Comments on: The rain in spain falls mainly on the plane

Question: The rain in spain falls mainly on the plane

Samuel Farrow — Sat, 21 Jul 2007 21:05:01 -0800

What is the shortest sentence that would highlight differences in dialects and accents in the English language? I am looking for some thinking about accents. Ideally ideas about the way we sound.

Awesome would be language quirks in particular groups within each country (such as the rolling r NZ has in Southland.).

Including English quirks in areas where it is spoken as a second language, and why.

By: pompomtom

pompomtom — Sat, 21 Jul 2007 21:15:11 -0800

The first things that come to my mind are regionalisms anyway, but I'd try "Fish and chips on a really sunny day. Boyo."

By: niles

niles — Sat, 21 Jul 2007 21:18:28 -0800

Fish and Chips. (on preview, as pompomtom says) It's the best way to tell the difference between Australian and New Zealander (?) accents.

By: rob511

rob511 — Sat, 21 Jul 2007 21:18:45 -0800

It may not be the shortest, but I've mentioned "Debbie does sex daily" in a similar context.

By: niles

niles — Sat, 21 Jul 2007 21:20:01 -0800

er, I did mean New Zealand. I just don't know what you call someone from New Zealand...New Zealandite?

By: TheNewWazoo

TheNewWazoo — Sat, 21 Jul 2007 21:22:36 -0800

New Zealander

"Out in the car, she headed to London for a beer."

I've never known of a "standard" phrase, but you could quite easily build one using those phenomes known to vary widely.

By: Samuel Farrow

Samuel Farrow — Sat, 21 Jul 2007 21:32:53 -0800

Awesome - but I guess I am more interested in specific words of phrases, internationally.

For example in Southland they say "herb" - I hear harb because of the large number of crofters (from Scotland) that settled there.

By: Steven C. Den Beste

Steven C. Den Beste — Sat, 21 Jul 2007 21:40:55 -0800

I think that simply the word "fire" is enough. Variations in pronunciation of that word are all over the map.

By: edgeways

edgeways — Sat, 21 Jul 2007 21:43:42 -0800

Yeah, I'm thinking similar to TheNewWazoo, identify a wide variety of phenomes then construct a sentence. Perhaps if you want to be percise even a set of sentences with each focusing on specific aspects (bilabial, labiodental etc).

By: Xere

Xere — Sat, 21 Jul 2007 21:53:09 -0800

"What in the world".

Also, simply the word "newspaper". There's the American "noohspayper", the British "newspiper", etc.

By: Ms. Saint

Ms. Saint — Sat, 21 Jul 2007 22:12:14 -0800

This may not be the most helpful to you, but I remember learning that the American pronunciation of the word 'bird' involves an r-sound incredibly difficult for anyone from other dialects.

(I don't remember if it's a specific region of the US or all of us, though, sorry.)

By: Abiezer

Abiezer — Sat, 21 Jul 2007 22:50:21 -0800

I'd include a negative in there somewhere - that's a point where a lot of dialects diverge I think: Scots cannae, Yorkshire nowt; Geordie divvn't etc.

By: iamkimiam

iamkimiam — Sat, 21 Jul 2007 23:24:06 -0800

Mary merrily caught a bird on the cot.

Lamest. Sentence. Ever.

By: Kickstart70

Kickstart70 — Sat, 21 Jul 2007 23:45:20 -0800

Buy, could you pick me yup a micky and a 2-4 since me pogey cheque don't come in for coupla weeks.

By: Guy Smiley

Guy Smiley — Sun, 22 Jul 2007 00:15:27 -0800

I remember reading a short magazine article (possibly in Smithsonian) about the disappearance of some New York accents, lamenting the replacement among elevator opearators of "Fawt flaw!" by "Fourth floor!"

By: hurdy gurdy girl

hurdy gurdy girl — Sun, 22 Jul 2007 00:29:48 -0800

On the Speech Accent Archive website, each speech sample features someone reading this paragraph: "Please call Stella. Ask her to bring these things with her from the store: Six spoons of fresh snow peas, five thick slabs of blue cheese, and maybe a snack for her brother Bob. We also need a small plastic snake and a big toy frog for the kids. She can scoop these things into three red bags, and we will go meet her Wednesday at the train station."

Each sentence highlights differences in regional pronunciation of vowel, consonant and diphthong sounds. Perhaps one of these sentences would do?

By: Samuel Farrow

Samuel Farrow — Sun, 22 Jul 2007 00:50:10 -0800

Brilliant - just what I need. Thanks.

By: barnacles

barnacles — Sun, 22 Jul 2007 01:05:19 -0800

I blame it on my family being from the Rocky Mountain West, but I completely unable to say the "g" in any word like "walking", "talking", "seeing", etc. (walkin', talkin', seein'), I'd suggest that you add a word like that to your test sentence. Maybe "Debbie does fisting sex daily".

By: hurdy gurdy girl

hurdy gurdy girl — Sun, 22 Jul 2007 01:37:52 -0800

Glad I could be of help. (The Speech Accent Archive is a pretty darn fantastic site!)

By: Idcoytco

Idcoytco — Sun, 22 Jul 2007 04:02:08 -0800

Just counting to ten will out quite a lot if differences, though you would have to wait until 101 for a short 'a'.

By: wackybrit

wackybrit — Sun, 22 Jul 2007 08:55:46 -0800

I'm semi-confident I could tell between at least 8 major British accents on this sentence: "I walked and worked about the beautiful grass."

"work" would separate Scousers pretty quickly, "grass" would separate entire families of accents from each other quickly (as would glass, arse, or task), "about" will knock out some Scottish accents, and "beautiful" could narrow it down even more with some of the less distinctive southern English accents.

By: MadamM

MadamM — Sun, 22 Jul 2007 15:34:53 -0800

Ahh! Speech accent archive! I thought about that site as soon as I read this question but couldn't remember it. Yay!

By: trondant

trondant — Sun, 22 Jul 2007 15:54:05 -0800

"How now brown cow."

By: effugas

effugas — Sun, 22 Jul 2007 16:38:55 -0800

Wow, that speech archive site is fantastic, and useful! Thanks!

By: klarck

klarck — Sun, 22 Jul 2007 18:01:21 -0800

hurdy gurdy girl, just my opinion, but I think that speech archive is worthy of a fpp in the Blue. Or has it been posted already? (I've already wasted more time on it than most of the Friday Flash Fun posts)

By: Samuel Farrow

Samuel Farrow — Sun, 22 Jul 2007 19:25:11 -0800

I agree with klarck.

By: hurdy gurdy girl

hurdy gurdy girl — Sun, 22 Jul 2007 23:45:34 -0800

It would be excellent to have the Speech Accent Archive as my first FPP! Unfortunately for me, it's already been done (in fact, I believe that thread was where I first found out about it--it's well worth reading, definitely).