notice, some people still have a very heavy accent from other parts of the country. But I find it interesting how a small land like the UK has (seems like that to me) more variety in accents than the english spoken in the US

 

[zoobyshoe]

I can still hear it. The accent is admittedly reduced, but it is still there. There's nothing special there; accents tend to be attenuated in many large cities.


Its a suburb of St. Paul, so they're going to speak more or less the same as people from St. Paul (which is a bit different from Minneapolis).

If you hear a Mpls accent, and also a difference between Mpls and St Paul, I'm pretty sure you're hearing things.

Cities, actually, are often the hub of particular accents. Take Boston, New York, Baltimore, and Chicago. The accents are thickest the closer you are to the native core of the city. (The same is probably true of cities in the South, but I don't know the South and can't say for sure. I do know a New Orleans accent is quite different than an Atlanta accent, despite the fact both immediately and primarily stand out as "Southern".)

They don't have a Minnesota accent. They have a Ranger accent. Very distinct.

Ranger accent:

Minnesota accent, except he doesn't think he has one:

These two are definite accents that stand out. Regardless, they are not the caricature that you hear when people imitate a "Minnesota" accent. The second guy doesn't think he has an accent because he doesn't recognize the caricature as representing how he actually speaks. And he's right. Which goes back to my original point to Ivan: everyone in Minneapolis can imitate what a Minnesota accent is supposed to sound like, but no one in Minnesota actually talks that way.

Well, yes, he does. It is diminished, but he is a radio personality after all.

Thing is, if anything, he emphasizes the Minnesota edge for "A Prairie Home Companion", then reverts to his real accent when off the air. The show is essentially about being Minnesotan. He is the Mark Twain of Minnesota, as it were. There, in that video, I don't hear any accent worth mentioning.

Minnesotans speak a different dialect from the Midlands dialect.

They would, since the "Midlands" is in England.

Minnesotan is a variant of what wikipedia calls North Central American English.

This is what both your "Ranger" and your "Minnesotan" are speaking (the "Ranger" just has a thicker accent), and probably what they were shooting for in "Fargo". You don't actually hear this in the Twin Cities. What you hear in Mpls/St.Paul is pretty much what you hear in Des Moines and in Omaha, which is what you hear in movies and on TV. Right now an Indiana Jones movie is playing on my TV. People in Mpls, Des Moines, and Omaha all sound pretty much like Harrison Ford as Indiana Jones, and pretty much like the average white person in San Diego and LA.

 

[Ryan_m_b]

But seriously, I hear younger people from, say, the east cost have less and less of an east coast accent, and we are all kind of sounding like we speak the same dialect of English here in the states. Of course, its just a trend I notice, some people still have a very heavy accent from other parts of the country. But I find it interesting how a small land like the UK has (seems like that to me) more variety in accents than the english spoken in the US

Population bottleneck. People have been living in the UK for thousands of years whereas the US was settles by a small group of people a few hundred years ago.

 

[Jimmy Snyder]

*A New Hampshirism created to avoid taking the Lord's name in vain, while still expressing the same degree of emphasis. (Actually its use may extend to Vermont and Maine as well, I'm not sure.)

If you don't believe in Jiminy Cripes, Gosh will darn you to heck.

 

[zoobyshoe]

If you don't believe in Jiminy Cripes, Gosh will darn you to heck.

I guess I will be darned. I thought his last name was Cripe. Hence: "...for Cripe's sake,".

 

[Jimmy Snyder]

I guess I will be darned. I thought his last name was Cripe. Hence: "...for Cripe's sake,".

That's NH dialect. Here in the People's Republic we say Cripes' sake.

 

[Ryan_m_b]

I think england because english originatd there

This was addressed earlier in the thread, England does not have an official language I.e a language defined by government as the language of the country.

 

[Monique]

All government documents in England are in English right? That would indicate they do have a official language, although not on paper. I don't think they'll start sending out documents to their citizens in Swahili?

 

[SW VandeCarr]

All government documents in England are in English right? That would indicate they do have a official language, although not on paper. I don't think they'll start sending out documents to their citizens in Swahili?

The UK government does issue documents in Welsh through the Wales Office. Welsh has an equal status with English in the UK according to the link below.

http://www.walesoffice.gov.uk/about/welsh-language-scheme/

 

[zoobyshoe]

That's NH dialect. Here in the People's Republic we say Cripes' sake.

See, right there. The way you pronounce it, it sounds like you're saying "Cripe's" not "Cripes' ". Your enunciation is idiosynchratic.