which accent do you prefer British or American?
<<No, no. You're confusing "pointing out clear cases of trollery" with "insulting." Like anyone could trust your word, anyway.>>
You insult me even when I'm not making clear cases of trollery (such as right now).
<<Like anyone could trust your word, anyway.>>
That right there is a clear example of an insult. Not an example of ''pointing out a clear case of trollery''.
<<You never changed your ways.>>
Even on Unilang? I don't think so.
<<Just an unrelated note, recently I've picked up the term "Tory-torrent merger" from Wikipedia, to describe what I could previously only call the "Florida oranges phenomenon thingy", in which historical /Qr\/ sequences have become /Or\/. ;-) You can't really call it the "sorry-story" or "sorry-gory" merger, because in most NAE dialects the word "sorry" is, of course, excepted from the merger.>>
Yeah I noticed that as well--I'll start describing my dialect as "Tory-torrent" merged, since that clears any ambiguity. So, if I'm right, "Tory" historically was /O/ while "torrent" was /Q/ (and still is obviously, for some Americans and British), before the "torrent" words merged to /O/. So, then you should have ["t_hQr\Int] (not sure on your final vowel for that one) for "torrent," and New Yorkers should have ["t_hAr\@nt], while I know I have ["t_hOr\Int] there.
<<Lazar, speaking of that Telsur site, I don't know if you'd seen it before but here's a pretty comprehensive listing of some of the different NAE dialects (with pretty graphs and isoglosses!). Of course, I wish they had more on the West (and wonder why they split so-cal and nor-cal into different dialect regions, but it's still interesting overall:>>
Yes, I have encountered some Telsur maps in my travels, although I don't think I've seen this Chapter 11 page before. ;-) You're right, they do give a lot of interesting information on NAE dialects.
<<It's rhoticism
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rhoticism, not rhotacism
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rhotacism
Rhotacism is something totally different.>>
Touché.
<<So, then you should have ["t_hQr\Int] (not sure on your final vowel for that one) for "torrent," and New Yorkers should have ["t_hAr\@nt], while I know I have ["t_hOr\Int] there.>>
Yeah, I have [tQr@nt] there. (The final vowel could be somewhere in between [@] and [I] but I usually just transcribe it as a schwa.)
<<Yeah, I have [tQr@nt] there. (The final vowel could be somewhere in between [@] and [I] but I usually just transcribe it as a schwa.)>>
''tory'' and ''torrent'' are /tOri/ and /tOr@nt/ for me. So, yeah, I have the tory-torrent merger.
I'll be turning in for the night. Adios! ;-)
Re: ''rhotacism'' and ''rhoticism''
They're spelling variants.
<<Re: ''rhotacism'' and ''rhoticism''
They're spelling variants.>>
No they're not. If you click on those links that I posted above, you'll see that they refer to two totally different things. But they're both linguistics related.
''rhoticism'' refers to a form of speech (such as my own) that pronounces word-final /r/s. ''rhotacism'' refers to either the excessive or idiosyncratic use of /r/, conversely, the inability or difficulty in pronouncing /r/ or the conversion of another consonant, e.g., /s/, into /r/.
Terry,
I prefer the American accent because it sounds natural to me.
I mean, British English sounds arrogant to my ears, and forced. But American English sounds just like the language of the people; British is the language of the "Queen," and I hate that crap.
By the way, some British people don't speak with that thick "Queen" or elite accent I hate. That one I can handle, hehe.
By the way, some British people don't speak with that thick "Queen" or elite accent I hate. That one I can handle, hehe. >>
I see, so it's mainly the Queen's English you dislike.