Quote:
Originally posted by cegerer
The only people in the USA without an accent are midwesterners. They speak English closest to the correct 'dictionary' prononciation.
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Not true in all respects. Mid Westerners tend to roll out the words more than CA. Pacific Coast speak is not clipped like the Eastern US (aside from accents like Bronx and New England). I find Michigan to be fairly neutral in the accents. No Wisconsin Nordic there.
The further we go in history, the more any of this is out of date. The theory behind the West Coast lack of accents included the coming together of many peoples from all over the US. As their kids schooled together, they lost what they brought from home. So, the geographical aspect is important to understanding linguistics. CA was as far as the population could migrate, so CA became the melting pot. It still is.
There was a period of not much immigration in CA after WWII, but a huge population growth from within, aka the baby boom. The predominant population and their newborn offspring were WASP. Schools were built by the 1000's and the language phenomenon continued. By genX, things were changing. After the Viet Nam War, CA experienced a huge surge in Asian peoples.
Hispanics have always migrated here, but when I was up on my grandmother's farm in Bakersfield in the summers of the late 50's, there were no Hispanics working in the fields at that time. Blacks and poor whites did itinerant labor. Many of the whites were from the Midwest like OK and KS. There were definitely accents there in the fields and a whole lot of discrimination. All this changed by the 70's and you never see blacks in the fields. Nor do you see whites.
Back to the point. All this time, schools were segregated by demographics, if nothing else. So the language continued to be flattened out until it was a blend of everything, hence no accent. The final proof of the thesis is the singing. British rock groups of the 60's sang the words differently than they spoke. You can hear underlying accent tones, but it is hard to open you mouth and project at a note and maintain an accent.
There have been some patterns of speech indigenous to CA such as surfer speak and Valley girl talk. But Todd noted that while I was writing (and checking my spelling) this.