Washington Post on Alaskan accents ... if there is such a thing

[Tom Zurinskas]

Thanks for that site, Andrea.  Bert Vaux did great work there.

One thing that surprizes me on the national scale is ~s for "Presley" instead of ~z.  I wonder if that jibes with folks saying ~s instead of ~z for many plurals that you would think would be ~z.  Pres. Bush says all his plurals with ~s.  Most by rule would be ~z.  In fact in running text the sound ~z is represented 100 times more by the letter "s" than "z" (truespel book 4).  That is if the usual pronunciation rule is followed.

Tom Zurinskas, USA - CT20, TN3, NJ33, FL5+
See truespel.com - and the 4 truespel books plus "Occasional Poems" at authorhouse.com.




> Date: Sat, 20 Sep 2008 09:56:31 -0400
> From: aandrea1234 at GMAIL.COM
> Subject: Re: Washington Post on Alaskan accents ... if there is such a thing
> To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
>
> ---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------------------
> Sender: American Dialect Society
> Poster: Andrea Morrow
> Subject: Re: Washington Post on Alaskan accents ... if there is such a
> thing
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> You might be interested in this link:
> http://www4.uwm.edu/FLL/linguistics/dialect/staticmaps/state_AK.html
>
> For those who haven't seen this before, then-Harvard professor Bert
> Vaux created an online dialect survey and made it available from 2000-2005.
> People who were interested in participating did so, and the results were
> gathered and mapped. The link above takes you to the results from those who
> identified themselves as being from Alaska.
>
> One unfortunate thing about the maps on the site is that they don't include
> Alaska, so you can't get the data visually, but you can still compare the
> numerical results from Alaska to the data from other states. Another caveat
> is that there are any number of sources of potential error and/or unresolved
> questions. (Are repondents REALLY from Alaska? How long have they lived in
> Alaska? What is their age, gender, and/or educational level and how did
> that affect their responses? How did their perception of the survey's
> formality or informality affect their responses? Etc.)
>
> But it's kind of interesting anyway, and you can then look at video of Palin
> and see if she is exhibiting any characteristics the survey identified as
> being typical of Alaskans.
>
> Andrea
>
> On Sat, Sep 20, 2008 at 9:20 AM, Doug_Harris  wrote:
>
>> ---------------------- Information from the mail header
>> -----------------------
>> Sender: American Dialect Society
>> Poster: Doug_Harris
>> Subject: Re: Washington Post on Alaskan accents ... if there is such a
>> thing
>>
>> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>>
>> She also referred to her audience, on at least one occasion (re-presented
>> by Jon Stewart on 'The Daily Show') as "guys and gals". Is _that_ an
>> Alaskanism or, as I suspect her g-stripping is, a 'folksy bit' by a
>> politician.
>> dh
>>
>>
>> William Salmon wrote:
>>
>> http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/09/19/AR2008091903
>> 524_pf.html
>>
>> If there's such a thing as an Alaskan accent, it sounds on Palin a lot
>> like the Upper Midwest, a more subtle version of the actress Frances
>> McDormand in the movie "Fargo."
>>
>> Palin regularly and seemingly deliberately rounds off words that end in
>> "g" -- the economy is "hurtin' " and needs "fixin.' " After McCain
>> answered a question the other night, she asked, "Can I add somethin'?"
>>
>> ------------------------------------------------------------
>> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
>>
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------
> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org

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