Accent inferiority complex?

Completely agree with you Suzanne! There may be a very, very subtile voice inflexition on occasions...like when ending a sentence on an "up" kind of tone but its not a British accent.

As for American's being loud...I have to admit I speak too loud at times....on the flip side I can't hear some of my co-workers when they speak (two right at the desks beside me) I have to sometimes get out of me seat to get closer to hear what they are saying. There are some loud American's and some soft spoken Brits and visa versa.

We were on a train to Windsor last weekend and there was a family of eight or Italians sitting next to us...speaking loud....I thought well at least American's can't take all of the blame. They weren't out of control...just chatting and enjoying themselves. Bottom line - while I may have felt a bit uncomfortable about my accent the first few weeks I was here....I will never feel ashamed to be an American.

Julie

I want to throw a further thought in for the mix.

I have lived nearly 10 years of my life in Germany, part of which was during my youth, and my German is indistinguishable from a native (to be precise, my German accent is "Lower Franconian", which is a region in northern Bavaria).

What people in the US and Britain often don't realis(z)e is how incredibly close the US and the British standards have remained.

Because of the history of Germany (it wasn't politically unified until the 19th century), the language was fragmented for centuries, and even to this day the regional differences are enormous. A farmer from Lower Franconia is unintelligible to a factory worker from Berlin, etc. etc. Of course, you have big variations in dialect in the UK as well, viz. Newcastle v. Wales v. London v. etc.

But the Germans, Austrians and Swiss have greater differences, also in written style and in vocabulary, than we see between Americans and Britons. It would never occur to them to suggest that the languages were "different languages" or that Austrian German was inherently "inferior" to that spoken in the Rhineland. Indeed, I personally love the Austrian idiom - it is rich and romantic to me, like a beautiful antique from the turn of the century. The Austrians, for example, have a beautiful literary idiom, their everyday language is more ornate and subtle in some ways. I personally love to hear a Viennese speak - I could listen all day. (Sort of how I love to hear a Welshman speaking English.)

Believe it or not, when you actually know German, you can see the beauty of the language! I don't necessarily mean phonetically, but certainly the expressiveness and the idioms and the structure, etc.

But it is possible to take on an accent you are exposed to - I did with German and it was because that was what I heard. Now it is indelibly imprinted and I cannot switch off the "Franconian" so easily.

This is sort of a tangent, but it is just to explain why I have to grin when people start in on these accent issues. If you think you've got accent-confusion, wait till you hear about this...

Mindy, sarcasm noted and appreciated. But I met many Brits while living in the D.C. area (and dated a few), so my commentary isn't based solely on one Brit in the States.

Julie: I had a similar experience on a coach trip from Paris to Normandy and Mont St. Michel. Other than Andrew and four Eastern Europeans, the double-decker bus consisted of Americans and Italians, with a French woman on both decks giving sightseeing commentary in the respective languages. The Americans weren't loud or obnoxious by any estimation; nor were the Italians. The worst-behaved were the Eastern Europeans (we couldn't place the language) who, unfortunately, happened to be sitting at a mini-table in front of our seats. The stereotype about Americans being loud gets really old, after a while. I've yet to see that be the case.

Misch: When you get tired of law, consider writing as a second career. Your prose is eloquent. Seriously.

Suzanne

I'm not sure it's a good idea to form an entire theory based on one person but hey, whatever.  I'm sure you're right, Suzanne.

I couldn't agree more. We all agree. Everything's going to be just fine.

Suzanne...yes the old stereotype about American's being loud gets very old!  

Misch - great post! I can completely understand about the German (my husband speaks it fluently and lived there for a few yrs, when he speaks it....he doesnt sound like a Brit).  I would imagine the case would also be true in someone lived in France or Germany...says it an American...it would said very silly to speak French or German in an American accent. I can only speak for my own experience American vs. Brit.  A subtle change in voice inflection...some of the time...yes. The exceptions are folks like Renee Z. or Gwenyth P. who took lessons on how to pull off a British accent.

On an slightly difference note (example) "Learned" or "Learnt". While it sounds completely fine when a Brit says "Learnt" (even though it  always catches my ear....and hubby doesn't use it).....because that is truly how some say it...when an American say "Learnt" it sounds very back woods to me and I wonder why they are going to that extreme.

Julie

Maybe I should read through here to find the people who claim to have actually acquired British accents in just 1 or 2 years...must have missed those claims...

Quite often I think I'm somewhere lost in the middle. My family/friends in the States tend to guffaw when I talk to them these days ("haha, that sounds funny", type stuff), and friends/coworkers here in the UK grin at certain words/expressions/ pronunciations. I've found it necessary to change my pronunciation of some words just to be understood, however uncomfortable it makes me feel to do so. Example: I work in a laboratory - the pronunciation of which I get around by just saying "lab" - and we have samples coming in which are called "in-process". When I hiccup and say "praw-cess" instead of "proe-cess", people tend to not quite understand what I'm saying, or it takes a second or to for it to make sense. For the sake of time-management I make an effort to use the British standard, but it's not easy. And I do feel uneasy because, to me, it's not natural and, hence, pretentious.  To someone else, though, changing the pronunciation of a word to help them in their job may not feel at all pretentious - it's pretty individual, I think.

I use British words/terms with Brits, American words/terms with Americans. It's really not rocket science here. Occasionally, I'll use a Brit term with Americans (Andrew sometimes uses American terms with Brits, but not as often, since he's in his home country). Both "versions" of English have nuances worthy of adopting. Pretending to have an accent unnatural to you (be it British or American) is a different story altogether.

