Neutral American English

<<"Would you mind repeating that, sir?" she replied in a drawl from somewhere well south of the Mason-Dixon line. "Cos y'all have an accent!"
>>

This couldn't have happened.

Y'all is plural; a contraction for "you all". The only reason it'd be said to one person is if the speaker had a group of people in mind.

For example: "Are y'all coming to church next week?"--said to Mr. Ensley.

Spoken to one person, but referring to the whole family.

Besides all this, better educated Southerners don't use "y'all" at all. Do y'all understand?

>> Y'all is plural; a contraction for "you all". The only reason it'd be said to one person is if the speaker had a group of people in mind.
<<

Actually that's not true. There are some regions in the South where "y'all" is the *singular* form, and "all y'all" is used for the plural. Illogical, yes, but the truth.

Iowa. I live there.

"I think the Western Canadian accent (with the aboots and the sohrees taken out) sounds like the most neutral 'US' accent. "

This is also true. But they also say other words out of spec for "general American" accent. Ask one to say the word "boat". Then compare to someone from Iowa.

Certain areas west of Iowa you can find the same accent, but there are spots that aren't. You cant go wrong with nearly the entire state of Iowa.


Even in Iowa, if you go to border with Minnesota you'll get the Canadian style "boat" and other similar words.
Most Canadians and northern Americans will say boat almost as "boot". Iowa is very close to where this accent starts to creep in.
But the southern accent starts creeping in soon as you get into Missouri, but again its spotty and depends where you are.

I grew up in southern Iowa and now live in northern Iowa so I'm pretty familiar with what you guys are speaking to..

<<Actually that's not true. There are some regions in the South where "y'all" is the *singular* form, and "all y'all" is used for the plural. Illogical, yes, but the truth. >>

I was born and raised in Tennessee, spent the first 18 years of my life there. I had relatives in North Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, and Texas. I NEVER heard "y'all" used in the singular, and everybody else I've spoken to who was raised in the south says the same thing.

You're confusing something; y'all can be said to ONE person, while referring to a GROUP. This is why Yankees always get it wrong. Example:

(said to Mr. French) "Are y'all coming to church next week?" The rash and impetuous Yankee would think "He's asking if Mr. French is coming to church." In reality, Mr. French is being asked if "the whole family's coming".

The usage is exactly the same as "you guys" elsewhere.

Now, if you can prove to me that y'all is used truly in the singular anywhere in the South, I'll listen, but I'm going to have to have a lot of proof!

Besides all this, better educated Southerners don't use "y'all" anyway!

Americano:

Exactly correct; linguistic people consider Nebraska and Iowa the General American accent. Everywhere else--including California--is a deviation, however slight--from this norm.

There is a movement to change the idea of General American to California; this probably has to do with Hollywood influence. As far as I'm able to discern, the movement hasn't succeeded yet.

>>There is a movement to change the idea of General American to California; this probably has to do with Hollywood influence. As far as I'm able to discern, the movement hasn't succeeded yet.<<

I disagree the idea of redefining General American to be Californian English, because there are a good few innovations in Californian English which are really unrepresentative of North American English as a whole, or even just English in the US. This is unlike General American, which while not truly spoken as such by a whole lot of people today (as most dialects like it today are cot-caught merged), is still suitable as a prototypical "average" North American English variety and as an abstract standard for the entire US, and with slight modification, for Canada as well.

<<I disagree the idea of redefining General American to be Californian English, because there are a good few innovations in Californian English which are really unrepresentative of North American English as a whole, or even just English in the US>>

Travis, I agree; I hope they decide to keep General American English in Nebraska and Iowa--it sounds truly neutral, while Californian sounds "accented" to me. I admit that this is purely subjective, though.

SAM: I just realized that, in my previous post, my zealotry could be mistaken for aggression; I apologize--that wasn't my intent.

But truly, in all my life, speaking to Southerners all over the South, I've never heard 'y'all" used in the singular. Oftensaid to one person, a group was always in the mind of the speaker. I asked a group of Southerners in an Internet chat room--they all said the same thing, viz., they'd never heard it used in the singular.

"All y'all" wasn't used very much; usually directed at a large group of people, the speaker meant to target each individual in that group, too. Its usage was exactly like "each and every one of you" as spoken in the West.

Keeping an open mind, it's possible that there are now small pockets of 'y'all' usage in the singular somewhere in the South; to the rest of us, that would sound odd, indeed--not to mention confusing. The singular usage would cause the rest of us to scratch our heads.

