DailyDirt: Talking Funny

Say That Again

from the urls-we-dig-up dept

Some people don’t think they have an accent when they talk, but even Mid-westerners have a few discernible pronunciations that can give them away. But beyond accents, there are also speaking quirks like slang and syntax and other weird sounds that people use when they communicate. Here are just a few examples.

• The Voices of California project is trying to document California’s English accents. The researchers are gathering examples of different slang, pronunciation and syntax that Californians use — such as “hella,” “pin/pen,” and the “positive anymore” phenomenon. [url]
• Is Obama addicted to saying “is is” when he talks? Thankfully, he doesn’t use extreme isisism, like the “triple is” in a sentence like: “What the American people’s understanding is, is, is that…” [url]
• The vocal fry is a low creak in someone’s voice while they talk — that mostly occurs at the end of sentences. It was thought to be more common among young women, but newer studies suggest otherwise. [url]

If you’d like to read more awesome and interesting stuff, check out this unrelated (but not entirely random!) Techdirt post.

Filed Under: accents, english, isisism, language, slang, spoken, vocal fry