"Authentic pronunciation"

[Jonathan Lighter]

Ah, yes, but it is probably among the least stereotypically accented for
non-native speakers, if they can hear any difference at all.

Many decades ago I was in a linguistics class taught by Sumner Ives, who had
a profound deep-south accent, Charleston style.

During the discussion of American dialects, a grad student from India
observed with embarrassment that she heard no difference between his and the
native New Yorkers'. Everyone laughed.

JL

On Sun, Oct 3, 2010 at 10:31 AM, Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at yale.edu>wrote:

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> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at YALE.EDU>
> Subject:      Re: "Authentic pronunciation"
>
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> At 10:14 AM -0400 10/3/10, Joel S. Berson wrote:
> >At 10/3/2010 12:52 AM, Wilson Gray wrote:
> >>Back at the '72 Summer LSA (remember those days, Ron?), friends who
> >>weren't native speakers of English continually asked me whether a
> >>friend of mine was a native speaker of U.S. English. My friend was
> >>from Minnesota and I didn't notice anything particularly distinctive,
> >>let alone non-native, about her speech. Yet, to those foreigners, she
> >>sounded like a foreigner!
> >
> >Isn't Minnesota (stereo)typically supposed to be in the region of the
> >best, least-accented American English, the Mid-West?  Or am I
> >ignorant or confused?
> >
> >Joel
> >
> The stereotypical Minnesota pronunciation is that of the Coen
> Brothers' "Fargo", as e.g. in the speech of Sheriff Gunderson
> (Frances McDormand).  Hardly among the "least-accented"!  (Garrison
> Keillor also portrays various lexical and phonological idiosyncracies
> of Minnesota English on his Prairie Home Companion, and at one point
> a semi-serious spin-off book appeared, Howard Mohr's _How to Speak
> Minnesotan_.  Could be worse, you betcha!
>
> LH
>
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