American English
By ALouie
@ALouie (118)
United States
October 25, 2007 1:42pm CST
I would love to know if anyone has an opinion about what is considered mainstream American English Pronunciation. I was born and grew up in New York and have lived in the United States my entire life. People very often correct my pronunciation and many times ask me to repeat myself, insinuating that they do not understand what I am saying. On a recent trip to Scotland a very intereting thing happened. My family spent ten days there and not once did anyone ask me to repeat myself. I spoke the way I always speak. Everyone understood me throughout our entire trip. It was so refreshing. The day I got back home, I made a phone call and the person on the other end of the lline did not understand my name and asked me to repeat it twice. Has anyone had a similar experience?
2 responses
@foxyfire33 (10005)
• United States
25 Oct 07
Hey ALouie! Welcome to mylot. I was born and raised in PA. Same county my whole life with the exception of the one year I spent 1/4 mile over the border into the next county. I don't know what kind of New York accent you have but sometimes I do have trouble understanding some of them...and we're neighbors relatively speaking.
There are so many regional accents and dialects I really don't believe there could be a standard American English pronunciation of anything. Just look at this discussion alone. So far I think I'm only the second person to answer and, including you, you already have 3 very different American accents.
@ALouie (118)
• United States
26 Oct 07
foxyfire33: Your response has been very helpful. There are indeed many regional dialects. Perhaps, because New York is so cosmopolitan it becomes more of a challenge for everyone to understand each other. What was impressive when my family visited the West Coast was the Californian English. Most of the English spoken there was smooth and flawless.
@mengchuijie (324)
• South Korea
13 Nov 07
i think it is normal for the native speakers sometimes hard to understand each other what they are saying. you know, in China, even the people from Northern cannot totally understand what the people from Southern were saying. Fortunetaly, we have Putonghua, a chinese standard accent, to communicate with each other.
