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In reply to:
In terms of pronunciation without a spelling change, UK, Australian, NZ & South African English inevitably uses "m-air" whereas US (& Canadian??) English uses the OE "may-or" for the word mayor.
Interesting. My Dad, educated at an Anglo-Indian public school in the dying days of the Raj, also uses "may-or" consistently - it's one of the few traces of his oroignal accent left after 52 years away from the land of his birth.
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Carpal Tunnel
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In reply to:
UK, Australian, NZ & South African English inevitably uses "m-air" whereas US (& Canadian??) English uses the OE "may-or" for the word mayor.
Stales, perhaps I'm misunderstanding your transcription (which seems to rhyme it with a female horse), but my pronunciation of mayor is more like mayuh(r) (stress on the first syllable and then a schwa at the end, r pronounced before a following vowel), and I think that's pretty standard Southern UK pronunciation.
Bingley
Bingley
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Bingley comments: Stales, perhaps I'm misunderstanding your transcription (which seems to rhyme it with a female horse), but my pronunciation of mayor is more like mayuh(r) (stress on the first syllable and then a schwa at the end, r pronounced before a following vowel), and I think that's pretty standard Southern UK pronunciation.
I think he's right - about Zild and Strine anyway. We do tend to pronounce the two words - mayor and mare - the same. MaxQ might have a different take on it.
The idiot also known as Capfka ...
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Carpal Tunnel
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In reply to:
I think he's right - about Zild and Strine anyway. We do tend to pronounce the two words - mayor and mare - the same. MaxQ might have a different take on it.
Mais non! Every good Kiwi knows that mayor and mare are homophones, pronounced exactly alike. That's why I mentioned that my Dad's lapse in this regard was one of the signs that gives him away as a steenkin' furriner.
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I believe the Aus/NZ accent comes from London. It shares many features with Cockney. Regionally, the modern Kentish accent, which is very slight, has a faint echo of Aus/NZ, so I suspect Cockney (East London) and the more recent Saaf Lunnon derive from Kent, which is why they're so strikingly different from East Midlands (London and Oxford and Cambridge), the origin of RP.
The fact that the majority of settlers came from the major population centre of London would explain how Aus/NZ and for that matter South African, which in some ways is similar, came to be, without invoking class or convicts.
But it is striking that NZ is ethnically very Scottish, yet has no trace of Scots in the accent. A simple explanation in terms of regional origin of settlers obvously isn't quite enough.
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NicholasW said But it is striking that NZ is ethnically very Scottish, yet has no trace of Scots in the accent. A simple explanation in terms of regional origin of settlers obvously isn't quite enough.
Actually the Scottish influence was very slight. They only arrived en masse in Dunedin, and then in one main tranche with a few extra odds and sods arriving in the next few years. Probably the majority of the immigrants between the first group, in 1848 and about 1860 would have been English, although the Scottish influence remained strong for a while, then waned. Things might have been different except that 13 years after the Otago colony was founded, a bloody Australian came over and found gold. The population went from a few hundred mostly rural settlers to tens of thousands from all over the world in a little more than two years.
Some of the Scottish traditions remained in a small way. It was a bastion of Presbyterianism until about the turn of the 20th century. Most of the Scots stuff is modern revival, though.
I agree that Zild is based on Brit English, of course. I have to go to my approximation of RP when I'm in the States. They can't understand Zild easily. But, unlike you, I do not hear echos of Zild in any particular English brogue or accent. Certainly not in saaf Lunnon, which is almost as foreign to us as it would be to, say, belMarduk. Essentially, it must be homegrown. Why we got what we have is the mystery!
The idiot also known as Capfka ...
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Oh no, you're right, Cockney and even more so Saaf Lunnon are strikingly different from every other regional accent in England; except that I think I can detect in modern Kentish a je ne sais quoi that suggests a common ancestor in Kent for both the East London and the Southern Hemisphere accents, both of course radically altered since then.
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addict
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the Cornish and ?Devonish sailors Devonian. As for accents, they are definitely in the ear of the listener. At least partly - each listener will most easily distinguish the accents s/he has most exposure to. That's what I think, anyway. (First person to translate the above sentiments into a permissible form for the 'Not M_' thread wins my undying admiration!  )
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Dumnonian, as I think our old Roman pals would say, or am I wrong about tribal Britons?
Local variations in pronunciation can sound hard to pick up if you don’t know that district, so a lad or lass from far away won’t twig linguistically why two folk that talk akin will both claim "I’m not using sounds anything at all as that chap is, can’t you catch it?".
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Relative to Rhode Island, it was founded in 1631 with the express purpose of being religiously open. The first Jewish temple, which is still in existence, was established in Newport. The building currently there was built in the 18th century, I believe. Roger what-his-name, I am told, walked 60 miles from Massachusetts thru the snow that winter to get away from the oppressive theocracy there to found a colony he called "Providence" that would have complete religious freedom. Penn, of course, founded the other at Philadelphia. Actually, Penn first came ashore at Newark (prounounced new-Ark') Delaware. But you touch on a primary factor that created the isolationism you mention and that is the religions of those who settled. Virginia was Anglican, Delaware was Lutheran, Pennsylvania was Quaker, Long Island was Presbyterian (sp?), Connecticut and Massachusetts were (originally) Puritan. Connecticut later became almost completely Congregationalist.
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