I’ve been seeing a lot of videos about various accents in the English language lately, and it makes me think that I must have missed some sort of calling to be a linguist. I find it all fascinating! But in watching these two videos about how to do an American accent (from a British perspective) and hearing several UK dialects (that all sound like music to this set of American ears), it’s no wonder that between various vocabularies and actual different sounds in pronunciation that things can get confusing when trying to figure out a way to create a “standardized English”. (And this isn’t even including other dialects around the world!)
Take a listen here– Enjoy! (I’ll be working on some of my British accents. I think I have the Northern Irish/Southern Irish one down, kind of, due to mimicking family relations. 😉 )
Danielle M. Villegas is a technical communicator who currently employed at Cox Automotive, Inc., and freelances as her own technical communications consultancy, Dair Communications. She has worked at the International Refugee Committee, MetLife, Novo Nordisk, BASF North America, Merck, and Deloitte, with a background in content strategy, web content management, social media, project management, e-learning, and client services. Danielle is best known in the technical communications world for her blog, TechCommGeekMom.com, which has continued to flourish since it was launched during her graduate studies at NJIT in 2012. She has presented webinars and seminars for Adobe, the Society for Technical Communication (STC), the IEEE ProComm, TCUK (ISTC) and at Drexel University’s eLearning Conference. She has written articles for the STC Intercom, STC Notebook, the Content Rules blog, and The Content Wrangler as well. She is very active in the STC, as a former chapter president for the STC-Philadelphia Metro Chapter, and is currently serving on three STC Board committees. You can learn more about Danielle on LinkedIn at www.linkedin.com/in/daniellemvillegas, on Twitter @techcommgeekmom, or through her blog.
All content is the owner's opinions, and does not reflect those of her employers past or present.
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3 thoughts on “No wonder (verbal) English is confusing!”
What skill, on both counts. The woman who runs through the 17 British accents does an impressive, entertaining job of it. Brings back memories of a summer spent in the Isles between college semesters. Thanks, Danielle.
Reminds me of a New Year’s Eve in up state New York many years ago. A US friend was gently pulling my leg that UK people always sang rock songs with a US accent. I didn’t want to admit it, but she was right. Oh and sorry to disappoint you, but there is a huge difference between the accents from the north and south of Ireland. 🙂
Oh, I know there’s a difference with the Irish accents, but mine sounds like a hybrid of the two–much like my American English sounds like a hybrid of a Trenton (New Jersey) twang, a South (New) Jersey accent, and a Southern (US) accent. And oddly enough, I listen to a lot of British bands, and not all of them lose their accents when singing, or at least not entirely. But it’s a point well taken. Funny how that works, eh?
TechCommGeekMom 
What skill, on both counts. The woman who runs through the 17 British accents does an impressive, entertaining job of it. Brings back memories of a summer spent in the Isles between college semesters. Thanks, Danielle.
Reminds me of a New Year’s Eve in up state New York many years ago. A US friend was gently pulling my leg that UK people always sang rock songs with a US accent. I didn’t want to admit it, but she was right. Oh and sorry to disappoint you, but there is a huge difference between the accents from the north and south of Ireland. 🙂
Oh, I know there’s a difference with the Irish accents, but mine sounds like a hybrid of the two–much like my American English sounds like a hybrid of a Trenton (New Jersey) twang, a South (New) Jersey accent, and a Southern (US) accent. And oddly enough, I listen to a lot of British bands, and not all of them lose their accents when singing, or at least not entirely. But it’s a point well taken. Funny how that works, eh?