It's been going on for several years at least.
But the invasion has recently been accelerating.
It USED to be that different regions, different cities, even different neighbourhoods, produced different accents around America.
A very good thing.
But of course television and radio have unified the country in a sense. Now everyone hears everyone else.
And for whatever reasons, a certain artificial sound has become associated with an 'educated' or 'refined' accent.
A similar thing happened in Britain perhaps 20 years agoit when the softer an 'R' you had, the more refined you were... which lead to a generation of affected accents with r's SO soft that they were what speech pathologists call a 'dark L'.
it sounds like a speech impediment!
It's almost as though they are saying "I weft my house at thwee o'clock"
but back to America...
There is one vowel sound, one phoneme, that is the AH sound.
Think of the way most Americans would say the O in olive, or in plot.
Or the tock, as in tick-tock.
The A in Palm. or Psalm.
but this sound is taking over.
There are some regional accents that said the word TALK with that sound.
In the midwest, people might very well say "I tocked to him"
But NOT in New York, NOT in Texas, NOT in Alabama or Arizona or Maine.
And that's one use.
Now I see talking heads on television bending themselves into knots to use ONLY that sound as much as possible.
Often slipping in and out of it as they struggle to 'correct' their natural accents, saying the same word twice, two different ways, in the same sentence.
I heard someone on the radio talking about a 'STOCKER" and I swear I pictured a guy who shifts boxes at the grocery store for the first 5 minutes until only the context told me she meant a STALKER.
I BRAHT my sister to the show?
pronounced like the brat in bratwurst, instead of BROUGHT????
really?
WHAT accent IS that?
Today I saw Chris Matthews on tv talking about campaign SAHNGS.
WHAT??
Again, maybe I'm slow, but it took me 4 examples before I finally got that he was standing on his head trying to mispronounce SONGS.
And it was just so ODD.
It's one thing when someone has a natural different accent. More often than not, it's clear in part becasue it's so ingrained in his/her speech.
These people are trying to affect the difference, and it comes out so unnatural and peculiar that it only makes it additionally more difficult to UNDERSTAND.
Which at least used to be the point of language.
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Topic: The Phoneme That Ate America - coming to YOUR town now (Read 3772 times)