Hacker News Reader

Comment by jeffadotio | Hacker News Reader

This is an interesting read but the article cites no sources for its claims. Even the claims that refer to linguistics debunking other theories have no citation.

It also makes some suspect statements. I live in New England and saying that it is hard to find someone who does not have an accent that links them to some New England locale is just silly. Then there is the claim that the “general American” accent heard on TV and radio is confined to a small region in the Midwest. That just sounds weird on its face. I imagine NPR must recruit reporters exclusively from this region because it would be difficult to find the accent anywhere else, according to the article. Having lived in the Deep South, far West, rural Midwest and urban East coast I have found that regional accents are largely overblown by articles like this.

View on HN

I think regional accents are fading. If I had to guess, it is due in part to TV, in part to ease of travel and relocation, and in part due to a huge decrease in European immigration.

My accent has faded in the ~two decades I've been away from Minnesota. But if you spoke to me in person you could identify where I'm originally from inside 3 seconds unless I was very careful in my word choices.

I suspect you're deaf to New England accents. I used to think people back home in the Twin Cities didn't have an accent. To me they sounded like the people on TV. It seemed like only the older folks or folks from rural areas had the Minnesotan accent. When I travel back to Minneapolis, I hear the accent. It's not "Fargo" level (although I've known people who talk like that), but it's clear and unambiguous.

The front-page article on this site is "8 Surprising Facts about James Dean," so I wouldn't take it too seriously. It reads like a high-school or undergraduate essay. Also, FWIW, it's from 2012.

Hopefully a linguist will come along with better treatments of the subject, but Google turned up a couple of articles with more links:

https://curiosity.com/topics/the-american-accent-is-older-th...

http://www.bbc.com/culture/story/20180207-how-americans-pres...

And, of course, there's Wikipedia:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_English

> I imagine NPR must recruit reporters exclusively from this region because it would be difficult to find the accent anywhere else

People can learn other accents. In the UK, there is (was?) a "BBC accent" which presumably didn't imply that every BBC personality was hired from a particular region.

I think it's been a very long time since there was a "BBC accent" - I'm in my 50s and I can remember presenters from my youth (e.g. John Noakes) with very distinct regional accents.

Not to mention the idea of BBC Scotland all talking in RP is quite amusing...

John Noakes would never have been asked to read the news.

It depends on the circles that you find yourself in.

In most areas there's the homogenized, suburban communities with corporate folks who are from wherever and sound like they are from anywhere, and then the people who are from that place. In that group, you could get knocked on the head somewhere near Boston and wake up in some subdivision near Charlotte and have no idea where you are.

There are exceptions, but if you're a reporter seeking out regional dialects, you won't be hanging out in suburbia, and you'll find plenty of them, particularly in older or coastal places like New England and New York where they are everywhere!

People on TV/radio learn General American. They generally don't act with their native voices.

Some examples can easily be found on the Walking Dead - three or four of the actors have a natural British accent but their characters speak with a southern American accent.

Also, as someone who moved from a small town in the Deep South 20+ years ago to a metropolitan area still in the south, I spent some time working on my accent.

I thought it was better but some of my coworkers working in India that I have gotten to know asked me was English my first language (it is) because they couldn’t understand me as clearly as other native speakers.

I still have work to do - especially as I move more into consulting and leading teams who may be offshore.

Not to mention that I use phrases and references out of habit that are well understood by native speakers but not by non native or especially people in foreign countries.

MentalFloss is recreational reading, not a peer-reviewed journal. This particular article didn’t seem to go anywhere. Usually I find articles from the dead tree version of the publication have a bit higher quality a bit more content that can lead you to seek deeper articles.

Yep. 7 years in Boston and the only time I have ever heard a “Boston” accent unironically was at Fenway Park.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com