Maybe I should read through here to find the people who claim to have actually acquired British accents in just 1 or 2 years...must have missed those claims...

Me too. I don't think Gillian Anderson is a UKY member. (Although I understand that she spent nine years of her childhood in North London, so for her to acquire a British accent? - I reckon she's just losing her fake American one!)

To someone else, though, changing the pronunciation of a word to help them in their job may not feel at all pretentious - it's pretty individual, I think.

Pretty individual, I agree! Some people acquire accents quickly, some never acquire accents, just like some people settle quickly into a new country, and some people never settle. It's down to individual circumstances - job, family, attitude, "a buncha stuff", yet again.

Come on peedal, you know I had mine within a few days of arriving!  Dunno how it happened.

All that pretense I have I guess.  I'm sure I got it from Mindy.

(please add appropriate North London inflection while reading this post)

Meow.

Who REALLY cares how anyone else speaks?  Everyone, keep talking the way you're talking -- if someone doesn't like it, they can stuff their fingers in their ears! 

Good call Lola!!

I have lived nearly 10 years of my life in Germany, part of which was during my youth, and my German is indistinguishable from a native (to be precise, my German accent is "Lower Franconian", which is a region in northern Bavaria).

But the Germans, Austrians and Swiss have greater differences, also in written style and in vocabulary, than we see between Americans and Britons. It would never occur to them to suggest that the languages were "different languages" or that Austrian German was inherently "inferior" to that spoken in the Rhineland. Indeed, I personally love the Austrian idiom - it is rich and romantic to me, like a beautiful antique from the turn of the century. The Austrians, for example, have a beautiful literary idiom, their everyday language is more ornate and subtle in some ways. I personally love to hear a Viennese speak - I could listen all day. (Sort of how I love to hear a Welshman speaking English.)

But it is possible to take on an accent you are exposed to - I did with German and it was because that was what I heard. Now it is indelibly imprinted and I cannot switch off the "Franconian" so easily.

Erm ... to diffuse the slight build-up of tension, I'm going to hijack this thread and comment on Misch's German language experience

I totally agree with the statement that one tends to pick up the dialects of the region ... one great example: my very first British pen-pal hardly spoke any German when I met her the first time in '78. Due to a lot of unfortunate circumstances, we lost touch with each other but 're-united' again in '89. I went to England to attend her wedding and was totally amazed when she welcomed me speaking in fluent German! The weird thing was, she sounded Austrian! It turned out that her to-be-hb was Austrian and that they had lived together in Austria for several years before the marriage.

Then, my best friend originates from the Lower Franconian region as referred to by Misch - I've known her since '85 when she moved to Berlin to study. She still lives there, married w/children, anyway, and still sounds as if she moved there only recently

I stem from a very rural part in the Rhineland where people have a distinctive dialect. It can be found out very easily because they can't/don't make a difference between the spoken "sch" (similar to the English "sh") and "ch" sound (like the "sch" sound except the tone is formed in the rear of the tongue not in the front  [however, in certain words, "ch" is pronounced differently altogether which is unimportant for the purpose here]). Personally, when I first heard other dialects in my life, I found mine very 'inferior'-sounding and I tried very hard to get rid of it. It's funny, I still have to pay a lot of attention when pronouncing challenging words like "psychologisch" Funnily enough, when I meet Germans today, they think I'm from Berlin so I'm quite happy.

Another funny thing is, I've known many Germans in Berlin that spoke a perfect "High German" (it is said the Hanover area speaks the 'purest' German; it can probably be compared to "Oxford English") but the moment they talked to their relatives on the phone, they'd fall back into their original dialects. In Germany, it is expected that you speak High German if you work in a public place (and, of course, radio & TV) that deals with regular contact to customers - that doesn't mean that every German is able to switch from dialect to 'accent'-free High German. It becomes obvious when you watch regional TV, for example, BR (Bavarian Broadcast channel).

It really surprised me that the customer service reps I worked with in London spoke with their cockney or south London dialect and nobody seemed to care! The same goes when I have to call any customer service in England ... sometimes, the person on the other hand speaks such a strong Scottish or Welsh accent it really gives me a hard time. I might expect something similar if I phoned a small rural garage in deepest Bavaria but certainly not if I called Deutsche Telekom

Then, there seems to be a phonetic border in Germany that also divides dialects by the way the letter "r" is pronounced. While the southern dialects up to Franconia kinda 'roll' the "r" from the tip of the tongue to the middle (I heard it's similar to how the Scots do it), in the North, the "r" is a sound formed in the throat. Now, there might be people who love all those different dialects, well, sorry, if someone speaks to me in a wild German dialect, I can't take that person seriously. It has a sound of being not very educated. I can't speak for all Germans but I have a personal aversion towards Bavarian and Austrian dialects, I can't stand them. Not only does it  sound to me like a simple-minded farmer talking to his mountain goat but also, due to the fact that national socialism originated in Bavaria (Munich) before it spreaded all over Germany, I'm still suspicious about the very conservative and right-wing attitude that predominates the south of Germany.

So, the south of Germany and any adjacent German-speaking countries don't only speak a different dialect ... they also reflect an entirely different mentality. 'nuff said.

 ;)But what about all my friends in the South, and Austria? Surely they aren't all hicks and rubes? I know some pretty sophisticated types in Vienna, btw, artists, lawyers and that kind of crowd, and believe me, a lot of them sure aren't anywhere near the right of the political spectrum.

I know what you mean, though, about Southerners (German Southerners, that is) being more conservative. A lot are, but many aren't. 

(What town in Unterfranken is the friend from? Just curious!)