Moreover, it's possible the dialect has changed since the 1970s; I believe the usage of "y'uns" has become extinct. It was used by Appalachians of working-class descent. And you know that godawful word "awesome"--with its overly stretched out vowels--has infected Southern speech (how I hate that word!). In addition to all this, some older Southern dialects are dying out; unfortunately, Tidewater English and Virginia Piedmont--beautiful tongues--have already almost become extinct. I believe their use has died out except in the rural Norfolk, VA area.

If you find evidence of singular "y'all" usage, in terms of dialect maps and isoglosses, I'd be happy to hear about it. I love discussions about dialects...

>> Exactly correct; linguistic people consider Nebraska and Iowa the General American accent. Everywhere else--including California--is a deviation, however slight--from this norm. <<

Which linguistic people (other than the ones that wrote the highly inaccurate "General American" Wikipedia article) say that Nebraska and Iowa speak closer to General American, than say Colorado, or Florida?

''Travis, I agree; I hope they decide to keep General American English in Nebraska and Iowa--it sounds truly neutral, while Californian sounds "accented" to me. ''

Any cot-caught unmerged accent sounds ''accented'' to me.
CC merger is the norm in Canadian English, a variation in US English, and there's a 50 % 50 % split in Northern American English.

''I hope they decide to keep General American English in Nebraska and Iowa--it sounds truly neutral, while Californian sounds "accented" to me.''

Nebraska and Iowa are fly-over States w/no prestige.
California is where the money is. It's where things happen.
Even in Iowa/Nebraska they like Californian pronunciation and spelling: kewl, newp...

>>''Travis, I agree; I hope they decide to keep General American English in Nebraska and Iowa--it sounds truly neutral, while Californian sounds "accented" to me. ''

Any cot-caught unmerged accent sounds ''accented'' to me.
CC merger is the norm in Canadian English, a variation in US English, and there's a 50 % 50 % split in Northern American English.<<

So? There are features of General American which sound accented to me, such as the use of [A] where my dialect has [a] and the use of [eI] and [oU] rather than [e] and [o], but that has no consequence here.

>>Nebraska and Iowa are fly-over States w/no prestige.<<

But the thing with General American is that it is specifically not a "prestige" variety in the way that Received Pronunciation is. Rather it is more of an average variety which most North Americans will most likely perceive as relatively unaccented, aside from its being cot-caught unmerged. General American is not analogous to pre-WW2 upper class "Mid-Atlantic" varieties, you must remember.

>>California is where the money is. It's where things happen.<<

So? People from California sound like, well, people from California, one way or another. Fronting and unrounding of rounded back vowels, lowering of [{] towards [a], rounding and raising of [A] towards [O], pronunciation of "-ing" as [iN], and so on are not "standard", "average", or "unaccented" from the perspective of the average North American.

That post above was by me.

"Y'all" are raising interesting questions that fall under the category of a historical mystery.

From my own perspective, the standard of Nebraska has always been offered to me by a lot of varied sources; a girl who took accent reduction at the Julliard School of Music (she was left with the barest trace of a Texas accent--she called the target tongue "Standard" American English, btw); a man who took linguistics at a local college; a dialect book or two checked out at local libraries; Internet chat rooms, forums, etc. Not any one source. All this was confirmed--and widened to include Iowa--by Wikipedia; a weak source, admittedly, but one that confirmed what I had already heard for 20+ years.

I guess somebody, somewhere had to pick a standard. It's likely that this choice was made either after the Civil War or with the advent of television. Speaker Walter Cronkite was from Nebraska; great orator William Jennings Bryan, a generation before him, was also from Nebraska. (An aside--it's very interesting, indeed, to hear Civil War Nebraskan English; it has definite RP overtones).

Perhaps the "fiction"--if it is one--that Nebraska--and Iowa--represents General American English has been repeated so many times that we have all taken it as fact. Does anybody else have definite information?

Travis, I think any accent is subjective, i.e. depending upon whose doing the perceiving. The Great Lakes folks would swear to you they have no accent, but to a Southerner/transplanted Westerner, it's so strong it'd knock you down. Southern Californians, in particular, have accents to me because it's a)variant from the Nebraska standard I've been brainwashed to believe is standard and b) it differs from Nevadan English. I hear a lot of vowel lengthening (is that the proper term?) going on; in the phrase "a whole lot less", for example, the short "e" in less is spoken with a much more open mouth than elsewhere. I can pick a Southern Californian out on television in just a few seconds of speech, just as I can spot a Great Lakes speaker in a short time.

I'm anxious to hear more info on this topic...

Walter Cronkite is not from Nebraska. He was born in Missouri and moved to Texas when he was about 12 years old.